I should have obligations to attend to today--thaaaaat's not happening; I'm REALLY not up for any of them today.
Which I know will cost me big time in the long-run, but when I say I'm not up for them.
I'm just.
Not up for them.
Anything I'd do out of a sense of obligation, even if said obligation was purely to my own selfishness, I'm not up for today; the only things I'm up for today are things that I'd WANT to do.
So sure, if an obligation becomes something I want to do, I'll do it, but chances are that won't happen and instead I'll be doing other things. Like spend time with my girlfriend, or work on my civ 3 mod. (More on that in a sec.)
I did want to mention that I revisited an old idea for a game I had; a tower defense game taking a few mechanics from my favorite tower defense games (notably, Defender's Quest and Gemcraft)...but giving my own very specific spin on things that make my game innately unique and original--while it is a tower defense game, what it is also is a Time Management game (and resource management); the whole idea behind the game is that it is literally impossible to win a level unless you are using your time to min-max your defenses.
I developed a whole bunch of really neat, mostly-original mechanics, albeit ones which rather a number have obvious inspirations, and some of them are brand new to today while others have been with the idea for as long as I've had it. (And this idea is like...five, eight, years old. Somewhere in that range; it is not at all a new one. Quite often, I'll come back and revisit/revise/revitalize old ideas I've not thought about in years, and this was one such occasion.)
The main thing I did today, however, was create the plot for the game. I had an idea for the first level of the game before--and that was it. Originally, I think I had the idea that after the first level, things would continue a specific way. I decided that there'd be a better route to take, one which is entirely all the more genius with the levels and intricacy of what I build.
The mechanics mesh beautifully with the lore I established, and the plot is coherent featuring quite the cast of characters. I love the game idea, it's probably my second-favorite tower defense game I've ever designed (the favorite being a game which was blatantly self-plagiarizing from Disease, one of my pet novels...which I liked so much that Disease stole a central mechanic idea from the game, plagiarizing from the plagiarizing to be reintegrated with the original source material, but I digress).
Would be fully doable, too, if I could program in, oh, say, Flash, and could create the art assets I'd need and whatnot. Since I can't, it'll remain a fantasy in my head, though. I could technically share details on it...but this is an idea so good, I don't want to.
Yes I know, that means that I'll probably forget the genius ideas I came up with, both today and originally. (Heck I'm pretty sure I only remember about 80% of the originally planned game mechanics.) But this is one idea where I can play it out in my mind and I quite like doing so. The only incentive I'd have to bring it outside of my head is if I could actually make it reality--without a programmer volunteering and without a pixel artist volunteering (they'd also need to make faces for portraits that aren't pixels even though the art aside from portraits is pixels), it's not happening.
And since nobody reads my blog pretty much, and the few who do are so busy/swamped with real life they'd never have the commitment/free time to help me make it even if they had the appropriate skills...there's no way it's going to happen.
Alas.
What might happen, however, is my Across the Ages scenario.
I have documented (I rediscovered my actual workaround--a pray to whatever relevant gods are involved, where I copy everything, close ALL word files, keep the clipboard, reopen word, and paste it) every building and unit that, as of this moment, I can think of that'd be included. (At least, I think. I'll at some point need to double-check, but I think I'm good.)
Not the details for them.
Heck I don't have all the possible details that need to be documented for them listed at the top of them.
But I've more or less indexed them alphabetically.
What I need to do still is more or less, then, the following:
-I need to see which scenarios feature what governments. Some I know are Vanilla-only; some I know are one-scenario-only (e.g. Protestant Monarchy); the others, I need to form comparisons and see if I can potentially find compromises.
(I want each and every government to provide a distinct advantage, and for there to be no clear superior government. However, I do want slight favoritism to Imperialism as a cross-ages government, with its main rival in ancient times as the Tribal Council, Feudalism providing some viable alternative, Democracy providing a second alternative, and Fascism plus Communism being lategame rivals to it.)
-I need to group technologies together by type. What technologies make sense as working together in a progression.
-I need to also calculate how many techs I can fit in the science tree.
-I need to do the thing I just mentioned I haven't done--get all the possible details that needed to be documented, at the top of them.
-Eventually, but not right now because that'd take insanely long, I need to get said details from each and every scenario, including a vanilla civ 3 conquests game.
-I need to finish my terrain-tile-by-terrain-tile documentation of Mesopotamia, then do it for Rise, Middle Ages, Napoleon, and some of Discovery. (Top northeast corner of map.)
-I need to find the map of the world and document where the modern resources are on it, in the relevant areas.
-Not an immediate task since I need to do some of the other things below first, but: I need to document where there's resource shortages, beit luxury or strategic, and when they're present, see if I can fix it.
-I need to create a map overlay of Rise of Rome, The Middle Ages, Napoleon, and the northeast section of Age of Discovery. (This is something incredibly useful, but it is also quite challenging and rather meticulous to make. Mesopotamia was a 5800 x 2800 pixel file. Which, yes, was as huge as you'd expect, at 21 MB.)
-I need to download an art program with layers.
-I need to use said art program to manipulate the overlays such that key points common on them overlap, hitting as many key points as is possible.
I'll only be able to use two overlays at a time--but that's all I'll need, in order to get the job done. Because what these overlays are meant to accomplish is to establish exact parameters for my map (which for now I'm having as 200 x 200, hoping that's about right--but I'll be making said overlays before I'll be trying to make the map for real).
-I'll also need to document the location of cities in Age of Discovery, Napoleonic Era, The Middle Ages, Fall of Rome, and Rise of Rome, to try and get as many non-mutually-exclusive ones set up.
-Then comes the other stuff I mentioned last time.
Figuring out how to get created scenarios to track scores.
Wonder interaction fixes.
Resource display in cities.
Music from all scenarios, separated into appropriate ages.
Civ contacts being what I want.
Also stuff on the map that I know how to do more or less (cities, fog of war), just need to do them.
I'm making progress, though--quite a bit, in fact!
I just need to put the work in, bit by slow bit.
It's coming together quite nicely, if I do say so myself.