Old project, New project

I'm going number two: Isostrat on hold (until I make another Isostrat, and I totally will), have some fun completing some smaller projects.

What becomes of ye, Isostrat?

I'm going to clean up any exceptionally rough edges for a release, then release it like last time. If anyone wants to view/copy the code for educational purposes (Taking note of the advice: "don't read source code" ), then they're welcome to it. I could probably let all the graphics go free too because they're nothing that I couldn't do again given a few minutes.

Upgrading

Whether I can haxor things to get Pyglet going on Windows 2000 or not, I suppose it is indeed about time to upgrade, so I'm getting Windows XP and a new drive to install it on.

It's a big step, I know. I clung to Windows 98, for instance, for far too long as well because I was worried about bloat -- ha! Look at Vista for bloat, it makes XP look like a laser. Anyway, you can't even buy hard drives in the size that my current installation is on (40 gigs) (and ok, maybe you can, but it's uncommon) -- and my largest drive is 60 gigs. I've been keeping it powered down most of the time because it was starting to become flakey but I had nowhere else to put everything (though I did back everything up on Laura's computer). This is, you shall note, a rather ridiculous thing to be doing when 160 gigs costs only 60 bucks.

I'm going to have to drop some cash and get the latest Photoshop too, methinks; I'm more or less "in the industry", so it's time to be all current and stuff.

A New Project

As we all know, every aspiring game developer has a million super cool awesome unique ideas, so Laura and I sat down and prepared an outline for our next game -- yeah, we're going to work together on this one. I'll have more time to work on it, of course, because she has a real job.

So imagine Asteroids where you collect gems and stuff from the asteroids you blow up and sell them to buy upgrades for your ship and a home-base space station. It's like a compulsive grinding action-lite game, but the grinding should be fun and all interactions with the game should feel good, like in Diablo with its clanks and clunks that reward interaction with objects in a small way. That's the plan. Nothing radical, just good clean fun. And if we want to make it insanely complex later, we'll have a solid and working foundation to screw up on.

Milestones

#1:
- Ship flys around under mouse control

#2:
- Ship goes "pew pew" and shoots lasers
- Asteroids spawn
- Asteroids blow up when shot

#3:
- Asteroids spawn loot when blowed up real good
- Ship can collect loot with tractor beam
- Loot is stored in inventory
- Can throw loot back out the airlock

4:
- Home base Space Station exists
- Can dock at base
- Can enter "base mode" to buy/sell stuff

5:
- ???

6:
- Profit!