Plan for Ken

More books in the works, game design ideas gathering mental dust. Tubettiworld creeps along, furtively, but undeterred.

It's been a busy, busy year. After shipping my book, I had a backlog of "regular" projects to get out of the way. Those being almost finished, I'm moving on to other things again.

I'm also currently wrapping up a companion work to my "3D Game Programming All In One" for college/university profs, which includes Powerpoint slides, exams, etc.

The most significant boats on the horizon are three book proposals I've been presented by three different organizations. I can't say anything more about them at them moment, except that one will certainly be of interest to the GG Community; a second one probably will be (I don't have any detail yet) and a third might be -- however I'm not sure that I will take on the third one (it's not really in any of my areas of expertise). There is some sorting out to do, but I'm planning (read: hoping) to get at least two of them done during the remainder of this year.

Tubettiworld has been mostly in the background for the past year, with little things being done here and there when I needed a break from writing. I've prototyped the player ranking system: if you are familiar with places like slashdot, where people moderate other people's posts, and then meta-moderators rank the moderators, you will be somewhat informed of the TW player ranking system. Just exchange 'posts' with 'player actions', introduce time-outs and default neutral rankings, and you'll be on your way. I've also prototyped an in-game 'technology creation' errr... technology, that you can use in 3D 1PPOV in a manner somewhat similar to TIM or Chain Reactions. Use 6 components to build a motor vehicle, or take away 3 of them, add an hoist and get a static crane.

Finally, a host of game ideas looking for creators, all doable with Torque:

Bomber Command (flight sim): Multi-crewed (actually the favoured term is 'poly-crewed') bombers and of course, fighters to attack them. WW I or WW II era.
We need a good Torque based flight model for this. In fact, there is a ready-made player base out there that's looking for a kick-ass flight model (high fidelity) with poly-crewing.

Space Command: Like Bomber Command, but use distributed host servers, where each spacecraft is hosted by a player, and its crew logs in to it to man the ship. A Master Server then manages the inter-ship action.

Construction Site: Never mind terrain deformation -- give the kids a bulldozer, a crane, a dump truck and a pile of steel girders, pre-formed walls, wood, etc. and put them to work building Anywhereville.

Net Parlour: Internet meeting site, with 3D avatars at a simulated parlour table (picnic table, deck, basement hideaway) to play games like chess, checkers, battleships, cards, etc. Chat interface (voice/text). You could do it free-form (no rules set, only game action support) or rules-aware (so that a server tracks scores, enforces game play rules, prevents cheating). Obviously if you do a single-player mode, then it would have to be rules-aware. You could do the whole thing in a modular form with new add-ons to support new game types (card games, 'board' games, 'paper' games, 'floor' games (pretzel), 'body' games (charades). Game hosts could design their own 3D parlour and clients could design their avatars and upload them to hosts.