Dev Day Diary: Atlas

Got to spend some quality time with UAC yesterday, although it really seems like I can start calling it Atlas. The name has stuck into a neuron and doesn't seem likely to leave. The premise is that a huge galactic tragedy left the worlds asunder and an entire civilization is now reforming within the confines of an enormous asteroid belt. Or something like that. There may be pandas. Details left uncertain.

Thankfully, Torque 2D's physics are pretty top notch. I've successfully created an expansive asteriod setup without bringing down my system. The asteroids are essentially a constantly shifting array that deletes rocks as they move out of range, but is replacing them just as fast. T2D's physics handles all the collisions and velocity changes and I've got code to handle explosions, debris, etc.

One of the ways I triage is by asking myself what my next biggest problem is. Right now Atlas has no real player scoring or player death or anything resembling actual gameplay. One would think that would probably be the biggest problem, but in actuality the fact that I have no decent method of displaying that kind of information to the user really trumps that. I need a framework to add in text, windows, prompts, etc. ... which is far more of a behemoth that simply ticking down a value on a collision.