I would like to write all about my weekend and how intense it was, and how it's funny that I'm describing it as intense since if you were watching me you would've been really bored because I pretty much sat on the couch with my computer and didn't move much, even to go get food, because I was so into finishing up the first public beta of D5.2 (and now that it's up and everyone's so into it, making stuff in default-land), but my fingers are cold and unresponsive and it is hard for me to type this way. So I will keep it short.
Strangely enough, no memorable dreams.
Thursday night:
- Worked on web interface to sign into D5.2
- Watched Anchorman with the Bens. It was funny.
Friday night:
- Got D5.2 working on dianneandpaul.net
- Short ben checked it out, he was the only other housemate not off at work or in Madison or anything.
- Went to Dick's with Scuba.
- Came back, Ben said Fizz had gone for an adventure in his car with a guitar. I ran to the rugby field to find him. Only saw a car that looked sort of like his but I didn't recognise the bumper stickers. Came back to find Fizz I think. No, I think I came back first and he was back later. Anyway, he asked me if I had run by the rigby field because he saw me. Such an oppurtunity for an awesome rendezvous wasted because I didn't realize that was his car after all! :(
- Suddenly I have 3 people, not including myself, hooked on D5 :D
Today (and by today I actually mean Saturday):
- Mostly played D5 or watched Fizz play it
- Walked to Dick's with Fizz and bought rice
- Watched Kingdom of Heaven at Scuba's house which was awesome because Orlando Bloom is a total hottie! (Just kidding. I don't know why he's so great. His facial expression didn't change much).
Time has been going by very strangely for me. First, I totally lost 2 days working on D5. I mean I got lots done, but it went from getting back from classes Thursday to 9:00 Friday morning (and me being really tired) like nothing. I was very surprised to see that it was 9:00 in the morning. And now it's still only Sunday morning and I feel like we've been playing D5 for a week. Hooray for 3-day weekends!
I have to get up by noon tomorrow to do tutoring.
(as sent to the sourceforge project approval board)
D5.2 is a web-based game in which players explore an infinite procedurally generated world. Players can claim sections of the map and build on them (tunneling through mountains, building bridges, making gardens are most common activities at this point).
The basic architecture of the game is very open, similar to the intar-web: The client program (a java applet, for now) reads data (rooms, tile palettes, sprites, and room generators) from a shared filesystem (any URL scheme supported by Java is supported for reading data, HTTP is supported for writing, as will a local filesystem in the future). The player travels between rooms much as web users browse web pages - rooms are connected to others by links which normally point to 'spatially adjacent' rooms, but could also point to any other room, potentially even on a different web server (though running as a java applet prevents this ability, it is not inherent in the architecture of the game). Because of this architecture, it is really a single player game, though one where many people contribute to the environment. Mutliplayer features, such as allowing direct interaction with other players (not just rooms they have built) may be added in the future.
This game, for me, is a reaction against strategy games such as age of empires where building up a city tends to result either in its destruction, or its disappearing at the end of the game. While building in D5.2, players don't need to worry about their creations disappearing, and so can feel free to put more time and effort into making an interesting world. Current users have described it as 'addictive in a strange, new way' and 'goddammit i need to do my diffeq homework but this is so much fun' :)