< I N H > | The Engine

This game will now be written in Flash. This was decided because of adaptability, portability and good looks.
I am learning Flash as I go along, which could mean that the project takes a long time to complete.

I had been daunted by the task of writing an engine from scratch, and I thought of using a pre-made one like Adventure Game Studio. Fortunately I went to a seminar-type do last week with a speaker from EA Games. This guy was talking about a load of stuff including a Making Of Harry Potter the game. The video he showed had clips of Harry running around in a White Box, which is a simple room with various obstacles and objects, used for testing the most important aspects of the engine in a controlled environment.
This helped me to realise that I didn't need to worry about not being able to make the character walk around obstacles instead of into them, or not today at least.
If I make the engine in a series of stages, I can build it up, adding more complex bits onto the dead simple core of having an object move across the screen from one place to another. This is the beauty of Flash.

So here is my plan for building my engine:

Add background graphics,
Add a character object,
Add code to move the character to wherever the user clicks,
Add obstacles,
Add code to make the player able to go in front and behind of any obstacles, instead of being on top all the time,
Add a mask to specify where the player is able to walk,
Add code to make this mask work,
Add a mask to specify how far from the camera the player is (their Z coordinates),
Add code to use this mask to adjust the player object's size accordingly,
Add code to detect which way the player is facing or moving, and change the graphic accordingly,
Add code for displaying interactable objects,
Add code for interacting with these objects (the Verb/Object interface),
Add code for picking up items and adding them to the inventory,
Add code for displaying the inventory contents,
Add code for making the player walk round an obstacle instead of trying to go through and stopping (Pathfinding),

This list will grow as I go along, and as people with more bright ideas (you) suggest more cool stuff that has to get done.