7 day challenge

[jono]

It seems as though every fan project I start except for short term stuff invariably fails when my interest moves elsewhere. Once this happens, the project generally makes it's way onto the to-do pile never to see the light of day again.

I've decided that in an effort to actually get something done for once, I should place a short time limit on a project and have something releasable by the end of it.

So as of today, I have 7 days to release a stable build of a chrono-related game of some kind. I will start a basic outline for the game immediately and hopefully show some progress by tonight.

If anyone else is keen to see what they can come up with in 7 days feel free to join in

I'll post later with more project details.

[MDenham]

It seems as though every fan project I start except for short term stuff invariably fails when my interest moves elsewhere. Once this happens, the project generally makes it's way onto the to-do pile never to see the light of day again.

Man, that sounds like me.

Maybe I'll do something with this, though more likely I'm going to spend my three-day weekend cleaning the house and then working on other projects that are "in progress".

[Agent 12]

Not sure If you are a programmer but If you are then a fun project might be an easy to use editor to export and import tilesets. In my opinion an editor is more useful and doable in 7 days then a rpm hack

Jp

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Good luck!  If you can pull it off in seven days that will be AWESOME.

I will be looking for you in six days.

[Zakyrus]

  7 days, good lord! Well, good luck. Can't wait to see it!

[jono]

Wow! I didn't expect that much interest, I haven't been able to post because of some internet connection issues but I have been hard at work. I decided to start doing some work on a chrono based real time strategy game using the original game graphics.

So far I'm 2-3 days in and have got quite a bit done, I made a simple plan for how I would implement different features and a basic time line, according to this time line I am not quite as far into the ai as I could be (because of a nasty little bug that took quite some time to find) but everything else is running smoothly.
I've only really spent a couple of days on the actually game, before I could start it I had to set up double buffering, timing and an input manager but now they all seem to be working as intended (except the stupid input manager, iv got an annoying bug there that I can't track down).

Some screen-shots below show the progress over the past few days, I'm concentrating on the programming at the moment so the art is quickly thrown together and a bit ugly.


Units are capable of moving, a-star path-finding yet to be implemented, collisions not yet implemented.


Tile map loaded and scrolling is implemented resource gathering system almost finished.


The units now have actions that they can carry out, image loading and management has been changed substantially, current build is stable. resource gathering ai almost finished, buildings can be built by units. 

It all seems to be coming along quite well, because of the lack of a real plan before programming started some of the code is poorly designed (I just wrote it on the fly). I'll probably release the source but it is more of a good example of how not to program (broken encapsulation, lots of circular dependencies between classes etc.)

EDIT:

Bit more progress, map background image implemented - scrolls and can be animated (good for floating island maps in zeal based scenarios).

I'm planning on having a few races I'v jst been thinking about the possibilities-
Guardia 1000AD
Repitites
Earth dwellers
enlightened ones
iokans


I've also got some cool ideas for the heroes and villains from chrono trigger to be implemented. Hopefully I can get close to implementing some of that stuff before the end of the week. If I don't finish, I'll release what I've done and hopefully still have the dedication to continue, but me being me I'm not too confident.

[Kebrel]

Wow great progress! An RTS? interesting choice can't wait.

[jono]

Yeah i wanted to try something completely different, I started with the idea of a puzzle game and eventually moved on to rts. I figure an rts that people could just make scenarios for would be pretty cool and it wouldnt take ten years to make like an rpg.

I've had to simplify some parts of the plan to make it more completable, originally I wanted it isometric like aoe but I just decided simple is better. If it works out I can always modify the engine to implement some of the ideas I'm skipping at the moment.

[Zakyrus]

Looking good there, jono! 
By the way, out of curiosity, what are you using to code it?

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

COOL!  KEEP IT GOING!

[jono]

Sorry to keep everyone waiting, I've been on a fishing trip and am a little behind. In my excitement I forgot to make a stable release on fri so I'll clean up some code and make a release today as promised on friday.

What's important to remember is that it is still considered a beta release, more of a proof of concept than an actual game as it stands at the moment.

@Zakyrus:
Thanks! C++ and I'm using the allegro library for the graphics and window management (can't be bothered going through all the win32 stuff).

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Well if this all goes well, are you going to continue progress?  Please say yes?

[Zakyrus]

Sorry to keep everyone waiting, I've been on a fishing trip and am a little behind. In my excitement I forgot to make a stable release on fri so I'll clean up some code and make a release today as promised on friday.

Keep us informed! 

@Zakyrus:
Thanks! C++ and I'm using the allegro library for the graphics and window management (can't be bothered going through all the win32 stuff).

Ah C++, my kind of guy.