Prototyp
This is the story, so far, of a project that started in the middle of August 2008. Thomas Nilsen and Johan Herstad contacted me in need of a programmer. They had a wonderful idea about an educational game for journalists. They showed me a few somewhat impressing drawings and presented quite a catchy plot. I'm not sure if they knew just what a programmer is able to do on his spare time, but something tells me that the expectations were a little bit high (which is not uncommon).
I started out experimenting with OpenGL, and that of course took me a lot more time than I had expected. It was not before I got a few weeks christmas vecation that I was able to make some kind of game out of it. I think that was just about to slow for Thomas and Johan. Because after I came to them with the first tiny little demo, they showed no interest. Maybe they had expected a flashy 3D environment, mayby they just had found some other more interesting project to fill their spare time with. At least, none of them made any more contact with me after that.
But I could not just leave it at that. The project had already cost me about 100 hours, and it was designed so that both programmers and non-programmers could participate in making the game. In fact, it had become more of a game engine, than just a game. The game content itself could be constructed out of just half-simple xml and image files.
It still is a question if this ever is going to be a 3D engine, but I expect not. But at least I hope that the look of it will improve from what it looks like today. Even though the raw images look like crap, the game should be able to catch the player's interest. Just from the beginning, my intention was that the content itself should be easy to make. That means that the creator of a game doesn't need to be a photographer or a painter.
In the need of simple-to-make animations, a secondary goal emerged. I hope that some day, a simple-to-use editor will enable school teachers to feed more excitement into their classes, by making their own home-made subject related games. Games are extremely powerfull in the mission of creating diversions and excitement, and that should be used more actively in shools. But of course great quality tools are a neccessity for the games to emerge.
Opening up the project
I have to admit that this project is just about a little more than a stupid computer science student can handle on his spare time. That is why I'm opening up this project for anyone to participate. A git repository has already been set up and a complete documentation will make it to the web in something like a month or two. That is when I will start making a lot more fuss about it. An open project does not only have lots of participants, but it also has a lot safer future in front of it. Anyone in the world can help and nobody can ruin the project. At least in theory. Nevertheless, schools and teachers will have an easier time deciding to use the engine in their own classes.
Look out for the documentation in a month or two, and don't hesitate mailing me at fludvigsen@gmail.com to get access to the git repository today already.
