ChaosForge 2010
2 January 2010
2009 has been a busy year for ChaosForge. DoomRL has risen from oblivion, and became the Roguelike of the Year 2009 .Yet still, I strongly believe that 2010 will be the year of ChaosForge. I’ll allow myself for this New Years post to be a “taste of things to come…”
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DoomRL
This year DoomRL will probably have it’s best year ever. Not only plan I to actually get to version 1.0.0, with all the promised features (Modding, Replay’s, etc.), but most importantly, DoomRL will finally gain a feature that it has lacked and longed for for ages…
No, this is no mockup, this is the DoomRL engine running with preliminary tiles support, with the artistic talent of Derek Yu …
Neko
Neko’s purpose has been decided, and it will follow. The design that will allow me to reuse it both for roguelike and more ambitious projects is a tempting one indeed. However, that also means that I will need a higher level of genericity than initially anticipated.
I also decided that I will use Boost to it’s full extent. Neko has finally gained it’s goal, and will be one of the top tier projects of 2010. Although I have doubts it’ll be ready for 7DRL 2010, I’ll do my best.
Roguelikes
No matter how much I look into the future I can’t back away from the roguelike genre. I hope that targeting lower-tier but popular platforms may allow me to longer indulge in my roguelike passion.
I also hope to take part in the next 7DRL competition, but I seriously doubt that Neko will be ready for that. As a New Year’s resolution however, I promised myself to publish a new roguelike this year, apart from resurrecting one of the old ones .
If I successfully manage to get moving on a mobile platform (see below), then I’m also sure to attempt to create a roguelike for it, this time on a original intellectual property.
Finally there’s the topic of DoomRL 2, which grows more solid every day. A game targeted at gameplay, first and foremost, and of course with the great tiles seen above!
PhD
I’m 2.5 years into PhD studies, and it’s high time for me to start working on my thesis. Don’t be alarmed however, the topic was chosen to benefit ChaosForge as well. I hope it will be the basis of at least one important game.
Hope you’ll hear about it more soon!
Experiments
As I once wrote, I want to be able to dedicate full-time to ChaosForge. One of the solutions is to produce enough interesting content to allow a sustaining level of donations (and this started to bring benefits last year), the second one is aiming at commercial ventures.
As advertising brought only small income, I think I’d need to move to commercial content. Don’t get me wrong, I want as much as possible of ChaosForge’s content kept free, or rather donationware. However, I’m also looking at markets that could be a side source of income. One of those is the current leader in open content selling, the App Store, and iPhone.
No other mobile/handheld platform allows for such an easy way for legal distribution. And mobile/handheld platforms are one of the last bastions for single/small-team development. Hence my will to experiment with the iPhone. I’ll need a MacBook for that though…
Another target that I’m wondering about are online browser based games. I have a few ideas in this regard, but it’s only a matter of speculation for now. But who knows what 2010 will bring!
Finally, maybe not this year, but step by step, slowly I want to get to the point of releasing something as shareware…
Community
The community has been my main source of positive surprise this year. I’d really like to get everyone involved, and I’d like them to get as much as possible of a positive experience from that. Many ideas are thrown around, how to make ChaosForge a great place to be. I hope that I’ll have the opportunity to implement them, and not just talk about them…
Conclusion
It’s going to be a hard, but also very exciting year for ChaosForge. And I truly believe that it will be much more when I write the 2010 post-mortem post!