X@COM

...Hopefully not to be followed by baby steps.

I'm starting development with the battlescape, primarily because its design is potentially problematic so it's the best place to start in order to determine the feasibility of this project. (By comparison, the geoscape should be relatively easy to represent in ASCII.)

Progress during the first week of development:

• Expanded personal game library (which has only been used for basic 2D applications in the past) to include 3D LOS/FOV functions, a 3D pathfinding class, more 3D matrix methods, a handle manager template, and a generic logging system.
• Defined all major game flow handling classes/modules
• Defined all major data classes (Cell/Prop/Entity/Item)
• All data objects loaded from files
• Can load a rudimentary static battlescape map, with objects, from a text file
• Map props can be static light sources; entities/items can be dynamic light sources
• Visibility, and map shading, dependent on time of day setting
• Can control members of a test faction, walking or flying around the map, which is revealed as per FOV rules
• Can activate side-view map to see a vertical cross section of a unit's LOS
• Implemented randomized unit stats, and TU costs of moving/changing facing 
• Moving units will correctly climb/descend sloped terrain/stairs (fortunately they no longer leap off buildings unless capable of flying) and open doors
• The entire game state can be saved/loaded at any time

Next up: Firing your gun at stuff. This could take a while longer, because I'll be trying out some new methods I haven't used before...

Screenshots will come soon, after I make the tiny test level a bit prettier--right now it's pretty random...

I just recently began work on a new project, an X-COM-based Roguelike, and decided to create a blog to post updates and seek comments/advice.

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