Back in the lab

I've been working in the books, planning out systems for the early game and a few for the later game as to make sure I have these things in mind while designing and developing the earlier systems they will interact with.

I also received a letter about an apartment, if things go well I will be moving early October so I may be a bit distracted with that in the coming month. This will definitely make me more productive a month or so after the move has concluded if it does go through. I will have a lot less to worry about which means I will be more focused.

I also plan to try my hand with printing PETG filament that I bought a few years ago and just left in it's vacuum seal until I felt like I had a good enough grasp of 3D printing to try working with it. At this point I suppose I should have already at least given it a shot... so that is what I will do.

At any rate I am still working on planning out the systems I will have to build and how they will interact. The more complicated ones are mostly worked out, I have a pretty good idea how genetics and generation of random slimes work now. I still want to spend some time working on a bit of the details of breeding, though. Things like how long until a slime can breed again or how long incubation takes... these things seem small but can have a large impact on the game's loop.

I also started designing the world, I had only vague notions of what I wanted until now. I want to have an island with some smaller islands around it, reachable by ferry. The main island will have a big city along the eastern coast, a big tourist destination type theme park on the south coast and a huge forest in the center. Off in the west coast will be largely untouched coastline with some resort type places that may come into play later.

The setting will be an alternate earth in the mid to late 90's, players will communicate with computers at their apartments using old school browsers, BBS, chat rooms and forums. I'll have to build an in-game browser that can only visit specific sites and set up an internal internet for the game which I have already gone and started. Players may even be able to have their own websites in a Geocities fashion. All of this will require some... policing. I may have to enlist players as volunteer moderators at some point.

I want the game to be a more immersive pet sim than anything I ever played, something like what I imagined in my head when I was playing with my Tamagotchi and Pokemon back in my youth.

This will be a lot of work. I may have to take time off now and then once I get the basis of the game ready for testing in order to work on other things so I don't burn out on it. It's evolved quite a bit at this point and has become a combination of a lot of projects. I know I can do it and I really hope it's something other people will enjoy too.

At any rate I need to get back to writing the books and scaffolding this game out so I can get to coding again next week.