A lot of things have happend in the past few weeks. I've been working on the game alot and noticed that I still stick to my old habbits of being a perfectionist. Although I did spend time working on base systems (such as pooling, time management) which can be reused for later projects.

The current state of the game is close to what I wanted it to be. On of the main things I wanted to add - the ship selection/setup function - is working perfectly which was a big part of the concept. There might not be a lot of different parts to choose from but it is a good display of what can be done. I still have things I'd like to see improved and changed but for now I'll leave it as it is. On the gamepage you can find more details on the game, media and links to download and play the game.

The game has been comming along pretty well but still has a lot of things I really need and want to add, such as special abilities, ship selection and more. The schedule I made last week which relied on having only 1 week wasn't enough and ended up to be pretty non-accurate at all. The progress I've made so far has made a pretty useful testcase for a first time, telling me about the approach I should take for the next small project.

For now I'll put some more time into the Space Shooter game so that I can call it done and prepare it for you all to play and experience.

A small update on how the development of the first game is going.
So far I've been pretty happy with the way things go. I haven't really been able to keep on track with my pre-planned schedule but that doesn't bother me as much as I though. The first day was pretty solid but too short for me to do all the gameplay programming. I also still wanted to find the fun part of the game which only really came up yesterday (day 3). So far I've mostly been working on getting the gameplay as much fun as possible as well as enabling myself to test out different things faster.

The concept changed somewhat from the one that I posted before. A fun part about game-development is that you can (and should) listen to what your game needs. I added shooting and removed the LAZOR-cutting part from the concept. It just didn't feel fun to only be able to destroy stuff with your lazer and it was also terribly difficult to do so.
Instead the game is now fun due to the difficulty there is because you still control two ships... Which can shoot... But only if the other is not shooting and the lazer is not interrupted by an obstacle.

According to the planning I made before day 3 would be about content and levels. I tried to approach the game with levels/waves but that just didn't feel easy enough to make so I abandoned that idea quickly and switch to endless-random gameplay. This might change but for now it feels fun.
Content wise there is still a lot of things I want to make, especially more types of ships, turrets, bullets and enemies. The good thing about this is that they are really easy to make and test so I'll probably focus on some of the should-have's before continuing with those.

The picture shows how the game looks at this point. I used some art from games I made before and changed them a bit to fit their needs for this game. It's not super fancy but I like the style so far.

Tomorrow will be UI, sound and hopefully some more should-have features.

2 ships connected by (killing) lazer.
Manouver ships (solo or as duo) to avoid enemies/obstacles and destroy them for points.
Vertical auto-scroller.

Controls
    - WASD + IJKL (rebindable?).
    - Dual stick (pad or visual-touch).

MoSCoW
Must have:
    - Movement (figure out if vertical movement is fun/needed).
    - Killing LAAAZORRRZ *ZAP* (trigger that changes size/rotation between ships, kills on touch).
    - Obstacles (astroids).
    - Menu

Should have:
    - Enemies (with move-paterns).
    - Powerups
    - Leaderboard (local).

Could have:
    - Bossfight (sequence of move-paterns).
    - Shop to buy upgrades.
    - Online-multiplayer.
    - Online leaderboard (facebook for example).
    - Endless mode.

Won't have:
    - 

Win state:
    - Complete the level!
    - (Get the highest score.)

Lose state:
    - Lose all health points (3 hits for example).

Today I'm starting with the first weekly game. My intention is to stream my process and record a time-laps but I won't be doing that for this one just yet. I still need to figure out how to do this but I just need to get started with the games to keep myself sane and active.

Planning
For now I've planned to work 5 days, focusing on specific elements every day. I'll try to keep on this track as closely as possible so that every aspect of the game gets some of my time.

Monday: Concept and gameplay. Starting today I'll focus on the concept and gameplay. This also means that I'll define the scope of the game.
Tuesday: Art. Defining the art style and replacing of all temporary gameplay art.
Wednesday: Content/levels. Fleshing out the game with content such as levels and story.
Thursday: Music and audio. Creating the music and audio as well as implementing them.
Friday: Polish and optimization. Cleaning up the last bits and pieces that still need some work.

During the weekend I'll update the website with the new information so you can read about and play what has been made.