Project Updates - 10/7/23
It seems like every time I make progress on something and put it out there for people to see, my motivation to continue just tanks and I forget to work on it for a while π (Plus day job stress and other general life things working against me too lol) That said! I have been doing a bit of rework on my libtcob tutorials following some good feedback from the r/roguelikedev Sharing Saturday thread I posted in a few months ago. I worked on getting the project to build using vcpkg on Linux and Windows, which actually wasn't too difficult to get set up. Originally I wanted to stay away from using package managers and really any other libraries and things besides what was absolutely necessary for getting the tutorials up and running, but my system wasn't exactly the most straightforward either, so I think the vcpkg solution works. I also updated the code to use the newer libtcod system of contexts for rendering, which was also fairly simple to implement. Now I just need to rework the tutorial text, hopefully I can find time to work on that this weekend!
Additionally, I messed around some with Ogre3D the last couple days and got a minimal setup running to evaluate using it for OpenHomeworld. Initially I thought about using a more bare-bones setup and building it out from scratch for a more bespoke engine using something like raylib, but I think getting something running first with a robust and full-featured library like Ogre is probably a better way to go about things. If I can keep the code modular enough, I can always go back and start replacing the Ogre code if needed, but I think that Ogre will end up being the main rendering framework that the project will use anyway. No need to reinvent the wheel and all.
Speaking of bespoke systems and raylib, I am tinkering around with a little project that's been in my mind for a little while, a little RPG project based on some mostly obscure JRPGs. At this point I'm not sure if I want to take the time building a full game engine from scratch or if I should learn Godot instead. Maybe I can do a small scale implementation in libtcod even, and then port some of it to Godot. Lots of options here, but mostly still in the basic design stage.
All in all, I have a lot of ideas for things and finally have energy and motivation to try to work on them! :) It's an exciting time, and I hope that I can continue to make updates like these, too!
