The Challenge

Before I started working on this project, my first step was to identify the challenges I was going to be facing. I'm fairly familiar with the process of making games, so I felt my biggest issues were going to arise from the areas I'm not familiar with, or somewhat less familiar with.

Indexed colour palettes:

My intent is to create a game with VGA graphics - 256 colours at 320x200 resolution. While I'm familiar with working with smaller palettes, I've never worked with a strict, indexed palette before. Figuring out how to work with these is going to be one of the major challenges of setting up the initial game.

Unfamiliar scripting language:

While the language I will be using is somewhat known to me, the version I will be using is a much older variant than I started with, and much of the coding structure has since changed quite drastically. The manual is also a plain text file, which makes finding things a little trickier. I also have no idea exactly what can be done in this version of the engine, and I'm expecting that a lot of the things I take for granted may be more limited or not accessible at all in this version.

Limitations of the systems:

Building a project on an older machine presents a few limitations that haven't been a problem for some time. Working in DOS means I can't quickly change between windows to check things, meaning I have to make notes by hand. Working with 3.5" floppy disks as a transfer medium means backing up multiple versions is less convenient, and that game file size is a real consideration.

My plan to counter these issues is to work step by step, to work carefully through one issue at a time, to take notes and do research and to ask for help with any issues that I can't figure out easily myself. Half the challenge of this project will be learning how to make the game, the other half will be making the game itself. I'll be documenting as many of these challenges as I can, and perhaps if anybody else decides to undertake a similar project at some point then this can be helpful to them.