Monday, Jan 30

Tonight I spent time on GC fixing bugs, cleaning up code and adding in the game timer feature. Well, the bug fixing arose as a result of the code cleanup really. I wasn't liking the way I was accessing record fields from TorquDB so I wrapped it in a function to make it easier to read from a code point of view. In the process of updating the code base to use the new function I broke a few things, like the planets palette in the game editor, but cleaned that up easy enough. It's much easier to read the DB access now and much easier for me to remember how to extract stuff from the DB. So that's good.

The only other improvement was the game timer, which is available in Conquest mode for 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. Conquest games can go on for a loooong time if you're playing a big map with 4 experienced players. There is an option for unlimited play time but it certainly wouldn't be for the faint of heart. Anyways the timer works fine after a few glitches, like failing to even start, not counting down correctly, and showing times like 1:60 instead of 2:00. Right now the timer is only set to end the game if there are no actions in progress on the board. So if a bunch of planets are exploding when the timer runs out, the game will run until that chain reaction is over before ending. This is mainly for other game modes that score the player and gives the last player the ability to finish out his turn rather than get cut short and thus lose points he would have gained because the timer ran out. Whether it stays this way depends on play testing but that's how it is now.

I identified two minor bugs in the editor as well - have them down on the whiteboard so I can take care of them tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, I'm going to add the turn timer next.

Sorry I got no pretty screens today - didn't have time to take them and nothing spectacular anyhows.

Later.