Today I got quite a bit of progress done. I added the ability to repair and delete blocks, and added a GUI so that you can actually select different blocks and place them. Every block can be placed, but the special modifyer blocks (faster repair, shield, and power gain) do not function yet. The structure is in place for the functionality, and I am predicting it will be rather easy to implement.

As I am programming this game, I realize that the actual programming part isn’t too bad at all, but what will be difficult is balancing all the variables so it is playable and fun. I have to balance things like the rate of repair, rate of damage, cost, rate of gain, how long weather lasts, how frequently weather comes, how frequently weather is good, etc. As I saw this challenge coming, each of these variables is easily edited.

I’ve also come up with two major design decisions. First, what is considered winning? I could either do “make x amount of money by the end of this series of weather occurances” or “can you last x amount of minutes without going bankrupt”. The second is how often good weather should come. I could do a long period of good weather to “regroup”, a strictly alternating good/bad approach (with different lengths, of course), or a mix of two. I’m open to suggestions, but right now I’m planning on doing the “make x dollars” goal and a mixture of patters, depending on the difficulty.