game development
Two weekends ago I volunteered at the Texas Independent Game Conference. I had several good conversations with people about what they're working on and what technologies they're using. At the end of the first day, I realized that the time has come for me to end the project I've been working on for almost ten years and start something new. This decision has been due for several years but now I'm ready to let go. I feel sad about it right now, but know that this opens up new opportunities for my energy. On the second day of the conference I was able to be fully present, not judge my work against other developers', and really enjoyed the conference.
I've now officially marked the project as inactive and sent a message to the mailing lists.
I have decided to discontinue my work on the MUGU Project. I started
the project approximately nine and a half years ago with several
goals, and while I met some of my goals years ago, I recently
realized that this project isn't the best way for me to fulfill the
rest.
Ten years ago I was an administrator on a successful cyberpunk MUD,
but was feeling somewhat limited in my creativity by the LPC mudlib
we were working with. I wanted to use graphics to support a more
detailed model of the game world, and at that time there were no
MMORPGs so I felt I was pioneering something new.
One of the major reasons I started this project was to learn the Java
programming language. I had written a few "hello world" programs in
Java, but wanted a practical application to help me learn more. I
quickly learned the syntax of the language, and through this project
was able to learn many parts of the Java API such as networking and
the windowing toolkit. Seven years ago I applied for my first job as
a software developer, and relied heavily on this experience during
interviews. Since that time I continued to explore new Java
technologies through my work on this project, allowing me to stay one
step ahead of the skills I needed professionally.
Another project goal of mine was to build a platform for artificial
intelligence research. Representing the game world as a one-meter
grid rather than as rooms with exits allowed me to work on path-
finding strategies and herding behavior. In addition to movement
intelligence and artificial life, I continue to have an interest in
the opportunities for situated cognition in a virtual environment.
Finally, I've envisioned this project as a way to build community of
developers, world designers, and players. Although the team has
certainly waned in the past few years, at the height of development
we had contributors from Europe and Asia in addition to several
places in the United States. We built internationalization into the
code and translated the client into several languages. So while I
felt successful in creating a temporary community of Open Source game
developers, we never matured to a playable system and therefore did
not build the international community of world designers or players
that I had hoped for.
I recently attended the Texas Independent Game Developers Conference,
where I had the sudden realization that this project isn't the best
way for me to pursue what remains of my original goals. I've been
slowly working along on developing the game framework, but still
haven't gotten to the parts that interest me the most. As a result,
I'm not passionate about the work I am doing, and therefore I develop
the system at an even slower pace. Furthermore, I'm at a point in my
career where I need to learn management skills rather than
programming skills, so I'm not motivated to program on the project
simply for the technical learning value. There are now much better
frameworks for game development, and many projects that are much more
feature-rich. So despite my emotional investment in this project, I
need to admit that it has stagnated and move on to something new.
From here I plan to return to working on the research interests that
I'm passionate about, but without trying to develop the rest of the
game system. Depending on what I find in my searches, I plan to
either use an existing framework for world simulation and contribute
reusable library code to that community, or contribute directly to a
more successful Open Source game project.
Thank you for supporting me in this project, and I look forward to
staying in contact with anyone interested.
I've now officially marked the project as inactive and sent a message to the mailing lists.
I have decided to discontinue my work on the MUGU Project. I started
the project approximately nine and a half years ago with several
goals, and while I met some of my goals years ago, I recently
realized that this project isn't the best way for me to fulfill the
rest.
Ten years ago I was an administrator on a successful cyberpunk MUD,
but was feeling somewhat limited in my creativity by the LPC mudlib
we were working with. I wanted to use graphics to support a more
detailed model of the game world, and at that time there were no
MMORPGs so I felt I was pioneering something new.
One of the major reasons I started this project was to learn the Java
programming language. I had written a few "hello world" programs in
Java, but wanted a practical application to help me learn more. I
quickly learned the syntax of the language, and through this project
was able to learn many parts of the Java API such as networking and
the windowing toolkit. Seven years ago I applied for my first job as
a software developer, and relied heavily on this experience during
interviews. Since that time I continued to explore new Java
technologies through my work on this project, allowing me to stay one
step ahead of the skills I needed professionally.
Another project goal of mine was to build a platform for artificial
intelligence research. Representing the game world as a one-meter
grid rather than as rooms with exits allowed me to work on path-
finding strategies and herding behavior. In addition to movement
intelligence and artificial life, I continue to have an interest in
the opportunities for situated cognition in a virtual environment.
Finally, I've envisioned this project as a way to build community of
developers, world designers, and players. Although the team has
certainly waned in the past few years, at the height of development
we had contributors from Europe and Asia in addition to several
places in the United States. We built internationalization into the
code and translated the client into several languages. So while I
felt successful in creating a temporary community of Open Source game
developers, we never matured to a playable system and therefore did
not build the international community of world designers or players
that I had hoped for.
I recently attended the Texas Independent Game Developers Conference,
where I had the sudden realization that this project isn't the best
way for me to pursue what remains of my original goals. I've been
slowly working along on developing the game framework, but still
haven't gotten to the parts that interest me the most. As a result,
I'm not passionate about the work I am doing, and therefore I develop
the system at an even slower pace. Furthermore, I'm at a point in my
career where I need to learn management skills rather than
programming skills, so I'm not motivated to program on the project
simply for the technical learning value. There are now much better
frameworks for game development, and many projects that are much more
feature-rich. So despite my emotional investment in this project, I
need to admit that it has stagnated and move on to something new.
From here I plan to return to working on the research interests that
I'm passionate about, but without trying to develop the rest of the
game system. Depending on what I find in my searches, I plan to
either use an existing framework for world simulation and contribute
reusable library code to that community, or contribute directly to a
more successful Open Source game project.
Thank you for supporting me in this project, and I look forward to
staying in contact with anyone interested.