When I started using
Game Maker, I was somewhat skeptical. This would not be the first time I had tried to adapt one of my visions to fit inside somebody else's box. Last time I tried to use a free ware engine I found to build a strategy game, it turned out to have more box and less fit.
On the other hand, Earth vs. Mars is shaping up gloriously.
You may remember I had this idea about a Solar civil war between Earth and the colonies.* It was going to be on a giant hex grid so I could use vectored motion a-la
Triplanetary. After two weeks-ish of off-hand development, I have this so far:
A full on Newtonian movement system. With gravity implemented. A playing area that covers everything inside the jovian orbit. The ability to scale the display from 1:1 all the way to 1,000,000:1 - this is important when you're trying to navigate from Earth to Mars and you don't have radar.
It's a cool toy, but it's not a game yet. I still have some User Interface tweaks to make before I start adding bad guys.
MMmmmm. Saucers.
*Actually, after looking through the back blog, you may not. I may never have mentioned it here. But it's cool, trust me.
