So it’s another busy weekend, with little time for coding. But I did have time to create a gameplay video from the old code which is currently uploaded to Flash Game License.
Some of the features seen in this video have already been removed from the newest version. The two buttons that appear when you click on a unit have been removed in favor of automatically going to movement. The game no longer scrolls when you go to the edges of the map either, it’s now a click and drag interface.
Also, none of the images in the video are the final versions, they’re just pictures I pulled from Google to have something to work with. Let me know what you think in the comments.
So I know I haven’t made much visible progress on my game since I started this blog. And I think it’s due in large part to working on it part time.
Since going back to work after the new year, I haven’t had a normal sleep schedule. I got used to staying up until 2 AM every night instead of my typical 11 PM. I’m finally starting to get back to my “normal” schedule. But until now, this terminal sleepiness has made programming after work difficult.
This is a situation a lot people get into when they start trying to start up a business or project on the side. A full-time job can be really draining and after one and a half hours of commuting and eight and a half hours at work, the last thing on anyone’s mind is putting in work on a side project. The only thing keeping me working on my game is my intense passion for games in general and my strong desire to turn this into a career.
While I don’t expect to quit my job and start developing flash games full-time in the near future, releasing and selling my first game is the first step towards that goal.
Even if I produce a mediocre game that sells for $50 after I put a couple hundred hours into it, it’s still worth it. If I want a career in video games, having released one will help. If I want to turn this into a business, having released a game is necessary. Even if all I do with this is use the experience to improve my programming skills, it’s worth it.
So I’m resolving to get this game finished and ready for sponsorship on Flash Game Licenseby May 1 of this year. If I have to rush the last bit and release a game that’s barely more than a prototype, I’ll do it. Stay tuned over the next 3 months to follow my progress. You’ll know as I get closer to the deadline whether I’m going to release a crappy game or something actually worthy of playing.
Let me know what you think of my goal in the comments. Is it not ambitious enough? Too ambitious? Should I instead follow the advice of this article on Lifehacker and schedule some time each week to work on my game?
My game has been on Flash Game License for a week now and in that time all 3 of my friend’s with fan accounts have logged in and tried it. The first one discovered the error caused by code encryption. The second one told me that they couldn’t figure out how to end turn, but after looking into that I couldn’t find an issue. The third one reported the same issue as the second one. So I dug a little deeper.
Apparently, moving units is causing the “End Turn” button to disappear. The third tester also found that when clicking on an enemy unit, the game completely locked up. I have yet to reproduce either of these things even when playing the game online on a different computer. So I guess it’s back to the drawing board on the buttons.
Additional Game Progress
In the meantime, I’ve been working on adding a level selection screen up front. It’s making me realize how bad a decision it was to treat the “Main” class as though it were the class for my battle screen. I don’t have a “destroy” function to quickly make everything disappear when I want to go back to the stage selection screen.
That’s a lesson for anyone starting on their first game. Make every screen the user might see it’s own class and make the “Main” class (the one that runs every time the game is opened) as minimal as possible. It should contain a static variable referencing the window itself and should create an instance of whatever class will contain your opening screen and then attach it to the window. That way when you switch up which screen your game opens with you only need to change which class is called. Don’t do what I did. You’ll have to rewrite most of it later.
So I got my game in enough of a working condition to upload it to Flash Game License as a full prototype.
I got the AI working a couple of days ago. Instead of using my movement function I ended up creating a very basic tile evaluation algorithm. All it does is count the distance from each enemy unit to every tile on the map. Since the zombies needed to charge straight at the first unit they can reach it worked out well. Finally got the AI to attack as well. It’s not much, but at least now it feels like playing against another player instead of playing against myself.
The Opening Move by My Zombie AI
I had a few other bugs to fix. Among them I needed to add a way to reset the game and end the turn without using the keyboard shortcuts. Also for some reason my AI wasn’t reacting well to losing a unit. It stopped working completely as soon as a unit was killed. Lastly I needed to make my AI actually end its turn once it had moved every unit. It’s still not feature complete, but it plays like a game now.
I know that my artist has some sketches of the first 6 units or so. I’ll probably show them to everyone once she sends them to me. They already look a lot better than my crappy placeholder images.
Now that it’s uploaded to Flash Game License I can start requesting some play testing to see how it works at the moment. I can also start sharing the latest version with people. For now I only opened it up to fans; special accounts I can create for friends and family. I’ve only created 2 fan accounts so far and I’ve got at least 2 more available. If you’re interested in testing my game send me an email or drop a comment.
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