Forum for you, endless code for me. Feb 24, 2007

The forum is here.

On my end... It's mostly been planning, and I think I'm a little behind schedule with...everything. I am now officially begging for help. Please have a look at the help requests if you are at all interested in being involved in this massive project.

Spring break is coming up... With any luck I'll not only get back on schedule but ahead. Whee!

Coming Together Feb 10, 2007

It's slow-going, but here's what I got: Sketches and help requests. Oh, and a page so you can meet the dev team. They're going to be my favorite people ever for the upcoming months. There's a lot of background work going on right now too, designing the underlying database and some fundamental PHP objects. My map artist has shown some incredible promise, and I have a couple more people started on character sketches, too.

Getting all this going has left me with mixed feelings. I'm bummed that HPR's prime has passed, but I'm excited for this project. Oh but further news: since we now have an official release date for the final installment in the Harry Potter series, I've decided that HPR will remain online for another year. I'm still not going to bother maintaining it, but I'd rather not let go of the site completely so close to the release of book seven.

Oh and it occurred to me that my last entry rather unintentionally disregarded people who use browsers other than IE and Firefox. For you guys, I applaud your non-conformity, and I'm sorry, but I must join the ranks of those who won't guarantee my game to work in your browser. I'm following W3C standards as closely as I can, but there are plenty of issues I'm sure you're aware of with developing an interactive Web application across browsers. :(

HPWG Jan 24, 2007

Today, I launch the Harry Potter Web Game. It will be, for lack of a better phrase, flippin amazing. By Feb. 10 I'll lay out some specs for a bit of the help I need. I'll also have some sketches, and maybe even a map ready. My timeline puts the release of HPWG v.1.0 release at June 16, the day Harry Potter Rumors dies. Yes, yes it is true. My baby HPR dies. No more updates, and the domain expires June 16.

Between then and now, this site will grow with its own chat and forum, and a bunch of preview pages, to build some excitement and coordinate the creation of this vast undertaking.

So what the heck is it, you ask? Not quite a MUD. I'd say somewhere between Kingdom of Loathing and There, set in the Harry Potter fandom. I'm stoked.

Technical details: built in PHP on a MySQL database, heavy on the AJAX. Most images will be in PNG format with transparencies, so if you're an Internet Explorer user, I'd suggest upgrading to IE7 by then. Really, I'd suggest it anyway. Unless you're a Firefox or other browser user, in which case, rock on dude.