I’ve got final exams looming over my head like storm clouds on the horizon. But in between exam revision procrastination I’ve been thinking a bit about Tiny Frog Software’s next project.

Its going to be a roguelike game - Similar to Caverns of Underkeep but this time it’s going to be a downloadable title. Running the game on the desktop alows me to do alot of things that weren’t really practical in COU (like saves and game mods) I’ll be doing a free demo/pay for the full version type thing. And I’ll be targeting the Windows and MacOS platforms.

COU was written in Java, but I’ve decided to write this new project in C++ - Unfortunatly what’s really powerful about Java (and .Net) is that they provide a large framework for many common application tasks. When you go back to C++ you either have to write that functionality yourself or use external libraries.

Heres a list of tasks I need to be handled on my solution stack.

• Graphics / 2D / Hardware Accelerated : Simple and Fast Multimedia Library
• GUI / Game State Manager : Will develop in house as part of the framework
• Music and SFX : Bass (Licence Required €100 per platform)
• Scripting Language : LUA
  
• Internet Connectivity Library : Possible Solution - LibCurl

Getting this core framework togeather, operating and tested on Windows/MacOS will need to be done before building the actual application layer which will use all this nice stuff. It’ll probably be near the end of the year before my 2D game framework will be fully functional. That also gives me enough time to save money to contract out some art and music resources.