A lot of sun, sea, beaches, seafood and wine, and very little development, as predicted. Still, terrain and player collision are implemented and some communications issues solved. Internet connectivity was somewhere in between extremely poor and none whatsoever, which came in quite handy to improve network behavior. Weighted positions on camera and players turned out to look better than plain dead reckoning, and also package size reduced along with it. Simple user control is introduced, swipes left and right set the ships rudder, and it seems to work fine. Some time was spent browsing for interesting sounds, music, and 2D art. I can’t wait to start making things prettier and more fancy. Currently all effort is going to completely moving all Redis operations to server-side, due a) security, b) performance and c) elegance. Up next would be cannon fire action and city docking, which then would be a good time to implement persistence.
To be honest, still no clue of actual game play and game goals, if any specific… I suppose something to do with gold plundered, reputation earned, ships owned, towns visited, achievements unlocked, national pride boosted, guilds formed and teaming up with friends from OpenFeint. No clue. Towns could also be owned I guess, maybe king-of-the-hill style. Technically, also created and destroyed, as well as terrain itself. Probably a bit too much. I could still use a small army of developers, 2d and 3d artists, and at least one marketing drone. :)