Well I thought in keeping with the concept of half decent development I thought I would put up a small time-line and plan
Basic Concept :
Try to implement a 'herding' game. Rules should be very simple,
* Goal is to herd a large number of sheep into a pen
* Player interacts by giving commands to helpers (sheepdogs)
* Time is constrained
Timeline :
5th October
* 'Low-level' DirectX code governing device input and window to be completed.
* Basic prototype of the sheep flocking mechanism probably in Matlab, some kind of 'cellular automata'
* Full specification of rules of play
31 October
* Complete and tested sheep flocking mechanism, with good performance for up to 5000 sheep
* Prototyped 2D interface and 2D graphics
* Prototyped sheepdog AI, prototyped sheepdog command system
31 November
* Completed and tested 2D interface
* Completed and tested sheepdog AI and command system
Optional tasks
3D graphics, higher performance flocking and/or AI to scale the play to larger than 10,000 sheep and more sheepdogs