Note: The current story arc begins at Strip 446

April 4, 2005

I spent all weekend working on a remote D&D client. I'm making progress but man it takes a while.

Basically I'm writing, from scratch, a whiteboarding application. I searched and searched for apps online that would allow me to play tabletop D&D with my friends remotely. But they all have a feature or two that irritates me. Either they require pre-made maps, or require you to do all sorts of weird system config to get them to work at all. Or they just plain don't work.

So what I'm doing is making an app that is just a table simulator. It's not a D&D game. It's a table simulator. It simulates thins you can do at a gaming table. You have a big (infinitely big, actually) dry-erase map, a pen, unlimited dice, and unlimited pogs to put on the map as miniatures for combat. And that's it.

My friends are already asking for features and I get to say "No, fuck you," which is really liberating because I can't say that at work when a project gets feature-creep.

So I'm not even going to show it to my friends till it's done. Then it'll be like "I'm done." And they'll be like "Add this feature" and I'l be all "I'd be happy to send you the source code."

Anyway, the plan is to use Ventrillo for voice communication and Gametable (that's what I'm calling the app) for mapping, die rolls, etc. We'll see how well it works.

If it's effective at all, I'll post it for whoever wants to play with it.

-ATW