The Open2 Engine - part 7 - Dream The Impossible Dream

    Okay, so the last week has laid a lot of groundwork for my Open2 Engine project.  Time to look way, way down the road at where I want to go with all of this.
    I've always liked to take the long view, and so what exactly do I want the "Open2 Engine" to be when it's all said and done?  Well, that's actually a pretty crazy thing, because I want it to be something that - at the moment - I can't do/ create.  I actually see the Open2 System as comprising several parts...

1. Rulebooks - these are all the OGL resources, and the games of my own that I make from them.
2. Worlds - while having a generic game gives you some flexibility to adapt it to your own world, having a specific world also really helps to make the game come to life.  I want to create a few settings/ game worlds and also provide them free/openly (under a Creative Commons license I'm thinking).
3. Modules - I also want to make some adventures and campaigns; in an ideal world that were system-neutral, you could take the story itself and add whatever specific Rulebook you wanted to it (that is hard though because mechanics do drive story to some degree).
4. Engines - this is the biggest part, the "Engines" are how the reader/ user interacts with all this stuff, and there are several I want to make...
• Bookworm is a simple reading app, basically the ability to show and hide text I did in yesterday's post.
• PChelper is a reader that also has code to create and play characters.
• GMhelper is a reader that also helps GMs create and run adventures.
• Listener is a parser-based Interactive Narrative editor and player.
• Weaver is a hypertext-based IN editor and player; basically Twine.
• VizTalk is a visual novel-based IN editor and player.
• HCDcrawler is a game interface for an RPG inspired by the SSI "Gold Box" AD&D games like Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds.

   Is that an overly-ambitious goal?  Yeah, it sure is.  I don't care though.  I'll figure it out one piece at a time.  It's also going to be very tricky to structure, I want this to be very flexible, something that you can mix and match - which means I'm going to have to carefully structure my code and data in a way that will allow that to happen.
    So, from here I'm going to shift from looking at the project in general to examining each specific component and how it will relate to the others.  Also, I've been posting every day for about a week now, which has left me a little tired :)  So on Monday I'm going to take a look at the 5e SRD - how the game is structured, how that structure compares to other OGL games, and an "under the hood" "deep dive" into building off that structure to create a game of my own.
    Until then, I hope you have a good weekend!