I Got Myself Some Wolves

Boy, it has been tough. Even working day and night on this project I am still not satisfied with the progress. Yes, nobody said it would be easy. And I am still having lots of fun. I can not imagine how people actually get paid to do this every day! Anyway, I am not about to give up. To make sure that I stay on track, I even created a roadmap page in the SourceForge project site here. Having the rest of the work layed out like that gives you the focus you need to cross the finish line, or so the theory says. Basically I want to at least make it into a complete mini-game instead of spending too much time polishing the graphics or any other particular area. Once it gets there, I will start interviewing and will keep adding more eye candy and experimenting with the creatures and forest 3D models. I am tired, but I can smell sweet victory around the corner! Or perhaps I am just dellusional...

My little 5 year old girl has been so supportive of her daddy and so patient and understanding. It breaks my shriveled old heart. Recently she asked us if, in order to have a sleepover with a couple of her friends, we needed to use up money. She was relieved to find out the answer was no. Her list of things that perhaps she could ask for when daddy gets a job keeps growing. And that is why I gave in and finally agreed to get a cat, something she has always wanted. That sweet little girl loves animals more than anything in this world. I, on the other hand, have been known to joke here and there about how much I love cats (they are delicious!). I do not expect to enjoy the addition of yet another little critter to feed and take care of, but what could I do? So now she has something to look forward and a lot of planning to do. That should keep her a little bit less stressed about our situation. She knows it is just a matter of time. I hope it is. Also, I told her daddy would have to work on weekends too to finish his project, but that made her so sad that I could not bring myself to do it. I just worked at night after putting the kids to bed as usual. Ah, children.

Anyway, the latest version of the mini-game has (ugly looking) menus and buttons, little fade transitions here and there, a bunch of wolves and a mini-map on the top right corner where you can see the location of the wolves around the game world. I thought I would have to create one of those furry animals myself, but in the end I found a cheap 3D model from turbosquid.com. Not bad, except it was supposed to come with a number of animations (walking, attacking, etc) but I could not import those into my game. Even to get the basic model in I had to spend a day with their customer service and other online forums trying to figure out what was wrong with it. In the end I managed to hack it and make at least the model work. I will have to get my puppeteer hat soon to create the missing animations. That stuff is hard, dudes. And without much ado to bed I go. My eyelids are heavy and my flesh is weak. Wish me luck!