Week 11 -- Regrouping

That's me regrouping, not something happening in the game. Between being very busy at work and some family matters, I did very little on the project over the last week.

I've realized that it would be very easy for me to spend an endless amount of time learning TGB, and let the project die without even realizing it. "It's OK, I'm learning Torque. I can get back to work on the main project any time." So to avoid that, I'm going to follow a strict schedule and list of what I'm going to learn, and it's focused on the most important things that I'll need to know.

And I'm going to post it right here to help hold myself accountable (and it may be interesting for anyone else in a similar situation):

	Est. hours	Task	Notes
2		datablocks
2		moving between levels
2		layers	and getting objects to sort well in a three-quarters view
1		object groups
4		GUIs and GUI Builder
2		object pathing
2		camera movement	and following an object
2		behaviors
2		mounting objects
1		timers
1		mouse input
1		t2dSceneObject
2		tile maps
1		SimObject
1		SimSet
1		t2dPath
1		t2dSceneGraph
1		t2dTextObject
4		Misc class/function experimentation

(Sorry for the ugly formatting on the tables, can't take time to fix it.)

And the upcoming part of my schedule, for good measure:

Start date	End date	Hours	Task	Notes
09/19/2007	10/13/2007	33	learn TorqueScript/TGB
10/14/2007	10/28/2007	24	core battle system	attack, magic, tech, shield, knock-back, wait time
10/29/2007	11/02/2007	6	basic navigation	move b/w areas
11/03/2007	11/13/2007	16	dialogue/narration and events
08/21/2007	11/15/2007	24	all content for intro	introductory area / “first five minutes”
11/16/2007	11/28/2007	16	character ability up, change equipment
11/29/2007	12/06/2007	11	allies + basic AI
12/07/2007	12/09/2007	4	passive abilities
12/10/2007	12/13/2007	8	enchantments	basic/instant only for now
12/14/2007	12/17/2007	6	generate enemy groups
11/16/2007	12/20/2007	24	content for first major area

Between falling behind and adding time for studying TGB/TorqueScript, my schedule has slipped about 6 weeks from the original plan. That's sobering. It looks likely that my final product for the contest will have to be only part of the full plan for the game. If so, I'll definitely go for a more polished but shorter portion rather than longer but unpolished. We'll see how it goes from here.