A little progress, emphasizing “little”

Schleppery -- Muse, sing to me of the schleppery of Isis' son Fortuente,
lugubrious, doomed, that cost the Oregonians countless food stamps,
hurling down to the House of Fail so many fat bowls,
great kind-bud bowls, but made their buds ash,
feasts for house-plants and the compost,
and the will of Odin was moving toward it's end.

(With apologies to Robert Fagles, of course.)

Project WOTAN continues, however it does so in a rather halting and stunted fashion, as is my wont. I suppose I should have factored in the summer's inevitable doldrums when setting my deadline. I recall I did have the thought that July-September can be a trying time for a habitual computer user without air conditioning.

Essentially, I have gotten nothing done in perhaps two weeks now. I have done some, but very little and it mostly revolves around template-system code debt. Because the one  I originally wrote was utter garbage, and so I spent the bulk of yesterday consolidating methods and refining the template class. Honestly, if I wasn't so far along, I would probably scrap MJOLNIR and start yet another iteration based on the frameworks Kohana or CodeIgniter. Using one of the twain is definitely the plan for my next project.

From the outset, I wanted to reinvent the wheel for WOTAN because I am still learning not only PHP, but programming in general. The unforeseen difficulty I have run into using WOTAN to learn basic programming concepts lies in the fact it is really quite a large undertaking for one newbish person. I am far enough along that I can already see this has been a very valuable experience. The next project will most likely be a smoother process and by using an extablished framework, I'll get to see what I did right and what I did wrong in my own.

I have decided to eventually make WOTAN open source, however right now I am just trying to focus on getting the core engine and features in a working state. As of now, I plan on showcasing WOTAN on The Wizard's Tower (rather than make that site a Lone Wolf-like gamebook series) and focus on developing that site with engine development occurring more as a side-product. Eventually I will release it on a public repository with an open license. I am not worried, however, in setting any dates for that release, as my first goal will be to make TWT a working WOTAN-powered site first, then prepare the code for public later.

So here I am doing my best to stay motivated. And I think I may take a cue from that post I linked and work on some icon art for the game now that I have tamed the template beast more to my liking. I plan on using the CSS sprite technique on them, so that is something interesting to do.

Lego Universe: totally sweet or totally sweetest?

I am the father of a small boy. So I can tell you Lego Universe has been on my radar for most of this year, at least. I just came across a preview written by Jon Wood at mmorpg.com based on a LU presentation at E3.

I guess it makes sense it would be thought of thusly, but I don't really think of LU as a "kids" game, per se. Perhaps I only assumed it, but I was under the impression it was going to be an "all-ages" affair, after the same spirit as the physical blocks.

However, yes, it does appear to be marketed to kids ... check out the slightly-creepy subscription pitch:

What better way to give your kids the constant action and fun they crave than with some LEGO Universe game time? This universe goes on forever, and the possibilities are endless as kids can team up to quest together, or visit each other to see the cool stuff they’ve built on their properties. Find the subscription model that’s right for your child.

Because the constant action I want to give my kids leads to a life of repetitive-motion injuries. Why let the TV baby-sit, now we have virtual worlds!

At any rate, OK, it's a kids game. But I have a feeling I'll be getting it anyway ... for my son, of course. Of course, I'll have to figure it out in order to help him. Of course.