3.2 First Feature Milestone

Recap

The below points were listed in entry 2 as the things I wanted to achieve in this sprint.

• Look into some form of ticketing system to better track my to-do list.
• Add in the replay functionality
• Refactor some of the existing code
• Record gameplay for the next blog post
• [BONUS] Use GIMP to bring in some simple, custom-made artwork

I only managed to achieve the first three on this list, though I could probably sneak in the fourth one whilst I am doing this. I am not going to. The final one was marked as a bonus item anyway, so it went straight in the figurative bin on top of the code from entry 2. It's a shame I don't have enough of a following to really warrant self-referencing yet, but those that get the reference can sleep easy knowing they are indisputably my OG fans.

The High-Level Low-Down

This week went well. Very well. There were no pits of despair, no major wastes of effort, and I managed to achieve some valuable goals in addition the list above. This was mainly getting a full tidy up of the timeline code after implementing the replay feature, and I also managed to work in some automated test coverage, which is one of the personal goals for this project as a whole.

I don't think I am going to actually write anything else here. I'm writing this at 21:59 on 28/03, and I actually started writing the linked entries on 20/03. I ended up spending a lot more time on this sob story than I wanted to, and I've written most of the fourth entry tonight already. I wonder whether this is because my game is about time travel. At this point, I just need to publish this third entry even if I am not particularly happy with it. After all, real artists ship!

The next entry goes into a bit more detail on how parts of my game actually work. There is no code, but I have put together flow charts illustrating how the different components interact, which I definitely think is a step-up in effort and quality.

The Bleeding Effect

I am all over the place timewise. I actually wrote this part a week after the relevant sprint, but three days before the section above. I had therefore implemented more updates before thinking about and logging what I wanted to achieve. This does mean I could just write all the things I actually did in this section. Then, in the subsequent post, I would just say this weekend was a major success because achieved everything I set out to do in the agreed timeframe. I know what you're thinking:

The only person being fooled in this situation is yourself. Considering that this content in its entirety is of no consequence to anyone else and therefore could be completely fictitious anyway, such a lie is ultimately a waste of only your own time and effort.

To which I say:

I agree with you whole-heartedly. Such a fabrication would completely invalidate everything I actually stand to gain by writing these posts, and it would leave a stain on my otherwise stellar career as a billionaire CEO and astronaut.

Up Next

This is what I want to achieve in the next sprint.

• Implement a generic solution for floor pad and door interaction
  • Floor pads should require a configurable minimum weight to be placed on them before they can be pressed
  • Floor pads functionality should be easily extendable to variations - e.g. one-way, toggle, hold, and timed floor pads are in the pipeline
  • Floor pads should interact with doors in a generic way so that other interactions - e.g. lights, moving platforms etc - can easily be linked to a floor pad without requiring changes to the floor pad code
  • This should integrate with the timeline rewind and replay features
  • The new features should be covered with unit tests as much as possible by way of the HumbleObject design pattern.