The Wizard’s Tower

Work on Project WOTAN (a web-based gamebook framework) has been proceeding at a fairly solid pace over the past month. I have been hammering down not only the conceptual ideas, but also the actual code. It has really evolved since last year, mainly code-wise and this is entirely due to my increasing familiarity with general programming concepts as well as php itself.

Speaking of which, I have now just a few days ago embarked on my journey into the wild, wooly world of Javascript. "Fuckin shit sucks," I'm tempted to say, but I shall not. I'm merely suffering from a lack of patience and want to be a jQuery AJAX master now, not later. Give me another week and I'll have those user forms completely AJAX-ified, I swear. Really.

I suppose I am feeling the pinch a bit because I have yet again set a date for the initial release of WOTAN: August of this year. I am too lazy at the moment (actually I am tweaking on that sweet, sweet,  $("id").click(function(){...}); lovin), but I believe that is actually about one year past the initial release date. I suppose I could search back through the archives but that would be precious minutes away from the jQuery crack-pipe and we simply can not have that, now can we? That also seems rather far away, but with all that is left to do three-four months is not far away at all. I should probably extend it to October ...

So, ahem, yes, August 2010 I will be releasing WOTAN in the form of the web game "The Wizard's Tower."

Like all potential future WOTAN sites, The Wizard's Tower will essentially be a web-based gamebook along the lines of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy series or Joe Dever's Lone Wolf saga (a great favorite of mine as a young nerd). The main differences between a gamebook and WOTAN site lie in the technical possibilities and limitations between the two media. In spirit, I hope WOTAN plays much more like a traditional gamebook than what we might now think of as an "RPG."

And what story will The Wizard's Tower feature? I have actually been deeply considering this very question, and while I do not want to reveal too much, I am basing a great deal of it on Plato's Timaeus. And, of course, it will be set in the sort of generic dragons'n'warriors universe we have all come to know and love as it has evolved over the past couple-hundred years or so. While I'm not sure it could be considered high fantasy, as I am not sure I am capable of writing anything other than moral ambiguity, that is what I am going for.

And my plans for the story are also considering that I am running on schedule. I will be testing the site with a random dungeon generator and if I am too constrained for time I may have to launch with that in place and relegate the fleshing-out and writing of actual plot lines to post-launch site updates.

So that sums up WOTAN as of May 2010:

• php code and html markup coming along nicely and on-schedule
• UI in the form of AJAX components just barely started and I am worried this will fall behind schedule due to my inadequate skill level with javascript
• making me say things like "fuckin shit sucks" and refer to concepts like "stress head-aches"

Of course, I love it. And that reminds me, I need to find an artist whose willing to basically work for free out of an abiding love for interactive fantasy novels with neo-platonic/gnostic cosmological symbolism. Peace of cake, right?