DwarvesH Development has started

Greetings!

And welcome to my new blog.

I will be using this blog as a development tracking tool for my new project, DwarvesH. The name is probably not going to stick.

I have a small problem: after starting a project, once all the fun and challenge of developing it is gone, so is my motivation of finishing it. I have dozens of projects which will never ever be finished. So this is one of the reasons for this blog, besides documenting the progress of the development: to keep me motivated.

DwarvesH is the direct started from scratch sequel to one of my previous projects, which was a browser based MMO game. My original idea was IMO good, but it lacked longevity and I’m allergic to long time HTML & CSS & JS exposure. So I’ll try to implement something similar to Dwarf Fortress: a city simulator with rogue like elements tossed in there for good measure. At first the two games will probably be very similar but I would like to give its own vision and mechanics. Maybe even replace the dwarves with something else. Like *shudder* not dwarves.

Anyway, Dwarf Fortress is great. I’m a sucker for these kinds of games. Minecraft also looks like great fun, and I still have multiple versions of ADOM somewhere on the disk (versions I never boot up anymore). So basically I love extremely complex games that offer a sandbox environment for you to explore. These games tend to be so complex that it would be very hard to implement them with modern graphics. But that doesn’t bother me. They also tend to have a very steep learning curve and generally lack on the ease of use department. I’ll make this the primary point of early development: make it as easy to learn and use as possible. Mouse support is also a must. So at first I’ll probably implement stuff exactly as I see it in Dwarf Fortress, but changing the interface a lot.

On important aspect is that this is a personal project. I am coding for myself right now, with no intention to sell anything or release the project under any form. For now. Maybe later I’ll try something. Maybe I’ll release it as freeware. Maybe I’ll charge huge amounts of money and never makes one single dime from it. Maybe I’ll release the source code and make it open source. But right now, I’ll be only developing once in a while and post on this blog about my progress. I would like to thank the developers of Dwarf Fortress, not only for entertaining me, but for giving me the inspiration to try my teeth on something like this. Also, if the developers of Dwarf Fortress feel that my personal little project (that could evolve in any possible direction) makes it harder for them to promote their own work, I'm open for discussion. But I think there is room in the world for more than one city/cave builder with dwarves inside.

As for the tools I’ll be using for developments, I’m thinking something like C++/C#/Flex. I’m not sure yet. I’ll start off with C++ and if I don’t like the direction things go, change to something else. Yes, there is going to be random rewriting of the whole thing. Or less random. Or even justified rewriting. But that is not that fun.

So I’ll leave now saying that this is just a big experiment. I hate writing documentation, but blogging about development is different. I hope I’ll enjoy it.

Maybe someone reads this later and finds something interesting. Maybe you were always curios on how something like this goes. Maybe you have your own little rogue like which you abandoned, or which you only work on once a year.

I’ll post later today the first post about the actual code that I have written (today).