A first look, early alpha demonstration

While it isn't a lot to look at, I figured I'd share a bit on what is to come.

Go ahead and snag the py2exe compiled version of the game from here. Unzip it with 7zip to whatever location you want, then start it with Cinders.exe.

It's not much, but play around in the menus using num pad or arrow keys, and then hop into a new game by going to "New World". Enter whatever you want for name and go to 'Start Game'. Your world will be generated, and 25 chunks of world map will be generated, enough for a 160x160 tile map.

- Navigate the map using the numeric keys or the arrows. Shift increases scrolling speed.
- The 'r' key toggles the rainfall overlay
- The 'b' key toggles the biome overlay
- Pointing at a map tile will show some basic information at the top
- Hitting escape will take you to a menu
- Once you have saved, you can go into the save subdirectory and look there. A png rendering of each layer for each chunk is available there.

That's about it! Really, it's just a demonstration for now. I'm working on the concept for preloading and unloading chunks that aren't needed, but at the moment all chunks are kept in memory. While this shouldn't be a problem in the beginning, a huge game of several hundred chunks will be a pain to load/unload at the same time. Instead, I can do that threaded and load the chunks as they are needed. Saves time and energy, no?

A thought on releasing the source code. I will do so in a near future, and the bitbucket repository will be linked to this blog - every commit I make will be put in a section of its own once I figure out how to communicate with pyroCMS from bitbucket!

You can already see the commits using this link for the RSS feed. No need to wait for me to fix pyroCMS communication

Hope you've enjoyed what little you have seen in this demo - there will be more to come, I promise that. Much more.

I couldn't have done this without the help of you guys, so a big thumbs up to you!

-Tiv