So after years of pining, I've decided to "commit" to developing a game. I've had lots of false starts, written lots of incomplete engines, and had scores of somewhat novel ideas. And every time my interest was diverted to the next big idea, or the next big distraction (AKA'd as "life") (and World of Warcraft) (and girlfriends). Well, today I am for the Nth time making this pledge: I will complete a game. This time I'm doing it right. I'm working on my design document, getting many of my ideas down on paper and thinking through them before I set out to develop anything. I'm choosing technologies that I'm already familiar with (C# 3.5, ASP.NET, ADO.NET) on a platform that I have already completed many non game-related applications (the web). I'm following all of the advice of the guys who've been there before.

This time I'll get it done.

My first post here is rather slim on details, but I am reluctant to post much until I've got a more formalized plan. Essentially my plan is to create a web-based, multiplayer dungeon crawler with player character persistence and a menu and chat driven overworld. Dungeon crawling will be limited to small parties of five, though this may increase or decrease depending on how party size affects gameplay. I also intend dungeon crawling to be turn based, which should drastically simplify development relative to attempting to develop a reliable, real-time system using AJAX and HTML. I'm not getting real creative with the genre, which will be Tolkein-esque high fantasy.

So, there you have it.