Farewell Flixel, hello XNA!

The New Plan

So, Flixel didn't work out. The main problem is that Adam Atomic is frequently making changes, and a lot of the functions keep getting rewritten. This means the tutorials break every time there's an update, and most are still written for Flixel 1, which makes learning very tedious. I may return to Flixel once it has settled down, but for the moment it's not for me.

I considered my options, and while I would ideally rather use a browser-embeddable medium such as Java, Flash or Silverlight, I find all the HTML stuff confusing, so for now I'm going for a traditional .exe compiler (sorry non-Windows folks). I've been working through a book on C# in Visual Studio, and have installed the XNA plugin for graphics, sound and input.

If I ever manage to make a game worth widely sharing, I'll consider learning a more distributable language and translate.

The New Game

The above decisions actually happened some time ago, and I have already begun work on my first game. It's going well (although not exactly a game yet per se), and so I decided to start sharing my plans and progress, with updates and versions.

The game will be called Terrastrom. The name comes from terra meaning earth, and strom (as in maelstrom), which means stream. It focuses on an important aspect of the game, which is the world layout and random terrain generation. Quasi-coincidentally, strom is also a common suffix for Scandinavian surnames, which is where my blog name comes from.

Terrastrom is inspired by my favourite open world games, including Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft and Morrowind, and will be an amalgamation of these game styles. It's a top-down 2D adventure game, where the world, events, characters, villages and communities will all be randomised. There will be no specific aim or objectives besides those you set yourself, but I will try and make as much to do as I can think of. The specifics are completely up in the air, and I will let the game evolve organically as I add features. I will be happy as long as the game becomes fun, intellectual challenging, and a varying experience with each play.

In the next post I will provide a link to a download of the current version of Terrastrom, with an explanation of its current (limited) functionality. I aim to provide updates going forward to show how it evolves.