Sequel: what would you like?

[TroyHepfner]

Hi Ajuk999,

Good question, thanks for asking! Having vehicles in the sequel is a strong possibility. I would really like to do this. We're investigating several options to see what might be possible and relatively easy to implement, without having to build a whole new engine for the driving portion of the game.

At this point, I'm leaning toward something similar to Archibald's Adventures or the old 2D side-scrolling Duke Nukem games, where Dirk would hop into a vehicle but the game would stay in the 2D side-scrolling mode and not switch to a special driving mode. The main issue I'm trying to deal with is speed - when Dirk is in a vehicle he should probably be able to move faster, but I can't speed him up too much or you can't see far enough ahead to avoid obstacles.

So I'm still in the experimental stage, and haven't really decided on how it is going to work yet. But stay tuned!

[surfingpenguin]

I had an idea yesterday. How about a level editor, so we can make our own levels for the game?

[TroyHepfner]

I've thought about that. But I think it would be a lot of work to build one. So it probably won't make it into Dirk 2.

[surfingpenguin]

Yeah, that's what I figured. Still, it would be great to have a level editor. Have you thought about maybe open sourcing your code? That way other developers could build one.

[TroyHepfner]

I've thought about that, too, over the years.

The problem is that it isn't a simple matter of just zipping up the source code. In a nutshell, I reuse the same core engine for all of my games, so I am always making changes and improvements. So I would need to setup some sort of project management system for the official code base, and I would need to review other developers' changes before merging them into the official baseline. Plus, I'm sure developers would have questions about the source code and how it works. All this could potentially take up a lot of my time, and I would rather be writing new games.

Maybe some day...

[surfingpenguin]

I see. Thanks for considering it, at least.