In which Time is Running Out

So yeah, bit of a late start this month. Partly I’m putting that down to mild burnout, but also I just plain wasn’t in love with the idea I was planning to work on. As previously mentioned, the original plan was to be a sort of 1-dimensional golf/curling game inspired by this ld26 entry. It seemed like a fun little thing I could put together over a weekend, which may have been part of the problem.

In case it wasn’t already obvious, I’m a bit on the lazy side. Elevating procrastination to an art form is on my to-do list but I haven’t quite got around to it yet. So faced with a project that should only take a weekend, my immediate response is along the lines of “why this weekend?”. So far I’ve managed to still get stuff done out of sheer of enthusiasm for the games I’ve been working on, but this one just didn’t grab me enough to overcome that inertia.

Anyway, I finally sat down on Monday and forced myself to start coding, and after a couple of hours of swearing at the 3d camera setup I’d got the very basics in place and chucked a screenshot on twitter before calling it a night.

Exciting, huh?

Looking at it again the next morning though, all I could think was “that grid needs things on it to shoot at. With lasers. Great big, fuck-off lasers that go WHOMP!”. So, following the First Law of successful game design - “Everything’s Better With Lasers” I’m deviating a bit from the original plan and instead aiming to build the very best scrolling shooter that I can put together in the space of a week.

THIS IS HOW VIDEOGAMES WORK!

I put a couple more hours in last night adding most of the boring plumbing bits (AI subsystem, collisions, a basic level generator) and added in the most basic of all possible hazards : big glowy laser-walls (because Everything’s Better With Lasers - haven’t you been paying attention?), mainly because they were quick to implement, and now it’s looking like this.

Looking better already

Next on the list are some slightly more interesting enemies, and some lasers. I did mention there would be lasers, right? With a bit of luck I can have some shooty bits by the end of tonight and something actually decent by the end of the week.