I dove into this a bit head-first and I find myself flung in all sorts of directions, not really concentrating in any one place for more than a few minutes. Well, I played around a bit with some gameplay things, but really there are more important things to do. For example: fixed/floating point wrapper (not sure if everything's going to have efficient hardware floats), Thread wrapper (not sure if everything will have pthreads), the android java/c interface. I haven't even really touched much on input or openGL.
Speaking of graphics, I think for the sakes of simplicity, portability, and cost I'll just go with sprites for now, but make the engine robust enough that adding 3D sprites shouldn't be a problem.
I've got the Java code theoretically calling into the C to request rendered frames, and I'm working on figuring out exactly how I want to pass input events (though, as I said, nothing is really compiled yet).
I'll conclude here with afew random thoughts and notes on things, some Programming Potpourri, if you will:
- On the 30th, I got the Super Mario Bros. Mix (which is apparently so bad it doesn't have an IMDB page) from RedBox. It was a huge disappointment. There were some decent ideas here and there, and it was interesting to see the progression from the Super Show to SMB 3 to Super Mario World. I have to say that the Koopa Kid's names in SMB3 Show were terrible; I much prefer the canonical names from Super Mario World (and I think in the New Super Mario Bros.). Some highlights: What I think was supposed to be Iggy or Lemmy's head was sometimes an ugly teal color, sometimes the color of the rest of his body (and this changed mid-shot like someone just messed up a keyframe and didn't bother to go back and fix it). In a scene right around when I noticed the head, the topmost yellow-orange band across Bowser's stomach just disappeared. Very high quality production here. So, that set me back a few hours yesterday (didn't get to watch it on the 30th due to an excellent Wine & Cheese party).
- Also on the 30th, my license for the (free) Beta of Visual Studio 10 expired. I'll have to get the real thing so that I can compile again. Whoopsie. That certainly hasn't helped me stay on track. My usual pattern of code > fix compile errors > fix bugs is a little shaken at the moment. It's just code code code and it's sort of weird feeling.
- Since VS is out of commission, I've been using Sublime Text editor. I've got a friend who's a big proponent of it, so I've been trying it out. The powerful multi-select thing (watch the embedded video. Seriously.) blows my mind. I've just started using it and have barely scratched the surface. I look forward to being a bit of a power-user. I bet learning the keyboard shortcuts (apparently everything can be keyboard driven) will go a long way towards that.
- I thought the amoxicillin that I got as a kid was like the only good-tasting medicine in the whole world. I'm not sure why other medicines haven't copied it. Turns out they have, we got some antibiotics for our daughter that looks and smells exactly like amoxicillin but goes by a different name (cefalexin, apparently). I guess the drug companies are catching on.
- The delete key deleting two characters in Chrome with my blogging software. That is bizarre.
That's it for today, folks, but I'll be back tomorrow with maybe something a little more structure, though of course I don't want to be spending too much time writing about the code or game design since that's time I could be spending working on it!
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