The Gamedev Diaries - Week 3

The trouble with learning through the internet and online tutorials is that there is a lot of trial and error - so when you go off on a tangent that you think makes sense, no one is really there to steer you back on the right path.

I spent a good many hours trying to tackle collision detection for machinery - I couldn’t quite get the drag and drop interactions to work the way I wanted. I tried all manner of increasingly complicated solutions, from checking x and y axis collisions at outer edges of each object, to having eight different if statements determining angles of approach. It was becoming a bit of a nightmare.

Turns out, I didn’t need to do any of that actually - simply ticking the “solid” box on the objects was enough to get the desired affect. Oh well, you live and learn.

Other than that, I worked on a few systems around the purchase of machinery, figuring out gamemaker button functionality, and making the game space just a little prettier.

So now that I’ve made this tiny bit of progress, I’ve quickly realized the scope of what I want to do with this game is going to take at least a few months. When I was thinking of starting this project (a whole couple of weeks/months ago) I envisioned it as a first “simple” project to get started. Good work!

This means I’m actually going to spend a few weeks making something else smaller again, that can actually be finished in that time frame (aiming for an end of Feb release). Don’t want to talk too much about that one though, as part of it’s appeal is in the mystery - so will only post about that when I’m ready. Which means after a whole two posts, this diary series will be off for a while! Definitely will be continuing it however when I resume work on this project, as it’s already proven to be great motivation. Even if it’s just for me really, as the chances this reaches any other eyeballs is pretty minimal.

As an old friend I once worked with used to say: “Press on rewardless!”

See you in a few.