It would be easy to think that work on my current personal project 'Moon' has ground to a halt. I can tell you for sure that isn't the case. Though to the casual observer a few hours a month probably looks very much like halted.

A great deal of my time has been spent making bits of engine code that do specific but ultimately non-game things like generate voxel based collision meshes so the character doesn't float about in space, load file from the internet so I can support updates or just a renderer that doesn't crash at random times so I don't get angry emails from players.

Well, finally after a very productive weekend I now have actual visual results to show for my efforts. These are simply tests of the first parts of the level and block editor so don't expect Moon to actually look like this. Though I do quite like the stark grey against dark dusty purple.

Level Editor

The basic bits of a level editor. Blocks from any of the constructed sets can be placed in the world and saved. Nothing very fancy here yet and so much more work to do.

Block Editor

This is a pretty much complete Voxel based block and animation editor. Blocks can be constructed out of any number of carved voxel elements in here and then animated as needed. These finished blocks are stored as part of a block set that can be loaded and used in the level editor. Easy.

So, you might now ask when you can expect to play something. My best answer, eventually.

I'm sure every track I make takes twice as long as the one that preceeded it. In this case my decision to do all the music score from scratch instead of relying as much on samples probably had something to do with it.

I'm sure I'll look back on it at some point in the future and hate it for it's simplicity but for now I'm pretty happy with the result.

Download

As I've now decided to care and worry a little less about the quality of and size of the posts I put on here I thought I'd share something purely experimental. This is the result of some of my research into the perfect choice for natural light colours. Intensity from top to bottom and temperature from left to right.

In the past I'd have worried about my lack of a complete description here and probably not posted this. Times have changed, enjoy the pretty colours.

And so it seem that nearly six months has passed since I last gave any indication of activity. I suspect that finally deciding I needed a change from my old job and going through the process of ending over ten years of employment has taken it's toll on my capacity for concentration outside of work.

Very happily, I now work alongside the highly skilled ninjas at Double Eleven on some really exciting projects. It's great to have my brain worked again, learning lot's of new stuff, getting into a new code base and generally firing on all cylinders. It's also great to be looking forward again.

On the down side this has all meant that I've not really achieved much progress on Project Moon, or anything else for that matter. Hopefully not being out of the house for 12 hours a day anymore will mean I get some serious development time in the not too distant future.

Unless you've actually ever made a computer game you may not be aware of how complex the process really is. This isn't a boast with which I intend to inflate my ego, or some excuse for the time such endevours take. It's just a stamement of fact about the way things are.

Computer games are not alone in the set of all activities that are challenging, nor are they sole occupant of the set of things that when done well appear to the end user (or target audience) as usable and approachable. However, they also occupy the set of things who's creation feels like it should be simpler than it really is. Who's creation is filled with little things that on the surface seem simple but turn out to be filled with layers of complexity. I think in that, they may well be alone.

As an excercise next time you play a computer game, consider what complexity might hide behind simply making your character move, jump or attack as you'd expect when you press a button (obviously assuming you've chosen game that has a character in it). You may be suprised, and unless you've ever written the code for it, I'd put money on being able to show you something your character does that you didn't realise to give you that feeling of responsiveness, fairness and enjoyment.

Project Moon - Very Rough