…A game programmer programs games, even if he’s not being paid to do it.

If you recall, I promised to put Planitia on the shelf a while back and post it and the source. “So where is it?” you may ask. “Why are you breaking your promises to us yet again?”

Well…because I just can’t let it go. I feel that I’m about halfway through the second 90%…and the game has so much potential that I can’t release it in its current state without wasting all that potential. I feel I have an obligation to potential players to make the software worth starting up.

But I’m not going to hold it back until I think it’s “done”, so here’s a new version!

What’s new in this version:

• A tutorial! Everybody complains about the speed of the text; half say it’s too fast and the other half say it’s too slow. I’ll be putting in a “Next” prompt, but at least it exists now and should help people understand what the game is about.

• The Flamestrike god power is now implemented and has an animation.

• Changed the in-world hit marker. It’s still programmer art, but it’s much nicer programmer art.

• Fixed the AI so that it can at least improve its own land again (for some reason, the AI got horribly broken when I put in the multiplayer).

• Optimized my loading code so that the game now loads in about half the time.

What’s left:

• Finish the AI so that there is actually a single-player aspect to the game.

• Do some tweaks to the tutorial.

• Add LOTS more sounds.

• Add a bunch of UI stuff (for instance, right now, if you accidentally click Multiplayer when you didn’t want it, you have to exit the game).

• Allow the player to switch to fullscreen.

I’m hoping to have it all done…soon.