I'm a week behind the official timeline, so don't mind my week numbers if yours are different..

I'm also a day behind, but considering it was still the weekend because of Labor Day, I'm still counting it as last week.

I should probably go back to my original post and flesh out a bit of description on what this game is, but that's probably not happening tonight. The game is 1 part Asteroids, 1 part Space Engineers, 1 part Kerbal Space Program, and 1 part Firefly/Serenity.

Over the last week, I've gone from a very raw experimental statewhere all I had was the bare minimum to draw some vector graphics and enough physics to test the physics library I want to useup to where I am now, which has a lot of the absolute essentials of the game fleshed out.

The GIF below illustrates where things are at in development right now.

In a nutshell, I've got asteroids generating, plus a ship that is composed of parts. The parts have a parent/child relationship and are hooked together at specific attachment points. You can see in the GIF that I used the little connector just behind the capsule and disconnected the capsule from the cargo bay parts and the engine at the back.

Goals For Week 2

I'm hoping to get the physics going for real in the game (not just the little experimental stuff that I did earlier). It's perhaps the single biggest and riskiest piece that I have left to work on. (Don't get me wrong; there's still tons to do.) Once the physics system is up and running, the only core game mechanic left to implement will be your ability to manipulate the environment (besides crashing into things).

We'll see how far that goes. My process goal is to hit 15 hours of dev time this week, not including today, which I'm actually counting for last week. So I'll be doing some rounds probably every day in the chat room if anybody wants to come join me.

But that means that this weekend that is ending was the first weekend for the competition for me, and I was fortunate enough to have gotten started.

I've begun working on a game that might be described as "If Asteroids were a sandbox game". Or perhaps, "Space Engineers, but simpler, with a dose of Firefly."

I honestly haven't gotten very far yet. I've been playing around with tools and constructing some building blocks, but I've begun to settle on the idea of using Win2D for vector drawing, UWP for a UI, and Velcro (formerly Farseer) for physics. Those two tools should get me going much faster, without piling on a lot of constraints. I very much have mixed feelings about not using MonoGame. But don't take my leanings towards these other tools as a sudden change of heart for MonoGame. It just seems like Win2D is a better tool for vector graphics, and UWP just comes along for the ride there. Farseer was designed for XNA, and I'm doing a few hacks to make it work outside of XNA/MonoGame.

Truth be told, I've always tried to design my games in a way where I don't have to have architecture determined by the game engine or rendering engine anyway, so my games have tended to not be too tightly coupled to those types of things. (Meaning I could make a MonoGame UI for this game without reworking the entire game if I wanted to.)

I'm hoping to get PiscesMike to work on this game with me, but he's been so busy with his new job and his old car so far… :P

I'm hoping to have a bit more to share by the end of next weekend.

With the eclipse happening and with how busy I've been at work, I hate to say it but I think I'm going to push back the competition time frame for myself by a full week. I just don't think I'll be getting a whole lot done this weekend, since my brain is elsewhere….

If anybody else is going to the eclipse (which you all should) may you have clear skies and clearer roads!

I'll post more updates after the weekend as the start of my time frame begins.