Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Offloading the client

As I mentioned previously, I've had to start working on a bare-bones client so I have a way to test server development as it goes forth. This was a bit disconcerting, because the goal is the server, not the client, but I may have found a solution!

I currently split my rare programming time between two projects, this one and Windows Phone 7 development. I try to give them equal time, and with this project having the client development requirement, that was resulting in maybe 25% of my coding hours going to MMORF. However, I may have found a way to soon return that to the 50% it deserves, by moving the client development to Windows Phone.


For the next little while, I'll still have to put some effort into this console client, just to have that for quick testing, but for anything more than a text interface, I can certainly justify it as "Windows Phone 7 development" and use my phone development time for it. And if my other phone-related projects suffer because of it, well, I can bitch about it over on that blog.

4 comments:

Reflex said...

When can I sign up for beta testing?

Crwth said...

I had hoped to have something to share publicly this summer, but that didn't happen... here's for hoping that "by Christmas" is doable!

Reflex said...

Sounds good. If you need any help with alpha stuff let me know. I've been playing with XNA off and on ever since metaplace shut us out. And I'm proficient with C# so I could play the role of customer/user/content person while you code the back end.

I'm wanting to build a multiplayer, tile-based, rogue-like persistent world. But skill-based like UO. And with an equal focus of combat, harvesting, crafting, and construction.

I have no stomach for networking code so for starters I'm just coding a single player rogue-like.

Reflex said...

Take a look at this XNA engine for your client:

www.flatredball.com

Free, supports silverlight (in 2D), and seems to have good support from the developers.

I've been playing with it a bit this week and will try to use it to make a simple Rogue-like for starters.