Fri, May 16th 2008, 13:25
Half and Half
Fri, May 16th 2008, 13:25
The way things went this week (and given the nature of the project), it
seems most fitting to break this week's update into two parts: client and
server. As this was an overly productive week, I'm only to present an
overview of the major changes.
The Client:
I spent the first part of my week absolutely tearing up the client. I
rewrote giant heaps of stuff for the purpose of saner organization. Of
particular note (from the would-be players' perspective), the entire
"galactic heirarchy" was rewritten. It's now more "realistic", which I
originally had mixed feelings about, but now that it's in place, I'm
actually quite satisfied with it.
So, some UI components have been shuffled around, and it's a lot more
colorful now. There's still quite a distance to go, but it's starting
to really take shape visually, which always feels rewarding.
The Server:
This was definitely the most frustrating task, in spite of it not being
all that complicated or challenging. You see, I went to the trouble of
writing out a very specific client design, so that I wasn't just
fumbling around until I ended up at the finish line. I did the same with
my network protocol.
For some reason, though, I completely failed to think through the design
for the server and, as a result, it was a treacherous, unwieldy
force-to-be-reckoned-with. So, I went in and chopped it to pieces, saving
a few useful fragments. Then I pieced it all back together (this time
with a cohesive vision in mind). The result? It does exactly what it did
before. The important difference is that it is significantly
easier to maintain.
If this game were to become wildly popular, I'd probably have to rewrite
the server for efficiency, but as it stands now, it's reasonably swift
and super easy to manage.
