Day 03: Called the friend, he basically said he could be interested in joining the speedgame, but wants to think about it. Well, time is running, so I am proceeding with my current plan at least for now, for I am bit afraid he might be thinking about it for too long time. I am also thinking about possibility of could I make this current plan inside a week, having a chance to make another quick doable with that friend? Maybe, since I have somewhat clear vision about lot of thing in this.
Yesterday I happened to play this game called Atom Zombie Smasher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL1p57PdkCU and what a good thing it was, since the gameplay in this game, is graphicswise very similar to what I had in my mind. And playing this gave me couple of ideas on how to do some things, as they had been done on this already.
I think I am tomorrow actually going to start from something else than I usually start from, I will start from graphics, since graphics basically decide how I should do the rest of the game.
I have currently three different ideas for graphics. In previous devblog mentioned Google maps. I think this would make the game look very good, and graphics would be easy to do. However, there could be two problems here. One is in fixing how AI runs around the map, as I would need to tell AI where are walls etc. And walls might not always be easy squares etc.
Another problem would be level design. I would have less control on that, since the levels would be decided based upon what the map happens to look like in reality, and I would have only limited control over level design. However, I would really like that attacks to be closing towards Jerusalem level by level.
Third option would be to use same style as Atom Zombie Smasher in that levels are built from tiles. This would make AI part so much easier, graphics could either be those green lines i mentioned in earlier devblog, or they could actually have some graphics like the Atom Zombie Smasher has.
Second option would be something between the first and third. Idea being that I would use the green lines, but have freedom in deciding where they go, instead of being tiles. However, the Pros and Cons compared together, I see only very little benefit in this compared to useing Tiles approachs, versus the Cons on using it, I think option number two is pretty much out of question, since I can pretty much do it with third option and make my life easier.
Maybe I have tomorrow something to show. Might not have a single line of code, but maybe some graphics.