Excuses and a minor update

I don't know if I explained this before, but as this project has gone on I've had less and less time to work on it, and increasingly complicated tasks to complete.

I work weekdays, leaving me a few hours after to work on the game (if nothing else is in the way, and if I'm not shattered). I see my girlfriend pretty much every weekend, so I don't work on it there.

Compare that to when I started, when I had considerably less responsibilities (no job, no lady).. you can see why I'm so slow to update.

Right, anyway, enough of making excuses. Just wanted to defend myself a little. Now onto the real purpose of this blog - stuff!

I completely rewrote the menu and now there's a basic menu system all sorted. It needs art, but it's functional. I can't do any art until I have a style guide, so that's on the shelf for later.

One (serious) problem involves a concept known as 'delta time'. See, for some reason, in the software I'm using, frame rate directly affects the speed of the game. On my home PC, the game runs at 60FPS smooth, however on my older laptop it's roughly 30. On my laptop, the game runs a 0.5x speed, I'm not talking about lag or stutter, but essentially slow motion.

This is a problem. Older hardware will play the game slower, which is not at all acceptable. Unfortunately, it seems like the program (Game Maker 8.1) doesn't support delta time without external plug-ins. Later version do, but I don't have the later version.

It's an important hurdle to consider.

Anyway, I'm ill, I'm gonna have another strepsil. Later gaters!
- Rob

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