In the immortal words from Time Bandit, "I've got an idea, formin' in me 'ead". Like many programming types, I got lured into the world of computers by games, and into programming by the thought of making games. In the early days, I quickly decided that the effort/reward ratio just wasn't there for me to pursue anything... and later, with the rise of truly good, in-depth games, there was even less reason to try.
Nowadays, the state of computer gaming has declined... not in visual flair, which is always improving, but in core gameplay. I believe this decline is due, in great part, to the fact that online games have to be designed for many thousands of players hitting their servers at the same time, keeping track of their individual actions, handling chat spaces and monitoring for spam, and watching/blocking the inevitable cheaters that arise.
So, the idea started to form... why do online games need to be massively multiplayer? Others have tried to apply that to even simple games, like card and board games, and still end up having to ban people for cheating, dropping out of games, and the like. If you have an online server of some sort already (like, say, the "personal" web pages that generally come free with your Internet connection), couldn't you just invite the friends you already have that play games to your own little game-server? Heck, I'll bet you could do away with logins entirely in most cases then... and you can get chat/IM software for free, so you don't have to build that in... and you could probably keep all the "game logic" on the players' computers, and just use the server for keeping track of the "game state"... and there's programs like Python and wxPython that would make game-client programming pretty easy... and there's all sorts of board and card games to play, especially ones that take too long to readily play at one sitting... and...
I think I'm going to play with this idea some more... for the time being, I'll call it Games with Honor, to reflect the whole idea of "you shouldn't need to protect a friendly game from cheating". Unfortunately, the "personal web pages" idea won't work for me (my ISP specifically disallows what's called "server side scripting"), but a quick search implied that I could get a proper website for about $5/month, so it's still a going idea. I'll likely try my hand at something fairly simple, like Klondike Solitaire, to begin with, and move up to games with more players and trickier rules from there (like, say, Chess, and knockoffs of Settlers of Catan, Diplomacy, and Advanced Civilization, just to name a few).
Let me know what you all think, and if you've got any games that you wish you could play with friends near and far, of course... :)
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My wife's current addiction is a game called Armor Picross. It is a flash game that serves up different puzzles to solve. I think a cookie on our system stores most of the pertinent data, its just that the puzzles come from outside.
I've also been playing Settlers at http://games.asobrain.com/index.html
which is fun, but I end up playing against the computer more often that the other players.
Hm... I played Robo Rally once a LONG time ago (think Navy timeframe), so I don't remember it real well. If it doesn't have much in the way of "interrupt" play, it might be a decent candidate (I'm currently thinking in terms of games that can be played asynchronously, so it can be played as individual players have time, without all players having to be logged in at once).
Matt, I ran across the "Xplorers" game earlier, but couldn't be bothered to set up *another* login to try it out... how you liking it? Oh, and, so you know, I'm looking at doing this as a stand-alone client... part of the whole idea is to prevent it becoming a multiplayer game engine that the whole world comes to play on one server, but rather make a toolset that anybody that has a website can use for their own group of friends... :)
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