Status update

So before I get too far into my insights on this, I thought I'd drop a quick status note on what I've accomplished with the game so far. I've had the overall design doc finished for quite a while, and I created the overall HTML templates a few months ago. So that just leaves the functionality pretty much. I was working on the Javascript and AJAX for the pages, but I realized that in order to work on that, I needed some kind of back-end, so I've been working on that recently. Here's the list of things you can do right now:

* Create a game room - it will add you to the player list and shuffle the cards automatically
* Play a card (partially) - the display logic is in place, but it does not record which card you actually played anywhere.
* Set "away" status (partially) - again, the display logic is there, but no one's listening on the backend.

Since I'm running all this off my laptop for the time being, I don't have a heck of a lot to show you, but in case you haven't seen them previously, you can look at my original image-based renderings of the game screens here and here. They're still largely accurate for what I've done already!

So what does this mean for the inevitable question of "when it's done"? Well, I've always been hesitant to make a definitive statement of where I am, how much is left, and when you might be able to get your hands on it. In this business, your position can really change at a moment's notice based on something you hadn't considered; and this is even before you get into user tests and debugging, when anything goes!

I'm (sadly) reminded of my time in the online gaming community, and development teams' general dislike of progress meters indicating that the project is, say, 65% done. I remember one project had a progress meter that would simply display a random number every time the page was loaded, and I myself made an image of a progress meter divided into categories (graphics, maps, AI, etc.), in which each category's percentage was listed as "When It's Done". Needless to day, I used this image at every conceivable opportunity. So unfortunately, I am going to have to stick you with "When It's Done" for the time being, but I hope to use status updates like this one to give you at least some verification that I actually am working on it here.