tinyMMO the Second

In early 2012, it had been 2 years since I released tinyMMO the First.  Nobody was playing it anymore and changes to the Google App Engine architecture had broken much of the functionality.  In those two years I had entered a few game jams and I felt that my skills were now up to the task of making a proper game out of it.

Unfortunately, after moving to Sweden I had forgotten to switch my power supply from 110 to 220.  What happens when you forget something like that?

This.  This happens.

All of the source code went poof.  Not to be deterred, I forged ahead.  I could still download the client source from the web and also the maps.  App Engine now offered something called the Channel API for streaming content to clients.  Its basically an implementation of Comet, or long polling.  Not great but much better than HTTP for latency.  I put together a new server and got most things working again.

It lives!

I worked, but I was starting to run into some serious limitations of App Engine.  No threading and no web sockets meant I was not going to be able to make the game that I really wanted.  And then this happened:

Same but better.  Much, much better.

It was time for some soul-searching.  I had to admit to myself that these guys had just accomplished exactly what I was going for.  I wanted to be the first clean, fun little browser MMO.  The keyword is first.  I was no longer going to be first.  It may seem like a small setback but to petty little me it was the death of my enthusiasm for the project.  So ended development of tinyMMO the Second.