So what's next for Platform Hack? The build submitted to DBP was a subset of what I originally envisioned. What I'd like to do is continue working on the game, primarily creating content, for the rest of the summer. The game would go into Peer Review late summer, and hopefully be released on XBox Live in September.
Here are the features I'd like to complete for the full release:
- 4 Total worlds, with unique tilesets, enemies and boss fights (Forest, Mountain, Desert, Wasteland/Factory)
- Leveling skill-tree and powers (Attack, Defend, Explore)
- Procedural level generation (for 50% of levels)
- Some form of narrative story that links the "quest" together
- Infinite mode (similar to roguelikes, where you can continue to "dig" down into the dungeon, and everything scales accordingly)
- Overall polish of menus, HUD, etc
The only tough programming challenge is getting the procedural levels dynamic and toned enough that they can be used. Right now I can randomly place enemies and traps, but they aren't set up in a way that makes the overall map feel both coherent and challenging. We'll see if it's doable.
Everything else is mostly content generation, which is slow and steady, but is well within reach for the summer.
Next, I'll be doing a post-mortem of the DBP process, a list of acknowledgements for the game, and a breakdown of the various tools used during development.
