Monday, August 15, 2011

Grunt work going on

For the last four months, I've been using almost all my free time writing a web port of a free game. That's why I did not post any new inflammatory benchmark or computer-aided game solution.

It might seem strange, but the game I'm porting, whose name I will not reveal yet, is only available as a Windows or OSX binary. I like the game very much and wanted to share it with some of my Linuxy friends, so I thought: "Rebuilding the game based on HTML/JS should not be that hard, and then, everybody with an Internet access and a modern browser could enjoy the game, without OS dependency or installation."

I'm making good progress on the game itself. It's not a graphics-heavy game, but more of a content-rich game and although the main game mechanics have been in place for a good time now, I'm still adding all the content, and that takes time. It doubly takes time, because I have to do research on the original game, to discover what needs to be implemented, and after that, I have to replicate it into the new game.

So what's the game? Sorry, but I will not reveal it just now. I have been in touch with the original developers because it's a free game, but not an open source one. I don't want to steal anything from them, and I hope we can reach some kind of agreement. They are currently trying to transform the original free game into a commercial one, far richer both in terms of graphics and content. I only want to replicate the free one, without killing their sales. Maybe it could even help their sales: like the current free version, it acts as a free appetizer.