Phew! Much improved since the post of a few days ago – thankfully! I’ve been out of the picture for about 3 weeks – off work, the lot – been quite the ‘adventure’ but fortunately I’m back on track it seems.
So – as my R&R comes to an end, and boredom takes a hold of my brain, I’ve started poking around the game project again – trying to remember where I was, what I was doing and so on.
I’ve created some structure diagrams for all the components that make up the game project using Lucidchart and used that to reorganise my Trello boards – and it was originally with a view to making these publically viewable. I’m pretty happy with the restructuring so far, but it’s not quite there yet so I’ll tinker with it over the next few weeks – and maybe then you’ll get an idea of the features and plans for the things I have in the immediate pipeline, as well as the “wish list” of things I’d really like to be doing!
I was working on the NPC Behaviours – with some basic defend/attack shennanigans on the go. I’m going to tackle some basic ‘trading’ NPC behaviour next, and that will be enough to get a bare bones sense of ‘life’ going on around you as you fly about.
The restructuring I mentioned has helped direct my efforts – I find I keep getting distracted by ‘visual’ issues which mar the appearance of what I’m trying to achieve. Now, visuals are all important – but they don’t make gameplay, and you can spend forever tweaking and honing a visual. I’d rather get something playable up and running, and then sort out the visuals – but it’s really hard to park the ideas I’m having!
So I’m going to go on a ‘gameplay drive’ and pull together all the elements I’ve put in so far, being; basic trading, docking/undocking, interstellar flight/navigation, basic combat. That should then leave me with a basic bit of gameplay, even if it looks ugly. Then I’ll start on the prettification. So – if I push out any pictures/videos of the work in progress – they may look a little naff for the time being I’m afraid!
Meanwhile, I completed my own final, final final(ish) draft of Book one – and now even have a cover! But – there’s a but! As I scouted around looking for avenues to circulate the imminent release – I came across an Indie book editor/critique/proof reader who has already helped with a few tweaks on the first few pages. So – I’ll be sending over the book for them to give a ‘professional once over’ and then incorporating any changes they suggest before wrapping it up. I’ve also got some more narrative and descriptive text to go in before I send it out – so I think it’ll be a few months more yet before I dare to self-publish at long last, but it will definitely happen!
So – while the proofing is going on, I can get back to doing some coding at long last… my only problem right now is trying to keep my subconscious from working on planetary landings…
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