Nine milestones in a day, and a world that stays put

RetroQuest started properly today. Not a prototype you poke at on one machine: a server that owns the world, a zone everybody shares, and a client that has to ask permission like everybody else.

The first shared zone, with more than one person in it.

A server that owns the world. The rule from the first commit: the server decides. Where you are, what you hit, what you got for hitting it. The client asks, and draws the answer. That is the part that is hardest to bolt on later, so it went in first.

Something to show for a fight. Melee combat, monsters worth swinging at, experience and levels. Then persistence, so none of it dies with the process, and regeneration for sitting down afterwards. Races, classes, and the seven attributes underneath them all.

Things to carry, things to cast. Items, equipment, loot and an inventory to keep them in. Spells, a spellbook, and the classes that read from it.

Casting, and the spellbook it came out of.

An interface you can sit down in front of. A free cursor, a window bar, scrolls you can scribe. Chat and grouping. Merchants, a scribe and a bank, so there is somewhere for your coin to go.

The rest of the night went to the things the old emulators got right and nobody should invent twice: pathing from their grids, factions and dialogue from their rules, pets, quests, tradeskills with their formulas, zone lines, monsters that cast, binding and Gate.

One thing worth admitting: the character creation screen refused to open for most of the day. You only find that by trying to sit down and play your own game.