Thursday, June 17, 2004

New Beginnings

I used to have a blog on deadjournal, but I've abandoned it due to the annoying and outdated nature of its content. Now I start with new beginnings, a blank slate which can hold good and evil, but never pure; only a mix. I go into this new realm with open eyes and no inflexible preconceptions.
Let me tell you about myself. I am a high school student, attending a widely unknown small public secondary education institution in the northeastern United States. My main forte is computer science, which I pulled a 104% average in for this past year. The scholastic version of computer science, however, bores me to a great extent. I have been programming since the sixth grade, and hacking hardware since before then. Recently, I have written learning algorithms, built a robot and a wearable computer, and done various other technical projects on my own. Last summer I worked on a continuation and rewrite of an operating system project I was working on the year before. Most of my projects fail, but mainly because I have small resources (human and material/monetary) and I try to switch between projects in order to complete others while I wait on circumstances to be right to finish the ones at hand. This leads to problems, as people think I'm quitting projects when I'm simply putting them on hold. I find that holding projects helps not only in time management but also in keeping perspective: if I start on a project that is ill-concieved or ill-planned, when I put it on hold and come back to it, I realize (respectively) that it's idiotic or what I was doing wrong. But enough about that.
This brings me to my current project. This project, and others, are the purpose of this blog: to record and share the journey of a project from start to finish or from pick up to leave off. This project, which is in fact a continuation of a previous project, is this: a game. An MMORPG, or online RPG, so massive and so immersive that people wouldn't view playing the game as a second life as distainful or disgusting, but as a perfectly applicable and acceptable choice. I want to have not just a city, not just a planet, but a universe with multiple solar systems, in which you can land on any planet and live out life. Not only that, but I want the ability to do nearly everything possible in real life, in a realistic manner. I want thousands of people on there, working, playing, or just living out their virtual lives. I want companies to base virtual businesses selling real merchandise, much like the online stores that exist today. But these are all long term goals, distant hopes so lofty that they may never be achieved. The short term goals are much simpler. The game will be cross-platform, and in three dimensions, with a client-server architecture. The client simply acts as a streaming video display and a socket-based command/data input. All objects in the game universe will be tcl scripts with code telling how to draw the object in 3d space and how to interact with other objects. Not only are the possessions, the metaphorical furniture of the game, objects, but also the avatars. One may code their own avatar, or choose pieces from an existing database of avatar parts, possibly modifying them.
Currently, I have a few people on my team. First is my friend Jon. He is the originator of the game's idea, and although he doesn't code, he is hosting not only the game server but all the developers in his house. Next is Mark. He was my best friend throughout junior high, and during that time I bet him (an insignificant amount of money) that I could make him into a hacker in two months. He agreed to the bet, and being honorable as is his nature, he followed the curriculum I gave him to a tee. He learned how to program in one and a half months, and gave me the money I won, but I didn't accept it. He is now hired as the object coder, and he needs to learn Tcl. After that is Doug. Hyper and peppy, this freshman (becoming a sophomore next week) is very smart but rather annoying. He is a good coder, though, and what he lacks in experience he makes up in sage-like knowlege and immense studying and information retention ability. He is coding parts of the server and debugging all the c++ code. The head developer is me, and I will be coding the brunt of the server (I already wrote the backbone of the engine code), all of the original version of the client (which I have nearly finished), and some objects. I am also doing all the design work (whitepapers, flowcharting, original algorithm ideas, etc). As for the possibles, there is Kraig, a long-time friend and fellow computer science student, and Rod, a friend from the internet and moderator at Elitehackers.com. Kraig is going to be helping with a little bit of everything, but he has a busy schedule and he needs some more practice with c++ before he can master it. Rod knows c, and if he joins the project he will be learning tcl and working on objects.
When the game is finally playable, the administrators will be Jon and me, although we need one more administrator to fill the third piece of the underlying storyline, only semi-present in the game. The storyline is a residue from Jon's writing career, and is reflected in other games and stories that I worked on with his help. The idea is that of a sort of deranged trinity: There is Selena, the mother and creator. That is my part. Next is Kiro, gaurdian of light and justice, the son of Selena and the person who helps people using his great powers. That is Jon's part. Third is Naraku, the destroyer, gaurdian of darkness and carnage. We are still looking for someone to play that part, but we may just replace him with a script.
If anyone who reads this would like to beta-test, or who would like to help with the game in any way, please post and tell me why you'd like to join the project and what you'd like to do.
Until next time,
~Unknown

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