Forgive me, Agnostic-friendly deity, for I have sined.
I’ve made a complete and utter hack in the Box2D engine to workaround the problem I had. See – the problem is – there is an internal counter in the Box2D engine. I have no idea what it’s for and it doesn’t appear to do anything other than count things. If this number goes below 0, it crashes the engine.
So … I shunted in a nice little “if x < x =” 0″>
Anyway, after two weeks of moving almost nowhere I felt the need to violate my code in this way in the name of progress. I’ve spoken with a few folks in the Box2D community; hopefully it’ll be resolved at some point, but I just can’t wait any longer (or figure it out myself. :/)
So here it is – what you’ve been missing – Build 5:
The gameplay hasn’t changed too much but the interface has been given a complete overhaul, mostly thanks to Greg for all the artwork. Some highlights:
- The game is now 16:9 (800×450)
- New art for everything, including awesome-looking animated bits on things (and a very lively title screen!)
- New menu icons that are persistant on the top right for ease of switching between modes
- New level-editing interface with actual easy-to-use icon selection
A lot of other things have changed on the back end, but it’s not fun talking about (or hearing about) that kind of stuff. ;) Some things that are yet to be decided:
- What the player character will look like
- How the player character will control
- What the goal of the game is
But it’s largely there – I kind of mused today that this is a game where you create a Fantastic Contraption and then have a player blow it to smithereens.
