So I’ve made a rather major change of direction with Munchers. Up until today, I had been building a game which I’ve finally decided just wasn’t sufficiently “Munchers”; the Muncher was basically just a projectile in a pretty standard artillery-style game.
So I’ve changed direction, and am now working toward a different goal-game. I find it interesting that I did this with Damsel as well, except that the game change happened on the Thursday, with Damsel, whereas it didn’t happen until Saturday morning, this time. (But I still expect to have a fully playable game by the end of the day, and that’ll still leave me ahead of Damsel!)
I now have a randomly generated world, and some basic player control. Just need to add some enemies, and some simple pathfinding and AI for them, and it’ll be fully playable. But right now, it’s time to break for lunch. Back in half an hour!
Yesterday I talked a bit about how much time I had lost, trying to extend VectorStorm’s collision system to support colliding bounding spheres against line segments, when I really should have just hardcoded the particular boundaries I wanted things to be restricted from crossing.
Today, I’m singing a different tune; I tried my hand at it again, and have had success! This dramatically simplifies some of the Munchers code, as it means I can simply drop collision lines into my collision scene, and have objects automatically react to them in reasonable ways, without spending time coding each one individually. This should actually save me a lot of time, and let me put a good deal more into Munchers than I had originally expected.
The down side, of course, is that I still don’t have a first playable version. That’ll be tomorrow, I suspect. As long as I get that first playable version of the game before Sunday, I’ll still be doing better than I did with Damsel!
Just a quick note.. it’s Thursday night, and I don’t have a “first playable” of the game idea, although I do have a pretty solid game design in my head, and the basic game mechanics are mostly implemented.
So I’m further along now than I was with Damsel at this time of the week, but not as far as I really wanted to be. I wasted far too much time today trying to extend the VectorStorm collision system to support line segments.. I should really just hardcode support for the collision lines that I really need (honestly, just the borders of the play area), and I’d have been a lot further along now, if I hadn’t been tempted into attempting system-level work. That’s an important lesson for the next time I do one of these. 
Not too much to talk about, today; I’ve done a lot of thinking about design, but haven’t really come to a definite design decision. However, I’ve started on code and some visual design. In particular, I have an initial, rough design for the Munchers, whatever they turn out to be in regards to the gameplay. I’m imagining them coming in a whole variety of colours.
So I’ve been thinking over game design ideas for a few hours now, and have come to a few conclusions.
First, I’ve decided that I really, really don’t want to have to create a cow sprite. So as much as I like the idea of integrating the context of the initial quote, I really don’t think I’ll do so, this time.
Here are a selection of just a few of the ideas I’ve been entertaining:
- You are a “Muncher” a very small organism in a petri dish that eats small cells. As you eat, you grow, and can begin to eat larger cells and other munchers. Think of it as an eating version of Katamari Damacy. Goal is to grow large enough to leave the petri dish. (I guess that this is basically fl0w, or the first level of Spore, so it’s certainly not my most original idea, in retrospect)
- You are a kid in a treehouse. The munchers are chewing at the supports of your treehouse, and you need to fend them off! (or build new supports faster than they can chew away the old ones, or something like that) Goal is to last as long as possible.
- The game is Pac-Man, but you aren’t playing as Pac-Man or one of the ghosts; you’re playing as the bunch of cherries. Goal is to survive as long as possible, before Pac-Man catches and eats you.
That pretty well covers the broad possibilities suggested by “Munchers”; you can be the Muncher, the Muncher can be trying to eat you, or you can be trying to defend the thing which the Muncher is trying to munch. Being the muncher leads to the most traditional arcade-style games, whereas being the victim of the munchers generally lead toward Daleks-style avoidance games, and ‘defender’ roles often lead to various puzzle and Tower Defense-style strategy games.
Haven’t picked a direction yet. I’m hoping to pick a broad design tomorrow, and begin coding by tomorrow night. Today was only about generating ideas.
