Aaron Winborn

Assuming the administrator gives access, anonymous users may now create and compete with characters at 5 Second Game (which is powered by the module of the same name). Additionally, if an anonymous user registers or logs in, they'll be able to claim that character as their own, allowing for saving any statistics, etc.

Sadly, my plans for August don't include Drupalcon Szeged. Already too much travel this summer, and the dates conflict with a training my partner is doing, so that would be hard on our 4yo.

Back in June, I made a list of personal project plans, so I figure I'll revise that list for the rest of the summer.

First, the status report on the projects from June:

• I finished writing Drupal Multimedia! And we're about half way through the editing process. The book is scheduled to be published in September, and can be pre-ordered now.
• The Embedded Media Field port to Drupal 6 is still in process. It's ready for testing on new installations now, but I still need to write an upgrade path from Drupal 5.
• Morbus Iff and I have made strides with the engine for 5 Second Game. The module allows character creation and the combat engine is nearly ready for play.
• Except for some experimentation with audio metadata, I ended up not really working on GetID3. I'll probably end up waiting till the fall to work on this, unless I get new inspiration.
• I haven't written any tutorials yet, but hope to do that regularly once the book has been published and I have more free time available.

New projects of mine in progress and on the horizon:

• Media Player, which I've already blogged about a couple of times. This is an exciting project. Once it's mature, I plan to hook it into jQuery Media and Embedded Media Field for optional support as a start, and write patches for other media modules.
• I want to tie YouTube API into Embedded Media Field.
• More Drupal 6 upgrades, including Views Slideshow and a couple of other modules that need attention.
• Jump more into Drupal 7 development, especially for media handling, such as with the hook_file patch.
• Presenting at DrupalCamp NYC 5!

That's all for now.

Here is a rough mock-up for a widget for the upcoming 5 Second Game Drupal module that Morbus Iff and I are developing.

It doesn't do anything yet, but check back soon...

Basically, this mock-up is for one of several planned widgets that are meant to be embedded in blogs and other posts. As a user of the game, you would post a widget featuring your character (at the bottom), and other people viewing the widget could fight your character, using an anonymous character, or logging in and using their own.

Read on for more details...

This list is partly to inform interested others of my personal Drupal plans this month, partly to get feedback, and partly as a reminder for myself when I see my blog. The order is roughly in order of priority for me. We'll see how it actually pans out...

• Finish writing Drupal Multimedia! (I've finished 10 of 12 chapters, so I'm on the home stretch...)
• Upgrade Embedded Media Field to Drupal 6. (There are several folks working on this, who have been instrumental in current progress.)
• Write the engine for 5 Second Game. (Morbus Iff has jumped on board as a co-developer, helping to ensure the highest quality for this fun project!)
• Expand GetID3 functionality. (Thanks to Rob Loach for his ideas and push to get that going. The next stage of development for this is to create an API to better handle Metatag storage.)
• Make a tutorial for XSPF Playlist + Views recipe. (I just finished writing an awesome tutorial for this in the book, but want to make a video tutorial available, probably for Drupal Dojo.)

There are other projects on the back-burner I'd like to get to as well, such as upgrading some of the other modules I work on, creating official releases, etc. I plan to revise this list next month, and see where things are.

The engine for 5 Second Game is built on a Rock-Scissors-Paper concept. There are three stats, corresponding to that, and everything modifies that: character classes, skills, combat, etc. It is meant to be a fast paced, easy to grasp, infinitely extensible game.

The game is designed to be fit into an embeddable widget, so that users may post the game in a blog or other page, allowing others to quickly and easily play the game. A widget may highlight that user's character, challenging all takers.

The game lends itself well to guilds and the like as well, which are also built into the system. Characters may belong to one or more guilds, which govern themselves as desired by their players. The system honors the guilds' wishes, so that characters belonging to a specific user-formed guild might gain certain bonuses (or suffer penalties) according to the guild charters.

Additionally, servers may choose to allow characters to migrate between certain other servers. The character may be "translated" during migration, so that world/genre integrity is maintained (if desired). However, the simplicity of the system lends itself easily to that, if an administrator doesn't mind a gun-toting sheriff to arrive at the scene of a medieval tournament, or conversely if the player of a high elf wizard doesn't mind being translated to a nanobotic engineer on a space station.

You can play the game at http://5secondgame.com to see it in action (once it's built...)