Thur, 08/20/09
Between getting married last month and a job follow up that involved me very quickly writing a little sudoku program (elsewhere on the website) I haven't got a great deal done on either this website or M.U.L.E. but I did just get a major refactor done on M.U.L.E. and the game flow is much more logical and fun to work on. The game is now playable (sort of) you can go through the whole game loop and repeat from the main menu, to land grant, to auction, back to land grant and so on. The auction isn't finished yet but once it is the game will be playable and even have fun mechanics. I still have a few other features to implement, but once thats done it will be time to tidy up, tweak the settings (speed and timing) and stage one will be done. If I ever get to stage 2 that would consist of replacing all the graphics with unique graphics and possibly adding internet gameplay of some sort. Either online VS. gameplay, or have the application communicate with a database for keeping track of scores for fun.
Fri, 06/18/09 --Seth Janes
These are some screen captures of my current progress on the game. I have at least in the rough stages up through controlling your character in the store and land around the store.
Thur, 06/17/09 --Seth Janes
I plan on creating a new game with my brother Calvin but we weren't sure what programming language/graphics library we want to use so we decided to divide and conquer and make a "test" game and see which setup we like better. He was using Python/Pygame and am using Java/Slick.
I chose a game for inspiration that I was familiar with to redesign and program because I wanted to focus on learning slick and there were several fun ideas I had to expand it. The original game was very fun, but it only had support for 2 joysticks. So while I might still play the game on the Commodore 64 if I only had 2 players, for more than 2 players it was awkward (I have heard there are emulators that can work online, but I haven't tried them).
First pass of the game I'm borrowing some sound effects and sprites as placeholders, but I will eventually replace the whole game with unique (or approved) sprites and sounds. I won't be doing AI or networking on the first pass (networking might never happen) so this game will primarily be for local play for over 2 players (Its possible currently to play with 1-4, but there wouldn't be much point to having only one player with no AI).
We have a competition of sorts to see who can finish first, with a bet of a PS3. That was in jest; neither of us even want a PS3. Once I finish the first pass for "completion" of the game I will start to add features and art and change functionality to make the game completely mine (though it might be background work as I'm very excited to work on something completely original).
There have been some wonderful websites that have been helping me with my project. Kroah's Games actually has a decompilation of the original Atari version of M.U.L.E. which helps me play test the game less in order to remember how the game works. Lemon is a great website for finding an emulator and ROMs (our old C64 died long ago) as well as just the website for the graphics library Slick I'm using in Java to program the game.