This week was spent working on Bit Beast. It is actually coming along pretty quickly, so I’m really pleased with that. The release time frame I mentioned last time still looks very probable.
The specifics of what I did this week on Bit Beast are all over the place, since the game is still in a really early stage. He grows up, dies, poops, gets dirty, gets hungry and thirsty, and regains energy over time now. There are tons of other little things that I got running, but I can’t remember them all. This week, I’ll be starting with the rest of the non-interactive logic, i.e., things that happen regardless of player interaction. I hope to have that finished within a day or two, and then spend the rest of the week implementing some of the interactions.
I keep referring to Bit Beast as a game, but maybe “software toy” is a better name for it. It doesn’t really have a set objective. You try to keep your pet alive as long as you can, or make it win a bunch of battles with your friends, or pretty much whatever seems fun to you. It does have a kind of end, in that your pet will always inevitably die.
I’ve been getting into roguelikes a lot again lately, probably as a result of catching up on all the Roguelike Radio’s I missed since December. I was sorry to miss out on the 7DRL challenge this year, but next year I plan to make time for it. I might have to work on a roguelike before then, though, because I’ve got a fun idea and I really want to work on one. In the back of my mind, what I would love to do is expand on my existing roguelike codebase: cleaning up the code, adding missing features, and improving the interface dramatically. Then I would either make a roguelike for the computer, or port my engine over to Android. I’d really like to try my hand at an Android roguelike. Most of the roguelikes I’ve tried on Android didn’t really have interfaces that I was happy with, but I believe that if done right, an Android roguelike could be really great.