Laying the Groundwork

Progress continues erratically. I'm taking a learn-as-I-go approach, which means that I often have to go back and change some previous work to reflect new knowledge.

I've been spending most of my time following a tutorial about 'traditional' real-time strategy games à la Age of Empires. I've implemented camera controls and a lot of background code laying the groundwork for players, units, buildings, traps, and other world objects, as well as a basic UI. Right now, the game knows when you select something and can tell you what is selected:

That selection box was so much more of a pain to implement than it looks.

Pretty soon this particular tutorial won't be relevant to my game any more. The tutorial leads to a game with resource gathering and civilization building, neither of which have a place in my vision for this game. At that point I'll have to look elsewhere for guidance, but for now this tutorial is taking me where I want to go.

Hopefully next week will bring more interesting things to report! In the mean time, check out this article about games and intellectual property.