Progress has been a lot slower these past few days. Sunday I has to do a bunch of stuff in the morning, had many interruptions and distractions while I could have been working, and had other stuff to do that took a few hours in the evening. Basically no progress. Monday after work was pretty much the same, although a little bit of progress was made. I now have the game connecting to a database, and sending information to it. This will be used for best times, world records and that sort of tracking. Tuesday not much progress was made by myself, but the website can now access the database and display a table of the laptimes, sorted to boot!
Today has been a slightly different story. Progress isn’t blazing, but I have at least added a Message Box state, which will be used to tell the player that they are not connected to the database, and therefore any laptimes performed will not be shared, or rated. Among many, many other uses. The other day I didn’t put up screen shots of the main menu, but I will now – despite the same fugly look.
This is likely what it will remain like for the Alpha build, although perhaps I am wrong. I know that over the course of development when I come to polish this screen, I plan on it looking something like the next screenshot. Forgive my concept art skills. Well actually, forgive the complete lack of any art skills!
My hopes are to have this screen animated, so it looks like the car is moving along. The plan would likely be just moving the trees and clouds from right to left, while adding a subtle vibration to the car, perhaps tire rotation… Something simple but active. Anyways, I’m still trying to refactor and put together some simple UI classes so I can create other screens quickly. Also, before I go too far I will need to stop and consider localization support for any text that gets built into the game. It is best to do that sort of thing early, although I am going to attempt finding “universal†symbols/icons, and use those instead of text whenever possible.
I do wish I didn’t have a day job. It is really holding back my potential progress, and really hurting me as far as my schedule is concerned. I’m hoping to release something by the end of October, but I am not overly confident it will happen. But here’s to hoping!