Well, I’m still working at refining the design of my game project mentioned in my last entry. And since back then, alone the document in which I wrote down changes and additions to the initial gamedesign is already 10 pages long. So the ideas are flowing and everything is coming together. And this also is the first time that I ever invested so much time in writing a game-design document. Up until now I usually just wrote down outlines of my idea and implemented the details while coding, which works fine for arcade-like games (see e.g. my Bomberman-clone or Terrorcide), but not for a more complex game-type like a roundbases-strategygame I’m working on right now. So when I’m finally finished with that document I can directly start to create content (graphics, 3D-models, etc.) and coding, without having to worry about implementing details of the gameplay.
And on another side-node : I started implementing a COLLADA-exporter into the NewtonPlayGround, after an internal discussion over at the Newton-SDK-Developer forum. Since this is an industry-wide format which also is open, it’s great for unified distribution of 3D-scenes, and when at least all SDK-developers support it, it would help users of Newton to load (and also find) scenes for their newton demos. But I myself don’t really like COLLADA very much, it’s so bloated and exporting even smaller scenes create huge files with dozens of nodes which makes writing an exporter very exhausting.