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[Martoon]

Name	Goal	Deadline	Status
Amanda Williams	Learn game making program	8/31/2011	Fail!
Arbitrax	working build of road generation	8/14/2011	Fail!
ugriffin	Release YSWMI	6/30/2011	Fail!
Arbitrax	Prototype palette and style for sidewalks	6/26/2011	Complete!
Arbitrax	Finish road tileset	6/19/2011	Complete!
Noah!	Release playable build of freaking game	5/31/2011	Complete!
centerorbit	Long list o' stuff for palm reader website	5/31/2011	Fail!
drChengele	Make Praetor into something playable	5/7/2011	Fail!
centerorbit	User profile, leader board, webcam	5/2/2011	Complete!
Player 3	Make art for one person's game	5/1/2011	Fail!
eclectocrat	Bat sheep insane Mysterious Castle beta	4/27/2011	Fail!
Martoon	Reimplement time slider in Time Commander rewrite	4/25/2011	Complete!
centerorbit	Publicly usable version of website	4/24/2011	Complete!
Sparky	Prototype monsters, improve player movement	4/21/2011	Fail!
Taugeshtu	Playable demo	4/19/2011	Fail!
Martoon	Rewrite Time Commander prototype from scratch	4/18/2011	Complete!
drChengele	Fleets, troops, agents, etc.	4/18/2011	Fail!
Inane	Implement enemies, summons, and spell thangers	4/13/2011	Fail!
Martoon	Ship rotation/thrust controls in TC prototype (again)	4/11/2011	Fail!
Theophilus	Weapons, shooting, graphics	4/5/2011	Fail!
drChengele	First milestone on C# port of Praetor	4/4/2011	Fail!
Theophilus	Finish health and armor systems	4/3/2011	Complete!
Hempuli?	Have a swingable sword (*snicker*)	4/3/2011	Complete!
Martoon	Ship rotation/thrust controls in TC prototype	4/1/2011	Fail!
Pikmin259	Finish game	4/1/2011	Fail!
Richard Kain	2D sprite rendering with every feature conceivable (again)	4/1/2011	Fail!
atiaxi	Back on track with 10 hours/week	3/31/2011	Fail!
Xion	Status effects and varying potion effects	3/31/2011	Complete!
Xion	Complete pause menu	3/31/2011	Complete!
mirosurabu	Make phone window	3/30/2011	Complete!
Hempuli?	+3 items	3/28/2011	Fail!
Hempuli?	Mockup and base gameplay for PROJECT F	3/25/2011	Fail!
Inanimate	Get to work on card game	3/19/2011	Complete!
Inane	Full level complete	3/16/2011	Fail!
Theo	Concept art piece for 3D animation project	3/16/2011	Complete!
Theophilus	Time system for life sim game	3/14/2011	Fail!
Hangedman	Finish 6/8 tilesets	3/14/2011	Complete!
Eibx	Simplify the process of server/client sockets	3/13/2011	Fail!
Richard Kain	2D sprite rendering with every feature conceivable	3/11/2011	Fail!
Bood_War	Finish Ghost of a Chance	3/11/2011	Late!
Pikmin259	Finish first boss	3/10/2011	Complete!
OddGoo	Finish Beta of VITAEA	3/8/2011	Complete!
Theophilus	Fix wall sticking bug	3/7/2011	Fail!
John Sandoval	Finish AI director	3/7/2011	Complete!
Xion	Re-implement potions and consumables	3/5/2011	Complete!
eclectocrat	Fix lighting for occlusion	3/4/2011	Complete!
tsameti	New sprite cycles	3/3/2011	Fail!
dangerousday	Main gameplay and turn structure of exploration game	3/2/2011	Fail!
eclectocrat	Finish level editor and post screenshots	2/28/2011	Late!
dangerousday	Concentration game	2/22/2011	Complete!
Martoon	Time Commander prototype 1	2/19/2011	Complete!

Here's how this thread works: You post a reply with a goal and a deadline.  Try to make it specific and measurable.  If possible, make it demonstrable (i.e., you can show that you've done it).  Please give a specific date for the deadline.

The goal can be as big or small and the deadline as short or long as you like.  Once you've posted your goal and deadline, I'll add it to the table above.

On or before the deadline, post a follow-up reply reporting whether or not you've met the goal.  I'll change the status of your goal in the table to Complete or Fail.  If you fail to meet the goal, you give your implicit consent to be ridiculed and to have your worth as a person called into question.  However, you always have the option of partially redeeming yourself by reporting back with the completed goal later, and I'll change the status from Fail to Late.

[Martoon]

I've been wanting to play with a game concept I'm calling Time Commander.  The concept has the player controlling a variety of types of vehicles (a ship with rotation and thrust, a two-wheeled vehicle, etc.) from a 2D side view.  The player can freely drag a slider back and forth along a time line, and watch the vehicle (and everything else in the world) move accordingly.  They can move the slider to any point in time and adjust the vehicle's controls (the ship's thrust, the bike's throttle, etc.) at that point.  They might then play time forward a bit, see that the ship will collide with something, go back a bit, tweak the controls and repeat, eventually creating the perfect path through the level and meeting the objective.

Goal:
My initial goal is an extremely bare-bones prototype, in Flash.  A time slider, and a ship with rotation and thrust.  The thrusters will be set and fixed (no interface to change them).  All you can do is drag the time slider and watch the ship move back and forth in whatever arc the preset thrusters move it through.  This will require the integration of the physics engine (Box2d), up-front simulation of the world, storing the essential state of the world in a series of keyframes through time, and playing back those keyframes as the time slider is dragged back and forth.

Deadline:
Feb 19, 06:00 GMT (that's midnight Saturday night my time)

[tsameti]

New sprite cycles. Got to finally do them, been putting it off too long.

I need one Walk animation and one Run animation.

Two weeks? The third of March?

[Martoon]

New sprite cycles. Got to finally do them, been putting it off too long.

I need one Walk animation and one Run animation.

Two weeks? The third of March?

Hey, your Son, Stranger game looks very cool!  I can't say I've seen anything quite like that before, visually, dialog, or gameplay wise.  Just in the little dialog that I've played, the characters are already very engaging.  The lock tier system sounds like it will be interesting.  Looking forward to seeing more gameplay.

One walk animation and one run animation, March 3rd, it is. 

[tsameti]

Thanks, I'm excited about it.

Since you're working on a time-based game, have you looked at Achron? They've put together a CRAZY capable engine to handle time travel.

http://www.achrongame.com/site/

That's a few steps too ambitious, but there could be nuggets of wisdom dug into the interface, or the idea of 'wave' propagation of timeline updates. Hopefully there are lessons buried in there somewhere.

[Martoon]

Since you're working on a time-based game, have you looked Achron? They've put together a CRAZY capable engine to handle time travel.

http://www.achrongame.com/site/

That's crazy ambitious, but there could be lessons you could learn from the interface, or the idea of 'wave' propagation of timeline updates. Hopefully there are lessons buried in there somewhere.

Yeah, I looked at that recently.  It looks fascinating, and definitely caught my interest with the time flow mechanic.  I almost pre-ordered for the beta, but it looks like a substantial time investment, and the things they're doing with time travel are pretty different from the direction I'm going.  I may end up pre-ordering anyway, though.  I'm sure there are ideas I could draw from the interface.  Thanks for the suggest!

[Martoon]

Goal:
My initial goal is an extremely bare-bones prototype, in Flash.  A time slider, and a ship with rotation and thrust.  The thrusters will be set and fixed (no interface to change them).  All you can do is drag the time slider and watch the ship move back and forth in whatever arc the preset thrusters move it through.  This will require the integration of the physics engine (Box2d), up-front simulation of the world, storing the essential state of the world in a series of keyframes through time, and playing back those keyframes as the time slider is dragged back and forth.

Deadline:
Feb 19, 06:00 GMT (that's midnight Saturday night my time)

And, done.  Four hours ahead of deadline. 

It's not much of anything yet, but it accomplishes the three things I wanted to with this initial prototype:

• It gets me started on this project, giving me a little inertia.
• It gives me a glimpse of what the game will feel like.  This lets me better imagine the gameplay, and determine whether it seems workable or not.  I think it is.
• The hacked together code tells me a lot of the things I'll need to deal with in the "real" code.  I now have a pretty good idea of the subsystems needed, and how they'll work together.

I have to say, publicly committing to this goal in this thread made a big difference.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten this done today if I hadn't.

[ink.inc]

This thread is a damn fine idea.

[iffi]

This thread is a damn fine idea.

Indeed it is. I'm scared to post anything here, though, because chances are I would fail to meet my goals anyway.

[Martoon]

This thread is a damn fine idea.

Indeed it is. I'm scared to post anything here, though, because chances are I would fail to meet my goals anyway.

I was honestly pretty scared of that myself, especially since I'd look really lame if I missed it because I started the thread.  And I figured there's a good chance I would miss it anyway, because I've been seriously struggling with motivation lately.  But it got me half-assedly working on it the past couple days, and really pulling together and finishing yesterday.  I'm glad I committed to it here.

And I think I'm going to start using "half-assedly" as an adverb more often.

[Xion]

What a great idea for a thread.

Goal: re-implement drinking potions and eating consumables.
Deadline: Mar. 5, End of day.

[dangerousday]

Concentration. Just a simple Concentration game, from scratch, before bedtime tonight. That gives me three hours.

[Martoon]

I've put a table with everyone's goals and deadlines in the original post.  I'll try to keep this updated as people post with new goals and report their status.

[dangerousday]

Done and done!

Concentration v0.9

[Martoon]

Done and done!

Concentration v0.9

Wow.  Nice!

[Ashkin]

This thread is a damn fine idea.

Indeed it is. I'm scared to post anything here, though, because chances are I would fail to meet my goals anyway.

Both of these.
They are my thoughts.

[Evan Balster]

Okay.  It's Thursday morning.  The Infinite Blank needs a boatload of work.  I want it up by GDC.  I'm going to go eat breakfast.  Then,

[atiaxi]

This is a wonderful idea.  I've done National Novel Writing Month before and something that's always kept me going during the experience was telling everyone that I was doing it, knowing that if I didn't finish they'd forever demand to see my novel.

At the beginning of the year, I made a resolution to spend 10 hours a week on my game, and right now I'm about 20 hours behind.  So, I hereby pledge my very first post on these forums to fixing that situation.  By the end of March, I will be back on track!

[Martoon]

At the beginning of the year, I made a resolution to spend 10 hours a week on my game, and right now I'm about 20 hours behind.  So, I hereby pledge my very first post on these forums to fixing that situation.  By the end of March, I will be back on track!

Okay, added this to the table in the OP.  Welcome aboard!

[Martoon]

Okay.  It's Thursday morning.  The Infinite Blank needs a boatload of work.  I want it up by GDC.  I'm going to go eat breakfast.  Then,

I'm not sure if there's a specific goal and/or deadline there, so I haven't added this to the table.  Let me know if you'd like it added.