Week Six: Inching Along

This week was more productive than the last, both from a prototyping standpoint and an overall team vision standpoint.

We had considered dropping Nuclear Armageddon, such was our enthusiasm for the Death project.  The reactions when we announced this told us it was a mistake.  Our professors and classmates expressed surprise that we'd consider dropping such a fascinating idea.  We were unsure how the game would hold up over time; we had previously thought of the game as a PC or console title.  One of our professors suggested making this a mobile game, which we had surprisingly never considered.  Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place.  The arcade style and short matches meshes really well with the mobile market.  It'll be a bit more challenging, for sure, but mobile, I think, will be the key to this game's success, as well as to having it avoid the stigma of "just a student game".

On the programming front, I've made some progress with the prototype.  I've refactored all of my action code to be more flexible.  Now actions can take time to perform and can cost a building's storage resources along with the player's shared chromium and uranium.  More importantly, NUKES.  Flying missiles have now been implemented.  They don't really have any pathfinding to speak of, but they move and detonate, spreading radiation across different building slots.  This radiation can now be absorbed by radiation towers, allowing players to regain access to those building slots, as well as build up a store of uranium to boost all their units in recovery.

We're planning on challenging Stage One next week, but the prototype needs a few more things before we get there.  We need a win/lose condition along with an enemy performing random actions and launching nukes.  Basic conditions, but important to demonstrating the gameplay flow.

Until next time!