Plan for Adam Beaumont

Things have been quite slow this week on Roboherd. We're trying to increase the content in the game which basically means getting some more levels done. Last couple of weeks I've done quite a bit of coding building new objects that the robos have to avoid or interact with, now its time to try and get them integrated into some levels and released for people to play.

Some things I've been thinking about this week:

Demos - are they a good thing? I was thinking that we should try and put out a demo version of Roboherd every so often (couple of months?) just to show how things were going and to slowly build up a following of interested players. The game is definitely playable so people would get some reward for downloading. Is this a good idea? On the whole I think it is - its a good way of setting goals and measuring progress and it may generate some interest in the project (and get some help on board). The key thing for me is getting feedback from people when they play - that's where I see the real value of a demo. I've wondered about putting a button in the next release that will maybe give players an opportunity to answer some questions about playability and give feedback. I've already got some code that can post things to a mysql database on the web so with a bit of tweaking it may be able to collect feedback as well...

Mac Build - I am soooo close to buying a mac mini to see if I can compile Roboherd up on it for a Mac release next time round. I am naively assuming that the code will compile up without too many problems but I guess there is only one way to find out. I have a 15" powerbook already but its not really great as a dev environment - I tried using XCode to compile up a fresh version of 1.3 and there were a few things that needed sorting out. I assume that my version of the Roboherd code will have those problems and a few more. I saw a couple of vids from IGC though and mac seems to be a good way to go - by this time tomorrow I may be there.

Level building lite - we're a bit preoocupied with levels at the moment - one thing that struck me during the week was that there may be another way. We want to see beautifully crafted terrains and thoughtfully worked out puzzles and challenges, but until we get someone on board to help us out with that we are either stuck or we have to find a shortcut. Well, I came up with one. I decided that maybe I could build a level out of platforms - I could design them on graph paper, put them together easily even with my elementary f11 skillls, and use them to test out some ideas for the new objects I'd built - Metal World was born ! It's sort of like a Marble blast setting in that its platforms suspended in mid air - a bit of a tweak in the code and the robos can run around on them and your repellors work as well. I even came up with a level builder in Excel - you put letters in various cells, press a button, and a macro builds all the scripts to create the various objects and meshes for the level - sweet! It could be a good way for me to showcase some of the puzzle ideas I've had before someone else comes in and rebuilds them in beautiful 3d - kind of like level prototyping in a way.