And we're in alpha stage!

So, I managed some of the things on my TO-DO list before the 30th and now you can play it yourself.

Head on over to GGE to play it.

The Finishing Touch

Unbelievably, it seems I might have something remotely playable by May 30th.

The collision detection, while not perfect, serves its purpose in this Alpha version. And "making the game fun" seems to be working out. Sort of. It's hard to actually make driving around an empty road fun, but I think I'm on the right path here.

It makes me realize how hard being a game designer is. I mean, all programming and graphics aside. Designing a game is pretty deep shit. Constantly thinking about who's going to play it, how's he going to play it, why's he going to play it? I'm also beginning to think it would've been easier to start out with an easier, more simple concept instead.

This is a pretty simple game but going with something more familiar would've been a whole lot easier on my brain.

Collision detection cracked!

And it feels like I'm the first person in the world to crack this bitch! It feels like everything is going a whole deal smoother.

Makes you wonder if this is what it feels like being a god. Creating things.

It's awesome.

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines..

I'm trying to do too much at once.

I admit that. After utterly failing at implementing proper collision detection (the car drives all the way through now..) as well as AI, I went for making my deadline on my animation project.

Now, after finishing the short animation it hits me that the 30th looms over my head. As a part-time coder (wait, should that be free-time coder? Can you change blog names..?) I won't have time to break my brain over AI. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to crack the whole collision detection.

And then there's just that minor "making the game remotely fun" thing.

Optimizing code

It's a real bitch. The little function that cycles through the map array and draws everything according to that, is being pretty fucking annoying. This is probably the most irritating part of coding.

This wouldn't even be that big of a problem if I was writing this in C++, but ActionScript isn't exactly the fastest language in the world.

TO-DO list

This is more of a reminder for me than it is something for you, dear readers, to read. But it's up on this offical developer's blog. So you might as well read it.

TO-DO

• Proper collision detection - Because driving the car half-way through a building before the cars position is finally detected as being near the house looks foolish.
• AI cars - The last tested AI ended up in the ocean so I'm tempted to just drop this one, but it'll leave me with a very empty city.
• Mission system that's easy to write for - because according to my "design docs" there's going to be a heck of a lot to do in the city.
• Write the damn "design docs" down instead of memorizing them.

That's not a whole lot. Let's say I try and finish these TO-DOs before April 30th and then I'll have a somewhat playable version of the game.

This is almost too early

If you'd ever get the chance to play the current version of Delivery Boy (WORKING TITLE!), the next big Indie thing since Dan Marshall's Gibbage, you'd notice that it's not really come that far.

There's not a whole lot of people other than yourself. No computers driving around and surely no children playing on the street. Just you, delivering pizzas. Wait, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself. Delivery Boy is a game I started about two weeks ago.

I've never tried making games before and decided on coding it in Flash. It proved to be simple enough to get a car driving around a white background. From that it grew to delivering stuff. And now, two weeks and a couple of quick mathematic refreshers, it's grown to a whole town with a single pizza place that you happen to be working for. Trust me, I've got this fun premise I'm working from. It's probably going to end up huge with everything from Pirates and Ninjas to Hearts and Livers to deliver.

But the question that I ponder right now is: Is it too soon or is it too late to start this developers blog? The answer is probably no because no more than three people will eventually end up reading this and it'll go the way of the tree that fell without anyone hearing or seeing it.

So, the three of you, welcome and enjoy the blog.