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Thursday, December 30, 2004

Dev Night Diary: Filling out a framework

My online pal Wong and I like to compare notes on how we generally get nothing done. It's really not fair because both of us love to write frameworks. We love to write the core foundation to prove that if you can get x to do y that you actually do end up with the evil stepson of a hamster.

Our problem is that once we prove the hamster's existence, we don't do very much with it. We have this framework, but then some other shiny thing (like Half-Life 2) distracts us and we're off to prove something new again. This time I'm trying to do it differently, and actually finish this mod before moving on to anything new. I'm actually forcing myself to scale back and not scope creep the hell out of things. By sticking to single-player and trying to write this firmly in the Unreal Universe (which is a poorly cobbled affair as it is) I'm making the goal a bit easier to hit.

Last night I really started to fill out the framework. With some new tricks in UED I can make dark maps in a few minutes, so I'm taking some choice ones over. I started to add in new enemies, new weapons, etc. And then I was reminded why I don't usually take anything this far.

Because it shows you all the problems in your framework. I think I broke three distinct things just by using them. Sigh. Oh well, it's mostly working now and it's slowly starting to feel more like a game.

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