In the past couple of weeks of innovation lab, we did a variety of things.
Immediately after my last blog, some of us were looking at the haXe programming language. As I learned, it is a nice framework for writing cross-platform applications. I was planning on looking at Web Development at some point, and I think that haXe looks like a good place to start. Maybe by June I will try to make a small project in haXe just to figure out how it works. The one problem I had was trying to find an IDE which works well. I tried flashDevelop and IntelliJ, but I had some problems with both of them :3. Hopefully I can get one of them to work in the next few weeks.
Regarding my project - For the time being (maybe next few weeks or so) I want to switch gears. The problem I was finding was that I chose a project which involved a lot of skills I didn't have (F# experience, experience with .NET and Monogame, AND a lot of complicated algorithms for collision detection and physics related things). In Heinz sight, that was probably not a great idea, I should have focused on one or two skills that I didn't have, and learn a lot in the areas chosen. For the time being I want to cut out a lot of the complicated physics and collision detection related things, and just focus on making a game with F# and Monogame.
The *new* tangent idea I had was that instead of a racing game described in previous blogs, I would work on a smaller more manageable game without the added complexity of some of the physics and collision detection. My idea is more along the lines of a racing game where the cart is controlled with the mouse, and the cart must race against something (either time, or AI controlled characters - depending upon which I have time to make). Its a little hard to explain, and so, I created a short video, which hopefully can explain it.
This is the video of what I have worked on making in the last few days, hopefully I will be able to work more on it, and make it into a polished game. If I have time, I may try to work on my original idea, by then I will be familiar enough with what I am doing that I can start using more complex algorithms, but until then I don't want to push it (I really want to have a working game by the final)
