The map border is done! I guess I’ll move to creating the tree and rock lines that make up the inside borders of the map. I must say that this is a grind.

I got a little over half the border populated with collision polygons to actually block the player from going off the edge of the map. I’m a little concerned about the number of scene objects I had to create to make the border. Since the collision polygons need to be convex, I couldn’t just make a border that followed the tree or rock line. If performance becomes an issue, I may have to simplify the border.

My daughter asked me to lie down next to her so she could go to sleep. That turned into me going to sleep. Just have to do some work now.

The Eastern water border is complete. It was way more time consuming than either tree border, but it was easier and looks better than the rock border. Next thing is to setup the collision rectangles so the borders actual prevent the players from crossing.

I got the Northern border done while waiting to pickup a pizza. Couldn’t have done it without those trees. Tomorrow is water day!

So I lined the Southern map border with trees. Much easier than rocks. I just arranged about 9 or 10 of them then did a copy and paste, and moved them over a little and did some minor tweaking. I then did a copy and paste from the middle of the cluster I had just created and so on. I’m really happy with the outcome. Much more natural than the rock border.

Tomorrow I hope to knock out the Northern map border with some pine trees. Then I’ll try my hand at using water for the Eastern border.

Took a break to take my daughter golfing. We had a great time. She hit some great shots and I was pretty horrible. Oh well, God has blessed me with opportunity to enjoy golf with my daughter. Who am I to complain?

Tomorrow I’ll be helping my wife with her confirmation class reading and I’ll also do part of the Southern border of the map.

Well, I got the Western border back up. It’s both better and worse than the original. I’m still fatigued, so that didn’t help, but I had a better idea of what I wanted to accomplish. Can I live with it … maybe. I’ll probably tweak it as I go along which is fine with me. Everything is an iteration.

Well, I thought I had finished the Western edge of the map. Turns out that when you edit in TGB and then quit, your changes aren’t saved. It doesn’t even warn you that you will lose any changes since your last save. What fooled me was that I had always play tested my level which does auto-save. I guess I didn’t play test and so I lost the entire Western border I will file this as a bug with GarageGames. I know you’re supposed to save often (I’ve been doing this stuff forever), but I got fooled by the play test auto-save.

I’m also wiped out from watching the girls all weekend. I’ll start back up with a fresh mind set Tomorrow. Either the border will be better next time because of what I’ve learned, or it will be worse because I’m just trying to just get it done when I know I did it already. If I try to start tonight I almost guarantee the later.

I didn’t think I’d get anything on the game done today, but the baby got up a 6 AM, took a bottle and went down for another 3 hours. And since my eldest wasn’t up either, I decided to lay down some more rocks. I actually got the whole western edge of the map finished! It really is amazing how just thinking about something really puts it into action. Of course this is a two-edged sword. If you’re not thinking about the right stuff, you can get off the track you’re supposed to be on. I think that’s why it’s been important for me to really focus on daily reading through “Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions — A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord”. Without that focus, I think the game would be taking away from what I really hope to be doing and that is glorifying God.