I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll be faced daily with the choice of only one of four options: write some code, design some feature, blog my progress, or, of course, blow it all off for the day. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve actually been avoiding (mostly) that last one, but neglecting the blog option. I’m also feeling a little better about that. It does no good to write daily about not making decisions because I feel “drained” by writing about it, first. So a couple-times-a-month update seems a much better choice.
So, for this update, I can report some very good progress! I’ve gotten my project off the ground with full startup screens, icons and iTunes art for iPhone, iPhone retina display, iPad and the new iPad retina display. I also have a main launch page that allows you to go straight to an OpenGL ES 2.0 gameplay page (though there’s no game play yet, just a sample spinning 3D cube as a placeholder), and, of bigger progress, a multi-player option that allows you to start an online game through Game Center. That online option will allow me to support multi-players over a network without requiring a server of my own to coordinate it. The one downside is that turn-based play that way won’t support opportunity fire. That may have to wait for a future direct-connect online mode, but can (and should) be integrated into single-player and local multi-player. More on that to come when I get to implementing actually gameplay. For now, though, I’m continuing to work on Game Center support. Up next, I need to work on the ability to accept game invites and get some “auto-match” games connected between my main and a test Game Center account (as they’re the only two that will have access to the game at this point, of course).