The Milestone

Ahh you thought you'd seen the last of me... You can't get rid of me that easily!? Bwahahaha!! Yeah ehh, it's been a looooong few months since April (ouch!) with little to show for it. I apologize. First, my video card pooped and it's replacements were not DirectX 9 compatible, meaning... No XNA for May and June. Then, I hunkered down and bought a nice little house out in the corn fields... woo!! So, no XNA in July either. Suddenly, August has rolled ohh so slowly around, my computer is cooperating, and I've settled in to my home, and now... I trudge on. My blather may not be so exceptional as a result of all that, but still, at least I will have stuff to communicate. :)

The Milestone!! Oooooooh! To me, the milestone of my gaming designing endeavors is the point I get to every time I try to develop something, where I surpass my previous efforts. Over the years that milestone has stepped up ever so slightly... maybe at this rate I'll have a full game by 2150... you know when ehh... I'm almost 200... yeah... No! I need to break the trend I've set myself to of peetering out and starting anew. It's good that I do actually exceed myself each time, but it's not good that I don't really leave myself in the dust, you know?

Not anymore! My milestone has arrived. I've been somewhat busy with Confined since I moved and got my computer working, and it's gotten me to that milestone. My last game creation attempt ended at the point where I got the player drawn, the cursor moving, the input flowing, and the camera working how I liked it (I'm a real sucker for smooth scrolling/zooming)... then it was on to physics and... that was it. It did me in... I lost interest. Blasphemous, I know. Gah! It's kind of frustrating looking back at it... but it was a learning experience. Here I am once again at that very same crossroads... I've got a better platform to work with, I've got renewed vigor and passion for accomplishment, I've got the tools and more know-how, I've managed to corrupt friends into joining the Game Design Cause (sorry Matt) which has in turn regaled me, and I'm going to grab that milestone and run with it! WHO'S WITH ME??!!!

...Ehh sorry, I can be excitable when it comes to this stuff. :) So yeah, I'm set and focused... or something like that. I'm to the point where I was last time. I'm going to best that and I'm not going to stop any time soon. I'm going to forget about the excrutiating physics that seems to best me every time I try this temporarily. My current task is overhauling my SceneNode class to use a Body of one or more BodyParts instead of just a single AnimatedSprite. This will allow me to layer sprites better, make people with separate head, torso, arms, legs, yet whole bodies, and do who knows what to them. Since I see your mind is straying the gutter now (you should be ashamed!) I'm going to stop. Seeya next time!