New Years' Project Evaluation

So here it goes, my New Years' assessment of the project.  Over last year I went over a lot of what I want to cover in this game and my goal with this post is to condense that information and see where I have major holes in the project.

Networking and Server Client programming: while if in the end I do decide to use Ogre I would either need to learn this or add a networking engine, I think I am looking for a 3D engine which has a built in support for this.

Non-PVP game content: most of this has been readily described already, this would be the log-in screen, the main page, the menus and all of the side pages with update notes, friends and user stats.  This will all need to be actually programmed once I figure out which engine I am using, but for the moment I have a decent idea of what I want it to look like.

Tanks: I have talked a bit about what I want the tanks to perform like, but I will probably spend more time on this once I start making models for them.  Right now I am thinking I want 7 kinds of tanks.  One neutral, 3 lightly favoring once stat and three heavily favoring one stat (stats being Armor, Equipment, and Speed).

Modules: I went over quite a number of these already, and when I go to release the game, my goal is to have pretty much everything already described ready.  There are a few more miscellaneous modules which I would like to go over, and I may as a filler post in the future (filler meaning more though and less production like this post).  I am going to get around to making some of the models for these closer to game release.

Maps: This is a very interesting part of the game design, how many levels do I need.  I am thinking at release my goal will be four levels.  This will give the game a decent amount of variation while not delaying the creation process well beyond what I am capable of in a timely fashion.  Right now I am thinking of doing the suburbia map which I have discussed a bit, a cargo hold on a space ship, and a medieval castle.  I have some time to decide what to make the fourth map since it will take me quite a while to make all of the props needed for the three already listed.

3D art: I could split this into game related and unrelated, but I am just going to summarize what I have done and want to do.  I feel very comfortable with making the actual models and will probably make several simpler models over the next few weeks to be houses filling up space on the suburbia map.  My biggest weakness, I feel at the moment, is in texturing.  This is partial why I am not rushing to finish the courthouse, but hopefully within a month or so I feel comfortable with that aspect of 3D art as well.

The Engine: The biggest problem is deciding which engine I want to use.  Once I make this decision I feel I will have no problem learning how to program the game inside of the engine, and will probably make a string of status update posts like I had been doing with the Ogre Engine tutorials before I decided to expand my horizons.

I believe I hit on every major area and hopefully I will have more to show from this year than I had for last year.

~gunnah