Progress Report

Alright, a last progress report for the month. Everything else is already out, so it's only 'The Modded Player,' which I finally settled on as the title of the new Twine game (I'm not entirely happy with it, but I had to pick something), that we have left to talk about. I'm into the writing and programming now and oh dear lord, I forgot just how much easier Twine is to work with than Renpy.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that Renpy is a more...robust...engine. But it is very coding heavy, with only incredibly minimal built-in tools. In a lot of ways, Renpy is barely a step above starting from absolute scratch with your own windows project. As far as it's built-in framework goes, it really only provides the menus and save/load features. For all intents and purposes? Everything else is a coding project that might as well be from scratch, rather than a proper engine.

Worse, the coding is the sort of seriously obtuse stuff you see from crazed efficiency-obsessed coders, rather than the saner (and easier to follow) structure you tend to see in well-put-together game engines. Which is, even worse still, reflected in its documentation, which is incredibly hard to make use of unless you swallowed a Renpy-specific dictionary first. The fact it uses python, and tries to treat python like a serious programming language instead of the barely-adequate scripting language that should be it's only use case, doesn't help.

cough

Err...sorry about the min-rant. I've long been frustrated that there really isn't a truly good 2D game engine that rests between the two extremes of 'too simple' and 'you might as well be coding without an engine.' There are some fantastic engines for 3D games, such as Unreal and the Crytek Engine. But 2D games are too niche for major engines to exist, leaving a massive gap between Twine, which is easy-to-use but can't do a lot of advanced things, and Renpy...which might as well barely be a toolset. Calling it an engine is almost too generous, to be honest. The fact that it is absolutely shit at object orientation is extra frustrating.

cough

Errr, sorry about Rant Number 2?

Back to the point, I'm actually making really solid and swift progress with getting the game pulled together. I'm already through the intro area entirely, and moving on to coding/writing the first town, which is all the content for November covers. If not for the combination of days lost to making hardware upgrades and the Thanksgiving holiday, I'd been 100% condiment and finishing on time.

As it is...eh, I'd give it 50/50 odds, currently. Even if I don't technically get the game out by midnight tomorrow night, though? I don't expect there to be more than a single day, 36 hours at the absolute most, of delay. Not unless something goes epically wrong somewhere, at least. Which, considering aforementioned delay causers, I consider acceptable in this case.

Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully the first part of the game will be out later tomorrow night. If not, than expect to see it on the 1st sometime instead.