The Usual Progress Report

Which is of course: Nothing to report :(

That is mainly because this week has been work hell. I've been finishing off one project and getting properly stuck into the next, and it was Anitas birthday yesterday. Coupled with not much free time last weekend has ended in a week where about the most I have managed is to uninstall VC++2008 and install VC++2005 in its place, which is a slight improvement except that I now need to recompile my dev libraries (SDL and Glew being the main ones) and problems are occuring from that.

Ah well, another weekend is looming and I should be able to get some free time over this one to at least sort out my libraries. I will attempt to get something on screen for about mid-way through next week (until I post next Thursday with more procrastination and excuses anyway ;))

Midweek update

Well, this is mainly because I am currently bored at work, and feel I should do a quick progress update due to the problem that I'm not going to be available over the weekend to do so.

So, my current update progress is: Nothing on screen yet.
The reason? Because I'm being my usual self and spending too long on my input code system. I must have written something similar to this system almost a dozen times now, and each time I get fed up and then lose the code. This time, I'm going to write one extra class (I currently have mouse and keyboard) to handle 'actions', but that will come after I have thought a bit more about how to design the actions. I will write a quick, hard coded wrapper around my current input code to create a window and have something moving around over the next few days, and then you may get a screenshot towards the end of the week of a badly drawn sprite or a simple teapot or something :)

But for now, I should probably attempt to get some work done.

Race to Saturn - Update and Setup

Well, I'm getting started with games stuff. I have a couple of ideas as to what I would like to develop and I have set my computer up as a fairly comprehensive (to me anyway) development environment. I currently have set up:
VC++ Express 2008 (I may downgrade this to 2005 express at some point. it is still a beta version after all :))
SDL
SDL_Image
SDL_Net
SDL_TTF
FMod
FreeType
GLEW (for opengl extensions, in case I ever want to go into shaders and stuff :))

and just because I'm interested:
C# 2005 express and XNA 1.0 refresh

So I think I am set up for most of my development needs.

As for other stuff, I have put a bit of thought into my roadmap, but it is in no way finalised yet. My current thoughts go:

Set-Up (completed)
Refresh knowledge on SDL and OpenGL (in progress)
Develop first game/demo
Learn sound and networking stuff
Develop second demo
Learn how to use TTF font rendering effectively
Add some menus etc to previous demos
Advanced OpenGL
More impressive demo (graphically anyway ;)
Some physics stuff (possibly look at havok, or possibly develop some demos on my own. Depends on how I feel :))
Start designing/implementing an engine
See how things go from there

Now, I've dabbled in a lot of this stuff before, so I hope that this initial set of things won't take me too long. I'm going to set an initial timescale of 6 months for it though, just so I can feel better if I go faster (and so I don't feel bad if I act like a lazy bum and find myself entangled with work more than this ;))

So, with that, I'm going to sign off for the week and update next sat/sun with any progress I have made towards relearning SDL and OpenGL :)

A Race to Saturn - Initial posting

Well, its been a while since I posted here, although not much has changed. I've gotten settled into my job and have almost ended my probation period. I've helped out a lecturer on a research project and should be doing some more for him soon. And I've entered a competition called 'A Race to Saturn'.

A Race to Saturn is an interesting idea for a long term project/competition. The basic idea is to improve an entrants game development skills by having a weekly progress posting (which will be here for me incidentally, and probably on a Saturday or Sunday) with releases of any small games/tech demos that the entrant has created. The final end goal is to have created a commercial level game and sell 100 copies of it, although this could be some time in the future (I'm guessing a year or two probably :))

My motivation for entering it was mainly to provide myself with motivation for continuing to develop my game development skills. It also gives me a reason to post something here at least once a week (even if its a 'work has been hell, nothing to report' posting which will happen more than once I expect. Just a warning up front ;)). When I do my first competition post I'll provide the entry details I am required to for the competition and will also do a quick roadmap of what I would like to do in this competition and (very) rough projections for how long I think each item will take.

Thats about it till Sunday. Now I'm off to do some work :/