Current Mission Plan:

18-08-2017, 5 a.m.

To get fightingfantasy.net to be at a stage where it is self-sufficient enough to afford server hosting that will support an installation of Graph-Viz that is performance capable enough to handle multiple concurrent hits on self generating graphs of user adventures.

I will add my previous mission plan later, just for the record.

Currently fightingfantasy.net incurs costs of about £100 a year which I am funding myself.  The hosting I am acquiring for this does not allow installation of binaries onto it, and furthermore I am pretty sure that the budget option upgrade will not be capable of handling the highly processor intensive package that is GraphViz, should several large adventures be submitted to it simultaneously.

My first mission plan at the time seemed a distant goal.  It is now a reality (mostly).  This target, seems similarly unattainable.  I hope I can repeat my relative success.

If you wish to help fightingfantasy.net achieve its goal, please contact me for information on how to donate to us (I will add paypal button etc. later).

 

First Mission Plan:

04-09-2001

1. To devise a system whereby all existing Fighting Fantasy Books published may be expressed in a simple meta-language to be understandable by a programming language.
2. To write a suite of CGI programs that can read the meta-language and present them on the internet for play.
3. For the suite of internet programs to include a ‘user account’ system whereby players may play, leave and return to any book at any time.
4. For the game system to remove the possibility of cheating inherent in the books by simply returning to previous book references.
5. For the meta language to be sufficiently flexible and easy to use that further books may be written using any previous ‘rule’ or event series previously described in an existing published FF Book.
6. For the internet suite to provide a system whereby users may devise their own books online, and to allow other users access to play these books.
7. To provide a user community for exchange of opinions and general chat.

Amendments 08-02-2002

1. To provide facilities for users to write their own online books, and and publish them for the community to play.  (this differs from .5 in that originally I had envisioned a file sharing arrangement not an actual online system of sharing).
2. To extend the meta language so that users may devise their own game systems within the restriction that the system remains an adventure book format (e.g. Combat, and character representation and tests like Saving Throws may be defined, however the nature of the decision based book system remains).  (This was amended due to the fact SEL turned out to be much more capable than I had originally envisioned and was in no way tied to Fighting Fantasy – in fact it isn’t even tied to gamebooks at all and is a toy-language in its own right).
3. To provide an attractive and easy to use interface, both for playing and for writing books. (I still don’t feel I have achieved this given AJAX type functionality of major sites and sites developed by actual programming professionals).
4. Meta-Language to be referred to as Fighting Fantasy Meta Language. (well, ABML as it is now is much more powerful than being tied to Fighting Fantasy).

So there you go.  That was what I formalised of my project a couple of years into starting it (I set up a rudimentary forum in 1999 using YAPP).

Currently I am still extremely dissatisfied with its development and can honestly only say I feel I have developed a ‘proof of concept’.  It works, but in so many way it just shouldn’t…

I may, if I get the motivation, develop a more detailed mission plan in this document, to break down some of the details of what I feel I need to achieve in order to make this site a realistic prospect for authors and readers alike to donate to.