Status Report #49 (Research, Blog Plans, & Invisible Walls)

     The big change this week is my new plans for Yotes Games in 2015. New site look, bi-weekly posts, and updates on my most important game ever. I need to change up the way I do things because day-to-day happenings can be pretty dull when there's nothing tangible to show. Games are also more prone to hype when you don't know every last detail about them.

     A lot of things happened this week and I learned a ton of stuff dev-wise. Catch this week's wisdom review below!

Unicorn Training Collision Map Progress

     I've been placing invisible walls, doors, switches, and chests in dungeons maps this week. I also put up some animated torches in rooms to liven things up.

     I'm still not done with all these yet, but at least I have them all done for the forest, caves, and building interiors. The dungeons are taking a while and this week has been filled with distractions. I keep finding ways to be more efficient with this stuff so it'll be done sometime this weekend, even if I have to skip sleep one night. I'm just sick of looking at this task on my dev list. I really thought it'd take a few days.

(Note: Tomorrow's Status Report will be a little outdated because I'll be out of town this weekend.)

Junior Year Plan

My programming teacher talking to parents at a recent Open House.

     Making collisions for Unicorn Training maps is taking longer than expected. A 2 day assignment has become a week-long event.  A miscalculation from inexperience that won't happen again. I may have been done quicker if I mapped collision boxes to the tileset beforehand but I wanted to make more dynamic shapes with them so I did it the way I'm used to. Silly rookie me.

    To fill up the time I should restate my slightly altered plans for the upcoming Junior year of college I'll be suffering through attending. I'll be finishing Unicorn Training in the fall then immediately doing a quick arcade title before winter break. Over the vacation I'll be in pre-production for my Mobile Development class project which I couldn't be any more hyped to do. Get a lot more details on these upcoming projects and this semester's plans below.

Future Blog Posts

Looking at the devs I follow has inspired me to change my blog up a bit.

     I plan on changing up yotesgames.com a lot after Unicorn Training finishes up. A new banner & color scheme is in my head. I've wanted to change the site to match my favorite color combination of blue & black with white letters (instead of red and grey with black letters) for a while and it will match my Dragon game this winter thematically. More important than the palette swap is a new blog post schedule.