It starts

I need to put up some kind of a test post to see how things are all formatted and such, but just posting "Test" or a load of "lorem ipsum" seems like a bit of a cop out, so I'll make this the first official post for the project I suppose.

I'm writing this in the days running up to the first monthly meeting of the project. The story so far is that I (inspired by Louis) have gathered together a group of friends to make a video game. We had a meet up around a month ago in which we discussed what everyone wanted to do on the project, what we want to get out of the experience, and what kind of game we actually want to make. All very high-level, rather vague stuff inspired more by idealism than any experience of what to expect (mostly, though Mel probably has a decent idea of the stresses of group projects in general). More details about this will find their way to relevant sections of the blog as time permits, I'm sure.

A few weeks ago, shortly after the initial meeting, I sent out a suggested 'To Do' list for people to look over in preparation for this month's meeting. It included things like for Jamie, Tai and Louis (our prospective coding team) to learn Java and start working on the most basic parts of an engine of some sort, and indeed for me to set up this blog. Given that it's an entirely voluntary project none of the items on this list were obligatory, but it seems like at least some of the tasks have been completed to some degree. Which is good, because I'm imagining a lot of the things we talk about at the next meeting are to do with what we've done since the last, and what we're going to do to build on that.

I'm really looking forward to the meeting, come to think of it. It's managed to sneak up on me, but now that it's in sight I'm excited to see how people's thoughts have changed on the project and what they have come up with in terms of new ideas. I've had a few short chats with Relm about specific game design ideas he's had, all of which have been very interesting. If Mike has had some time to think about plot/story ideas, I'm sure he'll be wanting to share them with the group and they will be, if his past ideas are any judge, off-the-wall yet thought-provoking. And I'd love to be able to see some of Melissa's portfolio - right now I am thinking that it will look just like all the other similar games which I've seen, but there's no reason that this has to be the case. Given that I live with Jamie, I've been able to see a few progress shots of the engine - it's early days but still a lot further on that I'd have thought we'd be.

So yes, I'm rather rambling on but long story short, this weekend is looking like it'll be pretty great. And then we'll take our next step forward.