Planning

(9:00 – 9:30)

A bit late of a start today, but I think 15 hours should be enough to finish the game for today. The game that I have chosen for today is a game that I have never actually played though have read about a couple of times. It is called shut the box. Apparently, you can find special Shut the Box boxes that have a box with 9 slots numbered 1 through 9 on them. I have never seen one of these.

The goal of the game is to get the lowest score possible. Your score is the total of all the open boxes. The game is played by rolling a pair of dice, though if boxes 7, 8, and 9 are shut the player has the option of rolling a single die. The dice are added. The player has the option of closing the box with the number rolled or closing two boxes that add up to the number rolled. For instance, if the player rolled a 7 then they could close the 7 box, the 1 and 6 boxes, the 2 and 5 boxes or the 3 and 4 boxes.

Players keep rolling until they are no longer able to cover boxes at which point the open boxes are added together to form their score.

Today I am going to try something a bit different that should hopefully make the development of the game smoother. Instead of having pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release candidate, and final labels, I am going to break the development into more logical game dependent milestones. For today's game, my first goal is to create a flex version of generic dice. This should be quick to do as it is the hearts dice class but made more generic. The second task is the game box, which will be broken into two separate milestones. The first is the layout of the box (with some testing to make sure the slots can be shut) and the second is the functional single player game. The fourth milestone is the game player selection screen as I don't want to require 6 players. This code will be used in the remaining four games as well so I may take some extra time making sure it works well. Finally, we have the finished game.