Shining Online

July 10th, 2009 10:10 Development Diary

Project Update – July 10th, 2009

There’s not been much of interest to write about lately, but work has still been going on under the hood. There’s been a task list sat in front of me for the last month that hasn’t got any shorter, which is frustrating to say the least.

The biggest problem on it is getting the server and client to communicate in a way that isn’t a complete nightmare to update. For a while the server was miles ahead, but now the client side is starting to take shape and the server code is looking like a mess.

The good news is that things are getting done. The bad news is it’s taking a lot longer than expected. It’s a combination of a few tasks being much bigger than estimated, and also a lack of motivation to tackle them. I’ll be making sure the next milestone is more fun.

Terrible Programmer Art

As noted in previous entries, there are two different gameplay modes in Shining Online: online and offline.

Here’s what the offline title screen looks like at the moment. It was a 60-second job in Paint, so it will be changed eventually…

Shining Online - AWFUL title screen

Selecting “New Game” takes the player to the “New Story” screen, where they can select from a list of installed stories to play. After that, it’s up to the story author what happens. Intro sequences will be supported, as will the trademark Shining Force character naming screens.

A break

I’ll be taking a few weeks break to go home to England, so there won’t be any progress for a little while.

Same as usual, really ;)


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