Oktober5 Game

Multiplayer online game of galactic conquest

Oktober5 is my toe-dipping into the world of online multiplayer games. Ever since I started programming on the Commodore 64, I've been creating space combat, space exploration, and galactic conquest games. Oktober5 is me stepping back in time and it's a lot of fun.

I initially wrote the game in Python on Google App Engine. My wife created the graphics and some of the more complex math algorithms. The first iteration leaned heavily on jQuery, a JavaScript library I had never used before. While proving useful in simplifying JavaScript tasks, my heavy use of jQuery ultimately bloated the code and bogged down the browser and user experience.

I'm now rewriting the game in Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Java; so, while it will all be JavaScript in the end, it will be more optimized and I'll take more care not to overdo it.

Click here to play the old python version of the game.

Background

I've been programming since I was 11, creating websites and web applications for the past 3 years, and liking almost every moment of it. Besides working on my own applications, I like to teach people how to program.

My Kind of Development

I like to create functionally simple web applications for positive social change. Programming is an art. More craftsmanship than engineering, great web application development requires a delicacy and freedom to produce. This should not require a computer science degree or knowledge of multiple, complex layers of technology. Above all, creating web applications should be fun.