August 1, 2020 at 12:43 pm
Fairly productive month. Added another backend to my graphics layer using an open source library that supports several graphics APIs (ie. DX9, DX11, OpenGL, etc.). My graphics layer was already designed to have multiple backends I can switch to at runtime. The idea being that if there's any errors with one backend (say, bad driver), the player can switch to another backend that hopefully works better. That said, in the process of adding this new backend I realized I need to formalize my "backend APIs" going forward which will be another distraction but hopefully a short one.
In other news, we're coming up to the 10 year anniversary of Synekism's first public release: September 1st, 2010. I was hoping last year I would have something to release by now but despite a good uptick in my productivity, I'm still far from anything function. In light of this, after some reflection, I decided to change plans a bit and work towards a simpler RTS-style game before Synekism. It would still use the same engine that Synekism will use and will hopefully allow me to make all the mistakes before starting on Synekism. It should also be a bit more rewarding as I plan to use my friends to battle test it (and in the process battle test my custom snowflake engine). I do plan to release this RTS publicly as well and go through that process so I'm better prepared when Synekism comes along.
Until next month! Hopefully I'll have some sort of announcement by then, even if it's not a release of any sort.