Another short one. I only get Monday through Wednesday to do game work this week. I’ll have to keep this modest and unquantifiable:

Outline the Game Flow section.

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You see, people, this is why you can’t ever let me get bored.

Like, I guess you could download it from here if you really want.

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Productivity!

• Finished first Core Gameplay
• Moved on to Game Flow

Game Flow refers to a typical string of activity that a player will go through during a play session, from the game mode screen all the way to the ending credits. I finally started to get hung up on mid-level decisions at this point, specifically when I started to describe the title screen. What kinds of game modes will this game have?

My first impulse going into this was that the game should be similar to Civilizations, in that the game map is generated randomly each game and the game continues sandbox-style from that point on. However, I also want to have some form of High Score system in the game, which means either that the random maps can’t be TOO random (no all-mountains Continent or some such outlier), or that there should also be some static maps for players to choose.

I think from the outset, I’ll go with just random maps. Perhaps the option to play pre-defined maps can be added in a later version. Or even better, I can create a map editor. On that same vein, I should also allow players to save randomly generated maps, if they are so inclined.

I also have an idea for a Survival mode. The Continent (I’ve been referring to the game world as the Five Continental Nations.) is essentially infinite, with new armies constantly spawning beyond the borders of the Strategic Map and moving inward. These AI armies would fight each other and gain strength while the player is fighting nearby AI armies and also gaining strength, forcing the player to fight steadily stronger and stronger armies until he his inevitably defeated. It would make a fun high score mode. I really need to flesh out the details better, though. This description didn’t explain it terribly well.

I need to do a lot of thinking regarding how the map is divided up. My first instinct was to divide the map into hexes, since that’s the ideal way to lay out a turn-based strategy map. When I decided that such a thing would be slightly harder to code, I started thinking about squares instead. Civilizations uses squares; why can’t I? Now I’m back to hexes again. The math isn’t that hard.

Another idea: I thought about not even showing the player hexes at all, but still using hexes under the hood to keep track of the map. I would build globular chunks of geography out of hexes, and just present those chunks.

Boy, it’s sure nice to be thinking about this stuff again.

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Hoooooookay. Back to working on Ultimate Epic Conflict Advance! this week. Where the hell was I? Lemme check my old posts.

It looks like I left off on the Core Gameplay section of the Functional Design. Taking a look at the document itself, I see a few notes to myself about the action/strategy portion of the game. Okay.

Let’s say, this week, I’ll finish the Core Gameplay section.

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Bathtub Brewery is live! Tell your friends!

Mel and I have been wanting to start a beer and brewing blog for a while now. I spent the last few weeks off from working on my Flash game to concentrate on putting a site together for us. By last Friday, it was all done, and we spent several hours on Sunday (after we got done bottling our first homebrew!) writing articles for it. Look for articles about homebrewing, craft beer, festivals, brewing how-tos, and even regular ol’ food recipes!

This does mean that I won’t be posting cooking articles on Hindrances anymore, which honestly makes me a little sad, but I haven’t done a cooking post in well over a year now, anyway. I do still cook, mind you. I just keep failing to get around to posting about it. But now that Mel and I are living together, I’ve got another foodie in arms reach to cook for and to have cook for me, so we both have a lot more energy for cooking now.

Anyway: happy face. Bathtub Brewery is fun and exciting!

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