Welcome!

Welcome to the Asciilands dev blog!

Asciilands is an ongoing project that I initiated in order to fulfill a number of goals.  Asciilands will be a browser based ascii RPG with (hopefully) some MMO elements.
The goals of  Asciilands development are as follows:

Goal 1: Teach my friends some code

When I was in highschool, my friend Julian taught me the basics of writing programs frot the TI-83+ graphics calculator. Immediately, a seemingly unapproachable world, the world of programming, had become a whole lot more approachable and I wrote basic little applications and games for the rest of my time a highschool and a little bit beyond. I wanted more but didn't know how to advance my extremely basic skill-set. When my brother saw me trying to teach myself C++ from online tutorials, he suggested maybe I should study programming. I had enrolled and was working on my first projects the next week and I haven't looked back.

Julian, who taught me on the TI-83+, is now working on some of the NPC interaction components for Asciilands and intends to continue working on more advanced additions as his skill-set and the Asciilands project continue to develop.

Banj is also along for the ride. He'd expressed an interest in learning some code so he'll be learning by making additions also.

One of the design goals that I am making every effort to adhere to is to ensure Asciilands continues to be open to additional content. This means that as Banj and Julian progress in their understanding and grasp of PHP, JavaScript, AJAX, HTML and CSS, they can add all kinds of features and systems of varying complexity and have them easily integrated.


Goal 2: Give back to the freeware community

I've always loved high quality freeware games. The fact that they are free, gifts to the community, makes them so much more special. I'm a huge fan of the works of Derek Yu, Kenta Cho, Pixel, Cactus Squid and many other freeware developers producing high quality work and not expecting a cent for their efforts.

Over the years, I have derived a huge amount of joy from these games but I also feel like I have incurred a debt. A debt that I've always been very keen to repay with something that others may enjoy. The beautiful pool of freeware must be added to in order to keep it alive and nothing poisons charlatan "freeware" more wholly than pay-to-win, micro-transactions, gold accounts or  members only areas.

For this reason I make this pledge:
I never intend to make any money from Asciilands. The most you'll ever see is potentially the ability to donate without reward just to cover the cost of hosting the site or other expenses. I think hoping to break even is fair enough but there will be no buying items, in-game currency or any other advantage for anyone willing to pay money. I want that to be clear.


Goal 3: Make an awesome game

Who doesn't want to make an awesome game? With video games being such a big part of my life growing up and such a strong entertainment and story-telling medium, I, like many others, have many ideas that I want to put into a game both in terms of narrative and mechanics.

Thankyou for your interest in the  Asciilands project. I intend to keep this blog updated with progress reports, development milestones and other general ideas etc. I'll be posting some more meaty content soon so keep an eye on the  Asciilands dev blog!