Week 4: Samurai

24 January, 2012

Three weeks down, and we're recovering from the epic week of activity for getting Ideastrike off the ground and demanding @jongalloway bake us a cake (unsuccessfully, sadly) - and the Jabbr room continues to grow in size.

So what's up for this week?

Codename: Samurai

Yes, we're making a game.

We have a rough idea of the mechanics of the game (its being discussed on the wiki), but haven't settled on a theme or visuals yet. But we have settled upon creating a turned-based combat game with multiplayer support.

What are we actually building?

After much discussion about technology choices (and I'm fairly certain some blood was spilled - impressive for an online discussion) we came to agreement on two things:

• licensing and cross-platform experience is a bit of a minefield currently.
• focusing on the server logic and gameplay mechanics initially will provide opportunities for others to write clients for their favourite platforms.

So for this week we're focusing on the server component and a client written using XNA. Not your favourite choice? We'll have a Trello board setup over the next couple of days with a better roadmap on future projects - so now's the chance to suggest a platform on our Uservoice site that you'd like to contribute to in the future.

Still have complaints? Please forward them to your local representative - if you weren't in the JabbR chatroom over the past 3-4 days we discussed the topic, you missed a hell of a debate.

How can I get involved?

The initial code is currently being fleshed out as I write this on GitHub (Samurai is the codename for the project, because Brendan is a sucker for a good random name generator). The Trello board is being cultivated to define the tasks necessary to hit the ground running.

This post may be a bit brief, but that's because so much is in flux currently and people's creative juices are just starting to flow.

Want to see it evolve? Hang out in the chatroom at JabbR and join in on the fun!

-- Code52 team