First off, to justify the WHY of this writing:
- I needed to start a project to fuel my desire to learn and experiment new technology.
- A game related project would be more fun, though I am going to try my best to employ enterprise related practice and terminalogy into it (This could act as a demo as well if I am to look for a non-game related job).
- I want to start a development journal on the project as well, to document and discuss the various technology used.
- A personal blog site could be easily set up, but it would not have the traffic gamedev current has (not that traffic == good, but more traffic might mean more constructive comments).
Next, for a brief description of the project.
No, AV does not mean adult video, you dirty minded eechi hentai. It's a code name! And no I'm not saying what it is yet!
It will be an online game (notice the omission of multiplayer) using the web browser as the front end. In a vague overview the game would probably feature the player recruit, train and send bands of units on missions (Shameless plug for www.lordsofmidnight.com , which influenced the game idea to some extent, though i MUST stress that the original idea existed before I knew of it), unlock areas, etc. I do have a mind map of all the game features I would like in it, but I'll refrain from revealing it because the primary purpose of this project is still technology first, game second, and posting the game feature list might lead to discussions on the game play instead of the technology.
Note, if you do intend to make a game, please, do not do it this way. Get a comprehensive Game Design Document up first before you start development.
The choice of a web browser is primarily to experiment with Atlas, Microsoft's Ajax solution (in a way, some might argue it's more than just Ajax). On a later phrase, window clients might be developed which connects to the web services exposed from the server, but that's unconfirmed (and even if I do that, it might be using avalon, xaml, browser control, or whatever's interesting at that time). A main game world application might be running constantly, and highly likely as a window service (I might justify that when I get to develop it). Remoting would be used to talk between the web application and the game world application, and Indigo/Windows Communication Foundation could be used for that task as well. Database software have not been decided yet. I would need to check up on the licensing scheme of SQLExpress. The Web server would be IIS, using ASP.Net 2.0 (please, do not even suggest mono on apache).
The time might be long between posts, depending on how busy I am, and what new design decisions/technology discoveries I made.
