Things have been a little crazy since my last post here, as I hinted at previously. The group project is long finished now, and was (moderately) successful. The project is/was ‘Stereoshift’, an open-source cross-platform networked extensible/lightweight music player. It turned out the project was stupidly ambitious, but it’s all done now and you can read a little more at stereoshift.net. Unfortunately, you may notice that there isn’t a download link or link to any code right now… there were some problems with licenses that none of us could be bothered to sort out. As such, you can just poke around the forum, the two wikis (developer and user) and Trac for now 
The project was only half the work though; I also had a fair few exams on some terrible, badly taught subjects. They went alright-ish.
After all that, I went on a search for a motorbike, and as a result am now the proud owner of a Suzuki GSF600S Bandit (2000 model). It’s been very bloody time consuming, but I’m happy with the result! That was the last big thing I had to do, and now I’ve got some free time to get working on things… Not for too long though, as I’m off on a trip around Europe on the bike as soon as I graduate!
Now, on to business: I’m starting a new game. I haven’t totally lost interest in CITS, I just feel like taking a break to develop something else. Hopefully the new code and design will be beneficial to CITS later, and the ‘diversity’ of two projects will look good on my portfolio 
The new project is an interesting one. It’s a simplified multiplayer RPG, concentrating on the theme of ‘adventure’.
The ‘simplified’ part of that relates to the interface and game mechanics; rather than your normal RPG ‘stats and skills’ system, where you work your arse off for another 2 points of dexterity and a level in lockpicking, there’ll be… well, none of that. Think Gauntlet rather than Baldur’s Gate. As for the controls, I’m aiming for a Zelda-ish system – directions and two buttons.
When I say ‘multiplayer’, I don’t mean ‘massively multiplayer’ at all; I want this to be a 4 player game, in which you adventure with your friends rather than complete strangers. Part of the reason MMORPGs annoy me is the presence of idiots. I want to completely sidestep that issue. I’m undecided on split-screen at the moment, it’s certainly an option though.
The main point of the game (and certainly the biggest design headache) is the ‘adventure’ aspect. I don’t want it to be a goblin-killing-fest, I don’t even want it to be totally story-driven. I’m aiming to give players an interesting and rich enough world that they want to explore it, and to have the quests and world generated around them to ensure an enjoyable experience. This will involve a lot of procedural generation of content (the world, characters, quests, plot etc…), which is something I’ve been interested in for a long time.
There are a couple of other design decisions I’ve made, which I’ll cover when I get round to ironing out their details.
Another point that may be of interest to you is that I’ll be programming the game using Test-Driven Development. Hopefully this will be enough to keep me interested, to push development forward constantly, and to ensure very high quality.
Now, off I go to get started!