Guncho development update

I'm taking the plunge and separating the code into pluggable modules, if only so that I can test one part of this massive refactoring at a time.

The introduction of Playfic has encouraged me to step up my game. Supporting I7 extensions is a great idea, and while automatically importing them into Guncho is a while off, my design already includes a way to share extensions between realms, so I can at least import them by hand.

Guncho development update

I've resumed work on Guncho and am basically working along the same roadmap I outlined in December. The first big changes, developed in parallel, will be:

1. A new persistence layer based on NHibernate, which will store realm and player data in a relational database in real time and keep track of revision history.
2. A REST API layer based on WCF, which will replace the .NET Remoting channel for communication between the control panel and game engine, and will eventually be exposed to the public.
3. Decoupling of "Realm" from "Instance", allowing multiple copies of a game to run side by side.

Guncho source code and development musings

The source code for Guncho is now available through Bitbucket. I've added a cursory roadmap to the developer wiki.

My first priority is to make Guncho more stable and scalable: crash less often, save data more reliably, handle realm failures more gracefully, run multiple instances of realms. After that, I hope to modularize a few subsystems to allow for new languages, new virtual machines, and new communication layers (e.g. a web service API).

I have a dream that Guncho will someday be able to "host" the IF Comp, with a dev environment for authors, a play environment with logging and access control for beta testers, and a voting/game-selecting/MPIF-matchmaking system for judges.