Welcome to the Garbage Tycoon work-in-progress page. I plan to update this page weekly with updates on my progress programming Garbage Tycoon.
Garbage Tycoon is a simulation game, much like RollerCoaster Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, etc. As the owner of a waste management company, it is your job to secure contracts with the town to pick up garbage. The goal of the game is to be the #1 waste management company for the town. Meet this goal by lowering costs to consumers, researching alternatives to traditional garbage collecting, and providing excellent service.
8/25/01 New demo with Lawnmower
Girls and Dog-Trucks
8/23/01b The major backer fixed the truck-on-the-road bug. Major
backer also thought trucks looked like small dogs.
8/23/01a Disaster! My monitor crackled and died just as I was
going to give a demo to a major backer! Luckily we found another,
albeit lesser, monitor in the garage, which I am currently using.
Well, here comes that flat screen I always wanted....
8/23/01 Implemented Truck Sprite, but the trucks don't always
seem to stay on the road
8/21/01a If this game were called Lawnmower Tycoon, I'd be about
finished (heh)
8/21/01 Lawnmower girl is now a little more intellegent about
where she mows the grass. Instead of just going back and forth,
when she hits a wall, she checks up and down to see which row
needs mowing more, and moves in that direction.
8/14/01b Grass grows more randomly
8/14/01a Lawnmower girl now only mows the grass (instead
of the roads, houses, flowers, etc.), which means she stays in
her patch of grass.
8/14/01 Lawnmower girl now moves in both directions (she reverses
when she hits the end of the screen)
8/11/01 Published an online demo
of my progress so far.
8/9/01 Implemented my first sprite! The lawnmower girl now mows
the grass.
8/4/01 Java crashes my computer. Installed new Windows service
pack, installed new Java IDE, Java still unstable
7/24/01a Added a game loop. Now the grass grows! I am getting
a frame rate of about 17 fps.
7/24/01 Added a sprite class
7/22/01b Optimized loading images with a hash table. Now images
will only be loaded once
7/22/01a Added trees (apple trees, to be precise), uncut grass,
and a lawnmower (check it out!)
7/22/01 Created the decoration class, replacing all non-changing
map tiles. Previously, I had individual classes for road tiles,
grass tiles, etc. Now, there is a single class, Decoration, that
reads in a file name and draws that image. This makes it much
easier to add new graphics.
7/21/01 Uploaded most recent map
(now with flowers and houses!)
7/19/01 Created first map, and added ability to use map to draw
specific tiles to the screen
7/5/01 Created first tiles: Grass and Road
6/28/01 Start working on Garbage Tycoon!
Get Java to work consistantly with my system (disabling SETI@Home
seems to help a lot)
Get a new monitor
Give sprites some dimension (this will be another fix to the truck-in-the-road
bug)
Scrolling around the map window
Create a road map for the trucks to follow
Simple truck AI (way-points for the truck to go to, so it will
at least look like it's doing work)
More graphics, different houses, trucks, grass, etc.
Raise Lawnmower Girl's IQ, so she can intellegently mow the grass
(as intellegently as anyone can, that is)
Collision detection for sprites (trucks and lawnmower girls pass
through each other effortlessly, very much unlike real life)
Waste management research (go to Europe to see how other nations
handle garbage collection)
