First of all, I want to apologise the lack of any updates in the last few weeks. Thanks to a combination of floods, power problems, moving, helping friends move and, if I'm being completely honest, more than a little procrastination, I have been neglecting this project. But things have settled down now and I should be able to get back on track.
What little progress I've made since my last post has been largely in the research area, particularly in the area of programming. In the vast majority of my past projects, I have been largely concerned with the design, planning and art side of development, while others have taken care of the programming. As such, the technical side of this project will be far more challenging to me than other aspects, and much of my time for the foreseeable future will be devoted to teaching myself how to program.
I've decided that the best way of ensuring I don't get too out of my depth will be to create an initial prototype of the game in Flash, as ActionScript seems to be a pretty easy language to learn. Depending on how the prototype goes, I will then decide whether to continue with the full game in Flash or to transfer it over to another language.
What with magnetism being a core gameplay mechanic, manipulating physics is going to be the most important thing to master. After a bit of searching around I've located a promising-looking physics engine called Box2D, or more specifically the Flash port of it Box2DFlash. I've been playing around with it a little and, while I have no idea how it works and don't expect to until I go back to the very basics and work my way up, it appears to be very slick and powerful and should be more than capable of helping me in this project. It's a free download, so I'd recommend it to anybody who happens to be interested in making a physics-based flash game themselves.
Well, that's pretty much it for now. This time I won't leave you hanging so long.
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