The Rusty Rocket

Initially the original idea was to try and repurpose the old, abandoned telephone boxes that are peppered around the city of Salisbury, turning them into broadcasting booths for pirate radio. I even came up with a way to turn neighbouring telephone boxes into relay stations to boost the signal from the transmitting booth. The boxes I had my eye on to start with were the ones situated in the centre opposite Tescos. After seeing how other towns and cities are repurposing theirs (I've seen some converted into shops and phone repair places, as well as your usual defibrillator station and libraries) I soon learnt that BT run an 'Adopt a Kiosk' scheme but my idea doesn't qualify for obvious law-breaking reasons. Shame, the idea was rather a good one, I was even sent an Ad Space Hack Pack that opens up advertising holders and frames to help promote the project. Not one to give up on an idea, and to make the project more desirable in the eyes of the law, I studied and passed my

Radio has always been an interest of mine from a young age and it's probably the main reason why so many radio related projects feature on this blog. As we all have time on our hands at the moment, I decided to put the time to good use and study for my amateur radio Foundation licence. Not knowing where to start, I turned to Google and quickly found the Essex Ham group who offer a free training course. I signed up with them and even joined them on a couple of their live Q&A sessions. Now Essex Ham are a really interesting group, have you ever met someone who is just genuinely so nice and helpful? Well, that describes this group, they are simply marvellous and give up their free time to help promote the hobby and tutor people who want to learn.  Due to the pandemic, the Foundation exam consists of only the theory exam as the practical element (that would normally take place at a group club meeting) can't be carried out but I still found that studying for the theory alone wa

I've been working on the artwork for the game and looking at how best to do free up more screen space. The labels displaying the water tank and population variable values have been replaced with two simple meters that run alongside the board. There are a great many positives coming out of this rewrite. As I mentioned previously I find it rather relaxing just to switch off and build with the random tiles that are present to me. As I now have an engine that when I pass in the assets it will produce a simple builder game. This will make it really easy for me to make little spin-off construction games in the future. The rewriting of this game features on my latest podcast Finding Space . Put the kettle on, grab a biscuit and have a listen by clicking on the below.

The great rewrite ! The decision to rewrite the game has allowed me to plan the structure better as I'm able to cherry pick everything that was good in version 1 and better plan in this version. The rewrite has also resulted in a better project plan. For this update I am planning on concentrating on the following: IKEA aesthetics Tile delivery system Wiping the board clean Game save I put together a random selection of shapes with the intention of evolving them into proper buildings later on. Once these were in place a basic tile delivery system was written that presents the player with a single item tile at a time and does this in a random way. I am dreading revisiting the logic I penned in the notebook for this system, it is what broke everything in version 1 and forced this rewrite as a result. Despite it only being a basic prototype, it is strangely satisfying just placing the random shapes onto the board. I have been able to plan a better method of recording each piece placed

There has been quite a lot of progress made on the game. I have invested time in developing the UI as well as bringing in the other buildings into the menu and applying the logic that allows certain buildings to only be placed if particular criteria has been met (see the notebook from previous updates). I have also been experimenting with the style of the game and would like to try and replicate an IKEA style when it comes to drawing out the pieces. It was actually playing a game called Sparvagn that sealed the deal when it came to the IKEA look. This simple train game looks so beautiful. After playing Dorfromanik I wanted to explore the concept of making it turn-based, with the game presenting you with a single item at a time to place on the map. The problem is that the tile delivery has to be logic driven in order to allow the game to continue being played. There is no point in presenting the player with a tile that cannot be played, so to the notebook I went and tried to flesh out

I have a rough concept of the game. Thoughts now turn to the environment and map the player will be playing in. I've played a great many settlement building games lately, for research purposes you understand ;) (Try out  Dorfromanik  by the way) and I think playing the game in an isometric view works really well and is a nice nod to the old world building games that I used to play. I've also been giving some consideration to how the player will journey through the map and have gone for a simple 2x2 grid system to start with, with players unlocking new areas of the map as they progress through the game. I had an idea for the initial cloud harvester the player has access to at the start of the game. This will raise its cloud catcher up into the air before retracting it to decanter the collected moisture. From here on in I am going to use simple place holders as the game evolves to make sure the mechanics are working before investing any real time in building aesthetics. I have tr