Going slow...

Well, the going has been slow. I've been working hard on a shipping provider rewrite for work, and that's sort of sucked the fun out of programming for me lately - especially with the rumors of DHL's demise looming on the horizon. My DHL shipping API integration was my first (and first successful) project with my current job, and to see that 2 months of effort wasted does not help my mood of late.

My plan to write a text adventure game is still brewing. I've been working on story elements - the concept is medieval fantasy, a common staple genre for this sort of game. I'm using the story building as a way to procrastinate, though, and put off building an engine. This sort of thing used to be easy when I was 12 or 13, but every time I start fleshing something out I get mired in objects. Bleh.

Here's the details I've decided upon so far. I will write a text adventure game engine, and the game itself will sit on top of the engine. Where normally I might consider using a database or some sort of configuration DSL, I'm instead going to implement all the rooms, items, npcs, etc., in C# code. This will allow me to implement a great deal of freedom for the player without having to write some sort of scripting language to implement the game in. All the interaction will be handled by the compiled code I write.

So the engine will have things like Room objects, Exit objects, Item objects, NPC objects, etc. The game will implement these things, one for each applicable bit of the game. This sort of thing will allow me, if I so chose, to completely change the rules of the game from room to room. Maybe overkill, but it's the way I want to do it.

So that's what I've been up to. More details later as they develop.