Mobile Game Update #2 (pictures, title name and software engineering!)

Behold, yet another update blog! This thing and myself might actually have a chance of getting somewhere in the next few weeks. I won't say I did this on my own or without any serious effort but I spent the Thursday night and up to Friday evening getting some concepts of classes figured out in my head and how I should apply this for games. I want to do this properly though and that costs quite a lot of time! My Saturday was sadly spend recovering from such a long work session. I promised someone I would sleep though.

Still, I am quite happy with what has been done so far.

If you haven't read my first update and don't know what exactly this project is about please read the first blog containing the best description of what I'm making I have been able to think of so far. The short version is it's a game of the mobile phone type.

I left my last update with a class diagram and a very rough one at that. I knew it needed work, a lot of work, so I asked for help. I had two big problems, I have trouble really designing classes until I work with them enough to finally "get" why they exist. The same thing occurred with methods. I didn't get or understand them but after trying to make a program without utilising them I eventually stood back for a second and realised I could do things much better. I needed help then I do now. The second problem was my ambition made for a very awesome but unrealistic initial goal for a game.

This isn't a very thorough tech and programming blog so I won't go into every detail so I'll just say for some things I went completely over the top in sophistication and design.

What you're looking at here is a very bloated, non functional design of a game. I  asked for help and advice from my programming lecturer Rob Miles and a good friend/colleague about it and they were thankfully very honest and helpful. The biggest point was it was just too damn big of a project and even if I want to start small I should make the diagram represent that. I was wasting time adding so much to it here and would waste time later too.

For now, weapons, armour, bosses, levels and a lot of the original things I had wanted to have in the prototype have been shelved. I will work on these as soon as I have something made and working. The advantage of the design so far is adding these features shouldn't require much headache, hopefully, by having a well designed program. At least for someone my level it's quite well designed.

This thing is no simple beast either but it should be functional in theory and make something that looks like a game. It is lacking in features though so it isn't what I would be happy with publishing which is a serious concern I have so far. The deadline is a week or few days before the 17th of March as I want to have a game on the Windows Phone store really soon. This is no artificial deadline! It gives me a drive to finish something though. That's something I appreciate.

From here I can actually get to coding. I probably will not long after publishing this blog. Expect good things! :D