This dev log was delayed by a week because I was insanely busy with other stuff. This will be a short entry this time, because many of the biggest initial challenges (networking, world-building, management of huge maps…) have been solved already. I’m not saying that everything from now on will be a breeze; scaling among other things will probably be an interesting nut to crack. But now, as I’m heading towards the first prototype, a lot of the things to accomplish will be relatively straightforward.
For example, I spent some time these weeks working on the user interface (UI) of the game. Laying out the basis of well-structured modular code to build all kind of menus for the game. Making a great UI is no simple matter and can be a challenge in itself, but for the prototype I’m not trying to make an amazing UI yet. I need something functional which allows the player to play the game. And in that, there were no big interesting challenges to discuss here. Below is a capture of the inventory menu.
This a basic inventory system, unfinished at the moment. The sprites have been grabbed from opengameart.org. Keep in mind that what you see shouldn’t be any indication of the final aesthetic of the game. I’m stitching together random art, nothing more. It’s normal if it doesn’t look good yet.
As I said, the goal now is to have a basic prototype as soon as possible. To that end, I have made a list of minimal features that should be in it in order to materialize the main gameplay pillars of the game. Anything that doesn’t directly contribute to this is left out for the moment. Since the game aims at being an mmo with a few main gameplay aspects, the minimal features list is still a bit long, so it’s going to take some time.
This will keep going like that for a while, until all the minimal features are in. As soon as several of them will be implemented, I’ll put demos online for testing. One thing I really want to have ready before the first demo is the more or less final world map, at the scale I have in mind. The recent progresses have made this possible, and I’m eager to experience it and see other people experience it, even though a huge map with nothing to do in it will still be of limited interest.
The next dev log should come out in two weeks as usual; I’m looking forward myself to seeing what progresses will have been made!
Jerome Renaux
I'm an independent game developer, working mainly on browser-based multiplayer online game (HTML5 & Javascript). I love to discuss about all aspects of game development so don't hesitate to get in touch!
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