Mirage (First Week: Update)

I've updated my blog with my current progress. It's been about a week
now, so you can see how far I've gotten in that time. I haven't had as
much time to work on it as I'd like, but I'm still happy with the
progress that I've made.

http://miragedev.blogspot.com/2008/01/first-week-update.html

Comments, suggestions, and (constructive) criticism welcome!

On Jan 28, 3:03 pm, David Damerell <damer... RemoveThis @chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:

> Post the article, don't post a pointer, please.

Ok, here it is. I was hoping people could follow along with my blog as
well since I don't plan on posting every update to the newsgroup.

"Since it's been roughly a week since I've started development on
Mirage, I figured it was time for a status report. Of course real life
interferes with development so I haven't really gotten as much work
done as I'd like. However, I am pleased with my progress so far.

The first thing I started doing was coding my Display Model. Details
of that creation can be found in my previous post. I'm happy to note
that this model is serving me nicely as I move forward with
production. It is an excellent base that (so far) handles everything
I'm throwing at it nicely.

The next thing I worked on was Tiles. Tiles are my base object in the
game, and is the base for objects that are put into my display model.
They are essentially any object that can be displayed within the game.
On top of this base class I derived two classes, Terrain and Actor. An
Actor is any tile that can move around the grid. Upon further thought
I think I'm going to rename this base class to Entity, since I'm using
it for things other than the player and enemies.

The Actor base class has been fully fleshed out, and from that I've
got an initial Hero, Enemy, and Projectile. You can interact with the
Hero through the keyboard, you can move it around the board, and shoot
Projectiles around the grid. All Actors have hit detection so the
Projectiles work just as you'd expect. Enemies also move around the
screen randomly, but that's all they do currently. The structure is
there to add AI and more complex logic to them though, so once I feel
the need to give them a little more life I'll be able to move on that.

After laying the ground work I started to work on some initial dungeon
creation. I've just been playing around, but I've had the chance to
implement two algorithms. The first I implemented was a cavern
algorithm, that with the right parameters could also be used for other
environmental features (lakes). The other algorithm implemented is
just for a basic dungeon. It's nothing special and just adds about 16
rooms to the dungeon, but it's something to start with for now. I'm
still working out the structure in my head on how dungeon generation
is going to work. This is especially important at this stage, because
I want anything even remotely content related to be in flat files
outside of the code. I'm trying to think of the best way of doing
this, so if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them!

So that's essentially what I've worked on. It's mostly just the base
stuff to build the game upon, and I'll start to develop some of the
more specific stuff soon. My next focus is some early dungeon and map
generation. This will include saving of the created maps, and html
output as well. Once I've got that going I want to add some logic to
my actual Terrain tiles, since currently the only difference is the
look and all Actors can walk through "walls." I'm trying to think of a
way to represent this logic so that it makes the most sense to me as
well.

So that's where I'm at. It's been a ramble, so I hope you could follow
along. I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on my progress. Any input
would be much appreciated.
?"