From Julian Cochran's memoir.
29 March 2018
The last two weeks I suddenly took to working intensively on the game again. Two weeks ago I chanced upon a very different approach, and I believe a far more effective one. It will centre on the player's imagination, as a text-based game, but with the excitement of real-time play, as many commands require a process to complete, with input received whilst waiting.
It also meaningfully integrates many players, which the 2004 plan had only in alliance relations, and not also in combat, as I now plan. It is equally well suited to phones and desktops; the 2004 version would only have worked on the desktop. And there is a lot more depth in this conception, so in fact I am glad to have put the project on hold, otherwise I would not have had this opportunity.
Over the last two weeks I have written a 60-page document describing the entire scope of the game-play. There was a 30-page version in 2004, with rather little overlap. Over the last four days I have programmed the star map, the server's handling of commands in and messages out, and most of the core classes, particularly the concept of "vicinity", which is central to the game succeeding with many players.
14 June 2019
I have decided to use the name Xalaria, for which there is no justification other than the sound, aesthetically pleasing in the context of a fantasy game about the outer universe. The game continues work I started as early as 2001, although only the planet and life descriptions remain from the programming of that time.
For the first time, the basic game engine is working. Of course it is without details, akin to having developed the heart of a body, which even beats successfully, but without the body itself. I was almost staggered when programming the 'h' command, four pages of help, in just a matter of minutes. That bodes well, as I have gone to lengths to make the architecture convenient for developing what is inside the game. The game runs centrally on a server. Each player sends commands and receives messages, so all of the play takes place in one place, while the commands and messages travel in parallel.
21 June 2019
The 'p' command, to show the planetary system, and the 'm' command, to show the star system, are both now working, so the player can receive descriptions of a planet's geology and life, and ask about distant planets without having to travel to them. What makes programming Xalaria so enjoyable is that such a high proportion of the time is spent on the creative side, the game-play itself, rather than technical preparation.
26 June 2019Warsaw
In Warsaw I had an important insight about how players move between the vicinities in the game. Rather than abstract notions of engaging and disengaging with other craft, as I had planned, the physical position will be modelled. The player can vary their acceleration, never beyond the vessel's capacity, to change the time to reach their destination, and so control their proximity to other players. That gives players the means of entering or avoiding combat, adds a fuel-saving dynamic, and allows robot players to be followed from one vicinity to another.