The past week or so I’ve been putting my time heavily in developing the Chimera Engine (I had taken a bit of a hiatus there… yeah 6 1/2 months but I’m back at it now) and I’m happy to report that I have pretty much wrapped programming on the first area of the engine, the profile. I’ve coded in several new features which you can read about in the (Project Log). I haven’t updated the demo yet, but that’s on my list of things to do this week so hopefully any non-beta testers who want to check it out as well will be able to soon.

You may be wondering what’s left to do before the engine is fully complete, so let me detail that briefly. The database architecture is set so this now allows me to build interactive item/equipment shops where you simply click a buy button to add it to your characters inventory. I need to build this up, it should be a quick thing to do overall because all of the tools to actual handle transfering items and equipment are already created.

A profile registration from also has to be created, and will need a lot of checks to make sure users are filling it out right, that they aren’t signing up multiple characters, and all that stuff. There will be some tools that need to be created here to insert all of this data into the profile database but more likely simply designing it to be user friendly and easy to navigate and fill out will be harder than the actual programming side of it. Along with this I also need to integrate all the stat stuff into the forum, and write up some tools to handle all the math for the user.

Finally I need a full backend GUI with more tools to give Admins super easy access to all the data in the databases (profiles, items, equipment, ships, etc) from here Admins will be able to edit any profile quickly and easily when updating (the system will handle all the math when a character levels up and all that jazz) Admins will also be able to adjust the availability and price of all items and equipment and lock down travel to any location (since traveling from planet to planet will be automated as well).