Thursday, December 23, 2010

Http clients. Release date estimates.

I used to be a web developer. Used to. Long time ago.
Now I need to make a http client for my game to connect to my php backend for authentication. Finally, my web 2.0 knowledge put to good use, again.

On another note, I'm finding it difficult to make an estimate of how long till alpha release. I don't even have a UI up yet. All I do is backend work now. And it's a lot of it. It seems now like the work will never end.

Estimates are hard to make. Depressingly hard.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Cross platform networking

Guess what? I intend to release the game for both Windows and Linux. I'm developing on a Kubuntu Linux box by the way.

I will be using boost::asio for the networking part. It's an awesome library, I have to tell you this. It makes up for STL's lack of sockets. How can you live in an Internet centered world and not include sockets in the C++ standard?

Anyways, I am working on enabling the game to connect to the website and create accounts/ log in. I find myself waking up at 5 am in the morning and just coding away. I think I'm most productive in the morning, but that's just me.

Let me know what you think.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Still working

I knew the authentication framework will be a pain in the back to implement, but it seems that was an understatement. I'm still working on it as we speak, and made some progress. What I did for now was implement RSA digital signing and digital signature checking. It was harder than it sounds.

Next, I need to make an interface (some class that knows HTTP) for the game to communicate with the Master Server (website) through, so that in game users can log in or register through it.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Status report

I'm starting work on the authentication framework. That means set up a database, and a script to allow you to log in. I intend to share Drupal's 'users' table with my game, so you don't have to make two accounts.

Hello!

Who am I?
As a first blog post, I think it's only appropriate to introduce myself.
My name is Edward-Gabriel Barbu (Zadirion), and I'm a software developer by day, avid gamer by night, and an up-and-coming indie game developer in between.

I'm a full time software developer at Caphyon Ltd, working on one of their products called Advanced Installer. Feel free to look it up. In my free time, I am working hard on a game I came up with a few years ago. I intend it to be fun and original.

So what's this game I'm working on all about?
I can't say much just yet, but let's just say that if you liked Minecraft or Infiniminer, you're very likely to enjoy this. Since my game is not ready yet, why not check out Minecraft? You're bound to have some fun with it. Also, for 10 Euros (about $13), Minecraft is almost as cheap as my game will be.

I estimate the game will be out in a few months. I will post updates here and on twitter @zadirion, so do subscribe!