Done! Yaaya =)
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It's really nice to get this alpha done. There are still some bugs, right now two issues. First one, the organics drone (i.e., that which causes plants and rocks to appear on the planets) seems to crash in windows. This is the first priority, since it's a platform issue. Second, there is some nondescript bug with warping to a new system, which has to be worked out.
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I think I will setup something simple that lets me (more or less) juggle the linux/windows builds. Simple script to copy back and forth the .o files? Debugging the windows takes a long time because I'm dependant on other people to run new executables and send me debug info... I'd like to be able to continue work while I do.
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So, it is time to think of where to go next! A few things come to mind. Immediately, I should get weapon generation in. This is one of the last (maybe THE last) thing to get moved over from static to autogen. I should also code a little bit more sophistication into the weapons, though I may not do that just yet.
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Network play! It would be nice to have the very early beginnings of network play available in the next version, wouldn't it? I'm not thinking it will be very much, at this point, but maybe still the most important things.
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A bit of game balance with enemies. This ties with weapon generation, because I need to think about how much HP enemies should have. It would be nice to tweak enemies to have different attacks and more developed AI, but I think this should sit still for a little while.
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If I felt artistic, maybe I could add some more enemy components, so that we get more variety in enemies? The same is true for trees. It wouldn't be such a bad idea to get on that, simply becuase the payoff is quite large and the work is rather mind-numbingly easy. Actually, that's something I can do without having to switch builds.
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Clouds, weather? This is another big payoff item that isn't *too* hard to do. Certainly weather effects like rain/snow/dust aren't that hard, they are simple particle and/or overlay systems.
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Well, I am not yet decided what is next, certainly I still have some thinking to do on network so I won't probably tackle that right away. Ah me!
2004-04-20