Since I'm still not working at peak effectiveness, it's pretty clear that I'm not going to be able to finish an alpha version up to an acceptable standard for release on the Internet. Besides which, I've started to really warm to the idea of creating a block-based puzzle game, and I think I'll put a couple of months into developing it rather than a couple of weeks. I'll use "Project Alpha Redux" as the test-bed for building a reasonably solid 2D engine, with all the little things I want in order to create my style of games. If all goes to plan, I should have a good game made by about the end of March next year. This was in my original plan anyway; have a really nice little game made by the end of March to either use as my first game to sell, or release for free for advertising purposes.

So since I'm still feeling exhausted at the end of the day, I'll only try to put in two hours of game development work each day (that should be managable). I'll need to think of an appropriate target to reach by the end of the next two weeks, but it doesn't have to be the alpha version. I'm also thinking of doing some planning work and art practice over my holiday whenever I'm stuch with nothing better to do (which happens a lot in my visits back home).

I'm also thinking I should modify the rules of my block puzzle game so it's different from the games I've played before. Maybe I should use hexagonal blocks instead of square tiles? I'll have to spend some time brainstorming gameplay ideas, and possibly mocking up a demo.

Unfortunately this means I won't have any really exciting screenshots for a while. So instead I'll post another reason why I haven't been as productive as I hoped. Here's a screenshot of what I was doing during my game development time last night:


A screenshot of me not getting any work done


I blame both the "Guess the Game" and the "Best Free Games" threads in the Lounge for planting the desire to replay OMF:2097. Although I found I remembered most of the special moves (including the super secret scrap and destruction moves for the Katana [smile]).

I'll get more game development done during the next week, I promise!