Here’s some stuff I gotta do.

1. Visual Studio set up
2. Sprite loading
3. Sprite animation
4. Animation description format (txt)
5. Animation loading
6. Level displaying (tiles)
7. Tile description format (txt)
8. Level description format (txt)
9. Level loading
10. Level editor (basic)
11. Controller movement
12. Collide with level tiles
13. Run
14. Jump

The tile description format will have a list of the tiles and their component .png files, which will then be referenced in the level description format so that it can be enumerated simply.

The format might look like so (tiles with multiple frames are for a fancy-tile format that I made up):

TileName   Frames  ”path.png”
BrickTiles   9 “tiles/bricks-9-3-3.png”
SmallPlant  1 “tiles/smallplant.png”

The level might look like this:
Tiles “tiles/tiles.txt”
. Background
b BrickTiles
p SmallPlant
EndTiles
Level 30 20
……………
….p…..p…
…bbbbbbb
EndLevel
etc

The animation format will probably look something like this:

Idle    frames 0    0     loop 0    // Loops infinite times
Walk  frames 10   19   loop 0    // Loops infinite times
Stun  frames 20   24   loop 1    // Runs once then stops
Stand frames 25  29   loop 1    // Runs once then stops

The level editor will also need a sort of collision hull editor and way to edit the non-architecture layers, including gameplay cues and monster drops, and so on.

I found a copy of Visual Studio 2003 on my desktop, which might help me to actually get some work done. However, I should probably buy the damned program already and install it on my laptop, to facilitate development. Actual motivation is out the window!

At this rate I might have something programmed by 2009.

The Platform SDK is always useful to have.

And here is the DXFramework.

I think I’m going to try to develop Grocery Panic on a different platform, since Java for cell phones is giving me a lot of trouble. C# or C++ it is. I’m going to do some research and prototyping tomorrow, as long as Rock Band doesn’t lure me away.

I spent some time today working on a design document, the fruits of which you can see here: Grocery Panic.doc

Excerpt:

The X
Don’t put the cans on top of the eggs.

Summary
Foodstuffs are falling into a paper bag from an ever-rotating conveyor belt of edible goods. Your job is to pack the bag without destroying anything. Certain items are fragile, and must be placed very carefully. The less empty space left, the better. Each bag will be more difficult to pack than the last!

Conveyor Belt
The conveyor belt carries items before they are dropped into the pit. The conveyor belt starts off the right edge of the screen and ends at the top-center of the playing field.

At regular intervals determined by the conveyor belt speed, new items are added to the conveyor belt from the right side of the screen. They should move along the conveyor belt until they reach the end, where they stack up awaiting use by the player. Stacked items occasionally jiggle, to represent how agitated they are.

Whenever an item is placed, the next one is immediately picked off of the conveyor belt and placed at the very top-center top of the playing field, even if that item was not already at the end of the conveyor belt.

When the conveyor belt is filled with stacked items, they will blink red, and if another item is added, they all fall off into the pit, which will cause many things to be crushed by accidental poor placement. This may cost a player the game.

Panic!

Just starting work on a recent idea: Don’t put the cans on top of the bread. That’s the gameplay behind this simple tetris-clone where you pack groceries into a paper bag. Each item has a weight, strength, and shape (flavor? price?). If you put an item on another item, if the weight is greater than the other item’s strength, the weak item is squished.

Examples:

Watermelon - 4 Strength, 4 Weight
Can O’ Soup - 4 Strength, 3 Weight
Cereal - 3 Strength, 2 Weight
Eggs - 2 Strength, 2 Weight
Banana - (Tastes delicious and has an odd shape) 2 Strength, 2 Weight
Bread - 1 Strength, 1 Weight

You can put a can on a cereal box, and a cereal box on a can. You can put a box on some eggs, but not on bread. If you put a watermelon on a loaf of bread you are a fool. The groceries will come down off of a conveyor belt, and you move and rotate them in the style of Tetris. Once the bag is full, you get points for each item in the bag, demerits for holes in the middle, and NO TIPS whatsoever. This is a union store, buddy.

That’s it for now, here are some pieces of art that I didn’t crop: