Progress Recap Post #8

This post will be a progress reports of sorts.  Really it will just be a signpost for us to catalog where we are at this point in time but even more so, an overview of how we got here.

Initial Concept: Summer 2013
  - Insane brainstorming about the coolest cross-genre experience ever.

Solid Concept:  Fall 2013
  - An RTS style combat sim in an RPG setting.
  - Main cross-genre components ->
            - Players recruit a "party" (a la RPGs) instead of
              building an army (par usual RTSs).
            - Units are initially NPCs; distinct characters that can
              be equipped, have unique "level" or XP,
              and are found in towns and villages.
            - In game items will be like RPG items
              (they can be scrapped for coin, traded, etc...)
            - A sim environment:  flora and fauna with
              aggressive and passive behaviors.

            - All other game aspects will be taken from the RTS genre.

Leads to:
  - Research on cross-platform gaming options.

 - Side problem *
             - Figure out a UI that makes it so RTSs on a tablet aren't so simplistic.
                i.e.  make the tablet RTS experience closer to the desktop experience.

             - Goal -  achieve 80-90% of the desktop functionality (hotkeys, control groups, etc...)

               (may have a good handle on this problem...  need time to experiment)

Cross-platform Options:     
Browser or Java (or port it to all the platforms!!!   yea right)

  - Java:  A great option.  The main reason we didn't go with this option was
              because of the nature of the 3D engine we wanted to use for it.
              There were several other options for lower-level frameworks that
              we decided to pass on for various reasons that are preferential
              not technical.

              In the end we decided we didn't want users to have to download
              our game.  Browser it is.

  - Javascript:  The option we went with.  Because; WebGL.
                       It just looks so cool. Additionally there is a lot of great
                       documentation out there for Javascript frameworks (I think it's)
                       because it has such a quick iteration time.

Implementation:  CURRENT
                              February 2014 
  Toolset:
  - 3D framework: Three JS
  - (Possible) workflow tools: Yoman, Node.js, Require.js, Backbone.js
  - IDE: Sublime Text 2
  - Development Browser:  Chrome

  - Books:  WebGL Up and Running; Tony Parisi,
                 Pro HTML5 Games; Aditva Ravi Shankar,
                 Learning HTML Game Programming; James L. Williams

  Game Framework:
  - Client-Server model with MVC components

  - Server: Haskell, because it has great concurrency control.  This should
    allow us to farm out the game logic to the host, which will free up the
    client to only work on the graphics.  This is a concern because of Javascript's
    single threaded nature.

 - Client:  Javascript, it's a great way to get our game out to as many people
    as possible AND it gives us a game with which we can test our ideas
    about a better RTS interface for tablets.  Javascript has great touch/swipe
    libraries.

  Tasks at Hand:
  - Finish UI mockup
  - Get textures packed into models for importing
  - Finish custom binary communication protocol (this should save us
    TONS of bandwidth allowing us to really push the amount of data we
     send about gamestate)
  - Complete the initial scene (models loaded and responding to picking events)

  Tasks Completed:
  - Basic models: male, female, weapons, armor, a few buildings and 3 vehicles
  - Worked through Three JS tutorials up through model loading.
     Networking portion will be next
  - Empty logic framework for server


PS:  Here's just another screen shot to show how the models are coming along