Bit Battles: November in Review

[Bit Battles is a multiplayer-only game currently in development by Fanatical Games. Visit FanaticalGames.com for more information.]

Another busy month gone, four more to go. Here's what's been going on this month:

At the beginning of the month the Fanatical Games website got an update. The 'In Development' section was replaced by a cleaner, simpler 'Games' page and a new 'Community' area linking players to the Fanatical Games' forums was added. On the development side of things, progress got a boost as a result of switching to a weekly todo list system. The multiplayer map 'Gateway' was taken from rough draft to semi-final state and slew of related tasks and bugfixes took place. Read more about the week's activities, as well as my spiel about the motivational effects of being able to measure weekly progress via a tasklist system here.

Week two saw me finishing up the odds and ends of Gateway. The terrain layout and design was done, objectives, powerups and team bases were added in. In addition to mapping, a change in game design took place: hazard zones were removed. Hazard zones were intended to be areas on a map that negatively impacted players that entered them. Unfortunately, the implementation of them wasn't much fun and so a decision had to be made to either keep them (and take time from other tasks to redesign them) or simply cut my losses and move on. And lastly, to top it off, more bugfixes (partially a result of making such a far-reaching design change this late in the cycle). To read more about the fun I had this week, go here.

Despite Thanksgiving and moving taking up most of my time, Bit Battles still moved a few more steps toward completion. The goal for this week was to finish a backlog of GUI work ranging from a new options dialog to a player profile section. In addition to that, I wanted to switch gears and delve into working on the offline training/tutorial campaign. Little did I know that my first attempt at AI programming would produce some of the dumbest bots ever to grace a videogame. To read my mammoth update and learn all about the successes and pitfalls of the week, click here.

Finally, as the end of the month approached, I was determined to get the AI (or lack thereof) working. This meant coming up with a good solution to pathfinding, teaching the bots to aim properly and defining exactly what they should be capable of doing. You can find out more about my battle with computer-controlled players in the ongoing section now (lovingly) titled "Offline Woes and Foes" by clicking here.