All roads lead to MMO.

I can't quit you, MMO project.

If I am going to do anything I might as well just do the thing I have passion for, right? It's better than trying to come up with a simple project and running in circles for months, I could instead be working on one large, complex project and bashing my head against problems that further it's development for months.

I have created around 4 dozen game concepts in the past 4 or 5 months and none of them survived much longer than the concept phase because I always came to one of three conclusions. One: This is complicated as hell, I might as well work on the MMO project. Two: This is not a game I would even play. Three: This would work way better in 3D, probably best wait til I can do it right.

Should've just stuck with the MMO project. It's the thing that got me into this mess to begin with. It's why I learned computer science, it's why I learned pixel art, it's the driving force behind most of what I have learned since 2004. I dropped out of school to learn everything I could to get to this point. It's tantamount to sacrilege at this point to do anything else, isn't it? After all I sacrificed for it...

It's gonna hurt. It's gonna burn me out sometimes. I will need to take time off now and then. I will come up against problems that will keep me locked in place perhaps for weeks, possibly months at a time. I will have to ask for help (probably the hardest thing for me, at this point. I tend to be able to figure most things out of my own, to the point I will go and take an entire course just to avoid asking a question that would solve my problem in 10 minutes).

After all the shit I have gone through the last several months in my head I seem to always come back to the MMO. Why am I even trying to do anything else? Scared to fail, I guess? Might as well have already failed if I ain't even trying anymore. Sure it's probably not the wisest thing to do; making an MMO solo... but maybe if I get enough traction with it I can get some funding and a team. Most importantly I need to work on it and stop dicking around trying to figure out simple projects because I never will make progress that way.

This site has become a journal of confusion and failure for several months and I need to change that. I will take time off and work on other things now and then, but the main project will be the MMO. I might have to stop meaningful progress on it in order to do some R&D at some points. I might burn out and have to take a while to just replenish my willpower from the pool of inspiration. But I will keep returning to the MMO project.

Also, this thing needs a name. Just calling it "The MMO Project" is repetative, verbose and non-commital. I need a working title. Dave. No, Bob. No! Something indicitive of it's meaning to me, as it is a working title and should conjure the thoughts of what inspires it and what drives me to work on it. Altar or Shrine as to remember what I sacrificed for it and how it has been a central point of my life. Some synonym for Endless as EO is what started the whole thing. And possibly a third word evoking a nostalgiac thought from that period in my life where I return to in order to ground myself.

Something like Amaranthine Altar or Boundless Shrine. But without the acronym reminiscent of Alcoholics Anonymous or Bullshit. The Amaranthine Shrine Project? TASP. It's got the bits, I guess. When I have a story for the world I will come up with the actual title, but TASP will do as something to refer to the thing.

TASP will begin Monday. I will work on getting back to where I was with some things removed, I will rebuild all the servers and the client from scratch. This time I will take more detailed notes while I do it and correct for the mistakes I know I made last time.

I will spend significant time figuring out GDNative before attempting to use it this time. The account system will be a bit more robust than some quickly hacked together endpoint on top of django but that comes later. First the basics, then the account system and all that. I need to get the three servers rebuilt, then get the world server to function as I intend it to. I want to keep the network code handling clean thig time instead of handling a lot of shit in the server code have it on it's own nodes and just call the functions in those nodes.

There's a lot I can improve. Once I have all the state, collision, enemies handled properly and can collide server side and have all the state properly handled, extrapolating from the clients and interpolating it all into the server state and smoothly broadcast that out to the clients. I will also have to handle this on a cell by cell basis. Also gotta figure out how to make the client only load the cells it needs to prevent it from eatting the memory of the player's systems.

Welp. Today's already kinda spent. I crashed through a lot of mental blocks to get here and I still got instrument practice to do today and some crap to clean up in the kitchen and livingroom. I can casually plan through the weekend, keeping the old notebook close at hand while I get chores done and relax and get this fucker on the road Monday after guitar time.

Once I get back to where I was and have solved the problems I had; I will spend a couple days creating a world story outline to drive the creation of the map. I want to focus first on the exploration and community aspects of the game. I will spend more time creating areas than systems once I have the basic systems in place, I think. Places with secrets. But that's a long way off, for now I need to get back to where I was.

Problems I know I have to solve: GDNative, Isometric Y-Sort, Improved Server State Management + Map knowledge and collision. I also really need to research MMO architecture more and organize the notes I take.

Cheers. Gonna go play my guitar for a while and clean up my kitchen a bit.