Where does the time go?

So it's been a month since my side-tracked rant about gender images in the media... and longer since I've actually posted anything of note regarding Incoboto, so here's where we is at.

I spent some time making weird, droney noises like this. I may use this stuff as music in Incoboto. I may decide it's too 'cold'. We'll see as time goes on.

I've just returned from holiday in Iceland and am currently suffering from post-holiday blues. While there's a lot in Incoboto already, there's a lot to do to make it into a game, let alone polish that game to perfection.

- The movement/interaction/interface is pretty much done.

- I have 'creatures' in the game. They don't do much, but they are flammable. Believe it or not, that's important.

- The physics has been re-vamped yet again. It's now a very peculiar hybrid of verlet integrations and rigid body physics. From a consumer's point of view, this simply means: "I can make windmills you can stand on, turn by hand, chuck rocks at and so on, and it all reacts correctly." Yay! Seeing as my background isn't particularly academic or technical, that's a big deal to me.

So - why the delay?

The problem is that I've a huge feature set, but no actual level demonstrating how this all goes together. As such, I need to make a big choice. Generative, or edited content.

This isn't a game where you 'make stuff yourself', leaving all that lovely creation to the user. My 'meaningful' content has to come from somewhere. I'm loathed to spend another month and a half creating an editor, but the sheer wall of work that is required to generate the content in a non-game-breaking way is really quite scary.

At the moment I'm taking time to think and finish off a few technical bits and bobs that'll lead to a smoother, more polished experience (getting planetary atmospheres and stargates rendering quickly, for example).

Once this is done, I have to face the 'wall'.

As such, I'll post more screenies next time around when there's a game to show rather than a bucket of disparate features. Thanks for your patience.

Now if I can only stop myself playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 multiplayer...