urchon

made the background more 2-d to better complement the stick-figure pieces

Two unfortunate things happened to our progress this weekend.

One was that Promit, while developing the first demo of our 3D client frontend…stuff, had a power supply blowout, which also (after checking with a spare power supply) rendered his motherboard AWOL.

The one which technically happened first, however…is that we screwed up with SVN, and didn’t add his Graphics directory to SVN…so we can’t build the frontend now.

Overview:
An update to the classic Commodore64 title Archon.  Archon is a battle-chess style game between two players.  The two sides are light and dark, each with unique units.  The board consists of a 9×9 grid where each tile can be black, white, or in continual flux. Attacking a piece results in brief interactive combat. The source code will also be made available under an OSI-approved license, although the exact license has not been chosen yet. More information about the game is available from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Dark.

The primary visual style will probably be whimsical, based on bright, bold colors, but this may change depending on what is easiest for our artists to produce. The goal is to be able to create an aesthetically pleasing experience without spending an exorbitant amount of time on individual assets. We would prefer to provide multiple visual styles, if time permits.

Technology:
- Pure ANSI/ISO C++.
- Cross-platform using SDL - Windows, OS X, Linux, and anything else you care to write a frontend for.
- OpenGL based 3D graphics, possibly using shaders (and possibly using a third party engine such as Ogre3D).
- Network-based multiplayer with spectator support (possibly implemented with the help of a third party library such as RakNet).
- Multiple graphical themes, including “classic” Archon and an ultra-cute option (because everything’s better with ~SUPER KAWAII~ faces.)

Goals:
- The only F/OSS implementation of Archon that we know of is, frankly, ugly as sin, and unmaintained. Ours may end up unmaintained, in time, but damn it, it’ll be beautiful!
- The game should also be a complete implementation, providing all the same gameplay as the original. We may explore more options if time permits.

Risks:
- Archon might actually suck. In that case, we’ll have to add all sorts of wacky things, like the Armageddon mode from Archon 2. Or maybe we’ll just implement another old game, like Baldies. Everyone loved Baldies, right?
- The goal of 3D graphics may turn out to be overly ambitious, even assisted by a 3D engine. There’s a serious question of how expensive this will be for asset production. We may fall back to a hybrid approach, with 2D art placed into a 3D world.

Team:
- Promit Roy: Self-appointed tech lead.
- Rich Ercolani: Crazy guy
- John Seibel: Giant laptop man
- Saya Russell: The girl. Also an artist.
- Mike Smith: Missing from the first draft.
- Rob Keleher: Sign-on-the-project-the-day-before-this-was-due kid.

to writeups