Deeply buried amidst my many fever-dreams of producing gaming excellence, it's easy for me to lose perspective on just how to go about finishing a game. I go back and edit the various procedures until I figure they're reasonably beyond reproach, an anal-retentive habit I no doubt picked up from forums and blogs that feature an edit button.

So it is that periodically I pull my head out of the haze of development aspiration I've built up, rub my eyes, and actually be somewhat surprised when I realize that the game is, after all, getting closer and closer to finished.

I like a deep game, and this mecha customization screen is quite deep - although not quite as overwhelming as an Armored Core game. The middle pane swaps out depending on whatever component you are customizing

Now walking around in that same mecha, you get a readout of armor and energy on the left, and the icon for the mecha itself is actually constructed out of whatever components are installed and are externally visible.

At this point, I now have the core three components of the mecha finished:

1. Chassis - A Wheeled, Tracked, Hover, or Bipedal movement system supplemented by an engine, its main purpose is to overcome the weight of the mecha and move it. Bigger engines move more weight, different chassis are better at weight bearing and navigating certain terrain.
2. Hull - The player mostly chooses their armor here. I use an "armor coverage" system that simulates the chance to pierce the parts of the mecha that are covered with armor. You also have a choice of 3 kinds of exponentially thicker armor - thickness reduces the damage to the armor when the player is attacked, but comes at the cost of increased weight.
3. Generator - Generates the overall energy the mecha has available to expend on actions. The players can choose to take larger generators (to increase energy generated) or larger batteries (to increase energy stored).

The system is balanced in such a way that players can freely allocate their credits towards becoming nimble raiders, slow-but-powerful juggernauts, or something in between. Don't take any numbers you see in those screenshots too seriously, I've only shot-in-the-dark balancing at this point.

Despite progress being made, I think my overall process have been rather terrible. I should have a playable game by now. Instead, I allowed myself to get distracted with too much emphasis on cosmetic details and bug hunting. I need to start coding flat out to completion.

To these ends, now that my timed movement mechanism is working appropriately, the very next thing I should do is allow the player to dig, find ore, load the ore, take it back to the base, and drop it off. Once that's done, hey, core Lode Wars experience accomplished. Then I can work on the interesting stuff.

I suspect this weekend (starting Friday) will be fairly bad for development on account of graduation preparations. Next week, job hunting will take up a bit of my development time. So it's a good thing I've another few weeks to get this project done, as I won't get several days of 6-10-hours-a-day coding like I did this week.