If you have been a reader of this blog for a while you probably know that I like to work on programming projects. Sites with Benefits ( formerly Project Murdock ) was my last project and it is in a pretty good spot. So I've been looking for something new to work on. Inspired by my playing of Ascent, I want to revisit some game ideas I have had over the years and try to put together a prototype.
As it is not worthy of a real name yet, it will be called Project Venice. The game itself would be a different take on the space trading genre. Instead of taking the role of the pilot hauling cargo, you'll be in management. Let's face it, hauling cargo is tedious. The real fun comes in the decision making and trade route discovery. Those are the aspects I want to concentrate on.
Another purpose of this project is for me to learn something new. Instead of using Google's App Engine (like I do for everything) I am going to switch things up. Right now, the plan is to use a MEAN Stack and a hosted service provider. It's not free, but cheap enough to make it worthwhile. MEAN stands for MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js. I have not used any of them before, other than a little project with MongoDB.
I plan on this being a series of blog posts, many technical, about the development of the game. I don't expect to get to the fun stuff for a while though as there is much setup to be done first. Determining a hosting provider is my next task.
