Day 04: Sometimes it is easier to just test out to see what is wrong.
Today did not do much. However, I opened google earth (that i was errorenously referring as google maps in earlier posts) and I tried my idea for a level using this method. It didnt take me long to figure out it was almost certainly not the way to do it. Almost certainly since if there would be no time limit to speedgame, I might actually do it, since at same time I saw all the problems coming in makingwise, I also could see how great it would actually be to solve all those problems.
As example of a problem. Comparing to Atom Zombie Smasher, the people are actually all giants in that game. When I was looking at google maps, I would either need to zoom very close, or people would be more like dots in that map to be able to move naturally. But then at same time I was thinking, whoa, wouldnt it be great if there be 10 000 dots moving around in there? yes it would, but whole load of trouble too. All of them 10k dots making AI decisions, all they need to be checked somehow if they become targets etc. oh boy, I have never tried putting over hundred, perhaps even hundreds of things moving on screen at same time, so that can potentially be a problem already, and I definetily dont want to increase that problem 100-fold.
So scrap the google earth version, unless i have at least a week of time left after game is already finished.
Current plan is taking the easiest road - Tile based map with clear squares all around.
Here is anyway the small test pic I did, just to get the idea and notice it was not a good idea for speedgame competition timeframe:
Just to point out, I wouldnt call this day a waste despite i was working (the little i did, maybe 30 minutes) in vain in some sense, since this helped me a lot in my plan. So far I have been thinking three different ways and everytime reviewed every idea on all three of them. Now I can finally concentrate on just one of them, the tile based approach and how it should work.