Well, what time I had today was spent finishing up putting up the blog and modifying the site a little bit. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll likely be putting up a forum, not that there’s much to talk about yet, and perhaps adding comments for the blog. I’m hoping to get the login and registration component up and running in the next week or so (it was running when I was using TNL), and then the chat component up in the couple weeks after that.

I’ve started a project that’s going to take quite a long time, and I’ve decided to write about it as it happens on a semi-regular basis. If you’re reading this, it’s quite likely you know the name of the project, seeing as how the title is emblazoned across the top, but you may not know exactly what it is.

Infinite Suns is a massively multiplayer online role playing game set in space. You fly spaceships around, mine ore, refine it, build things with it, sell or trade those things, shoot them down, go on missions, and hopefully, if it all comes together right, much much more.

Really, I probably shouldn’t talk too much about the details of the game as many of them aren’t finalized, but I also want to put the details out there that won’t ruin some surprises that I hope to have in store for the players so that they can be talked about and, perhaps, challenged and made better before anyone ever plays Infinite Suns. What you’re not going to get is a big feature list all in one post. I’ll save that for when I start advertising.

The game has been started. Players can log in, or they used to be able to, until I started switching network libraries, but they can’t do anything else. As soon as I get this networking library change sorted out, I’ll add a simple global chat chanel, and put it up. Not that I expect people to go in there and chat, but it’ll be there, waiting for the next thing to be added.

The development process is going to be moderately open, in that I’m going to have the system up and running pretty much from the start. You (yes – anyone reading this) will be able to create an account and join in the fun of playing a buggy, incomplete game.

For quite awhile, it will be free. At some point, I will start charging a monthly fee to pay for server costs and my development time. I don’t know for sure when it will be, but it will likely happen in relation to one of two events. The first would be when I can’t afford to pay for the bandwidth anymore. The second would be when it’s basically feature complete – it has an economy, harvesting, building(crafting), and combat.

During the free play time, don’t be surprised if the players, items, skills, or anything else occasionally gets wiped. It’s the nature of game development. Sometimes, the initial decisions aren’t necessarily the best ones. I’ll do my best to keep these to a minimum, but I can’t guarantee anything.

I will listen to suggestions, too. It doesn’t mean I will implement them, but I will certainly listen. I’m one guy, and I know I don’t have every idea in the universe.

This is going to take quite a long time. I’m one guy, and I only have a few hours a night, at the moment, to work on it. Should be loads of fun!