Simplify, simplify, simplify

An inconvenient truth about myself is that I always reach for more. Witness this blog, which began as an attempt to follow the design and construction of a small game, harking back to old school RPGs. The game has now mushroomed into a fully 3D monstrosity. So far, it looks pretty sweet. Dynamic, 3D lighting, randomly generated and placed geometry, I've re-incorporated the skeletal animation system I built a few years ago for component-based animations allowing paper-doll player equipment setups, etc...

It's gotten out of hand.

I started with a small game because I wanted to focus on making the game, not on building yet another gigantic mass of engine spaghetti code. I can continue for months, if not years, mudging around the code base, making changes, fiddling and farting around... and I'll end up with a pretty engine that falls short of production quality, and nothing in the way of a real game. It's the usual cycle.

So I'm taking a step back, and officially dropping the 3D monstrosity. I wanted a small game, so I'm going back to a small game. Toward that end, I've begun fiddling with ActionScript 3 and the Flex 3 SDK. It's been fun, and the natural limitations of the Flash platform ensure that I won't be ballooning this thing into some huge 3D atrocity for which I lack the time and patience to actually create a usable game for. Plus, I have it in my head to begin developing a series of smaller, casual-style games, perhaps for FaceBook and perhaps for merely standalone.

So pardon me while I regroup, and I'll try to get some updated screenshots of my efforts in place.