So my mission was to release a basic version of Hack24 before Christmas, this is now seeming unlikely!  I do have a 24 hour GameJam coming up which I plan to abuse and work on Hack24.  I may just release the game on a single platform first (probably Android).  The main delay has actually been the Christmas spirit and wanting to do Christmas things 🙂

So, back on to the progress. I have started building the user registration server in NodeJS. The original Hack24 used ASP.net which worked well but felt a bit of an overkill.  As I want to rapidly prototype the game, NodeJS seemed a good way to go.  Mongo is being used as the datastore and Socket.IO will handle real-time movement tracking.

For the MVP I need the following:

• User can Register
• User can Login
• User can post high scores
• User can see high scores
• Users in-game location is stored
• Game world stored

Nice to have:

• Reset password
• User items
• User Level
• Admin  panel
• User chat

In the original I used Apples GameCenter to do a lot of this, however as this is now multiplatform, I cant do this.  I also don’t really want to mix up Google Play users with GameCenter users and Steam users, it could all get a bit confusing.

Once this is done, I can then focus on finishing the game mechanics