Thanks for the kind words. In the grand scheme of things though, I'm strongly banking on the next 3 months being ones I acquire more actual skills to bring to arms versus mainly research in game design concepts and mass organizing of this 3(Not that the latter 2 bits haven't been important in their own right...game design concept pondering will be an ongoing thing all the way I reckon).
-This Mantis thingie looks interesting---especially since I'd never heard of it or anything like it! I can envision a future when this somewhat replaces(Well...supplements...) just typing everything on notepad then emailing it to myself or some such as I'd figured prior. Bookmarked! Definitely, if you have any other links to similar things feel free to dispel my ignorance...I'm sure there are any number of handy things out there I've not the slightest exposure to.
-As I mention in the RGRD topic the other day that seems to have spun out of control, I've also some musings for MANY good practices that could be adopted using the streaming sites gaining pep nowadays...like Livestream I think is a biggie from NeoGAF's gaming board. If it could be configured properly, not only could people watch and comment on a Live playthrough with Tile versions or otherwise unlike Crawl's online ASCII spectating, but even more importantly in my mind, it could be used to do Live coding, animating, tiling, sound/music composition, etc in the form of workshops or being able to observe ongoing development of something and then contribute live without the barriers of OS, installs, time to muck around with, and so on. The potential utility value is huge and something I will surely need to look into so that things can work better for what I do and other people down the line as well.
-LOL, at this rate I couldn't give up on C++, at least even if I wanted to, since I already staked out my claim on RAGe and C++ lib is what powers the awesome thing. As to needing better books, currently, I have NO books but a mass assortment of links to online ones, tutorials, and guides. In my mind, I'd like to think I'll stand a better chance of purposefully decoding C++ so as to understand and visibly manipulate/get immediate feedback from the RAGe engine moreso than aimlessly typing at it to no specific end. The engine is pretty much unrestricted from what I can tell in large part and the manual explains the gist of a fair bit...but there's nothing else online with it so I might as well be rigging up something largely from scratch. When the time comes, I'm going to need to draft some people around here and over on Shrapnel to really see what's what and what needs/could need doing. You know the world is a crazy place when I of all people technically wind up on what would count as the cutting edge of engine manipulation since it is 1. Newish 2. Unknown as there's never been a concerted effort in the slightest on stacking it up against the rest.
-I know nothing of Linux and don't really have much in the way of links to boot, but obviously that'll have to change. Pascal and Java are on the list as well for different projects in the big one...though Java has a somewhat loftier place as another project I look to help out in some respects when I can is JavaClassicRPG
http://jcrpg.blogspot.com/As to Plan B, while I never said it was a good plan, here's what it amounts to:
Yet again organize all my bookmarks at all relevant to game design and the related skillset---only this time in the form of a forum post on a site or so where I know there's knowledgeable folk afoot. Within this Gigantic post, which will hopefully prove to be very helpful to any other people interested in getting into game development, I will solicit people to help me "fill in the gaps" on the topics where I'm missing something(I've nothing on procedual generation), or everything(I'm POSITIVE there are magic tricks to learn/steal from the Demoscene people for Roguelikes and games in general along with the likes of that kkreiger project), as well as if there are any books they see as essential whose contents do not happen to be covered properly within the links to free online readings and such---goal being to minimize book buys overall as I'm broke and such though the plan is to have another round at it once I get a proper new PC sometime after October this year with the funds I'll hopefully have left after getting a friend to assemble a solid one.
Once they've confirmed additions or things of that nature...well...then there's nothing left by my own mad rush at the lot of main actors at the onset(Possibly in the form of this Livesteam dealie since this would likely be one of those 10+ hours things everytime/everydayish). If I get stuck on RAGe/Python 3.x/Squirrel/etc, then jump to a Tiling program, if stuck on said Tiling program, immediately jump to a Sound one, and so on until I come back around to the original offender or hit a breakthrough streak on one of the many that I hope to click with. Something akin to ruthless, savage pragmatism is the general notion. Besides, this should help prevent a common roadblock I've head people have in terms of getting stuck on "something" then the whole thing goes up in smoke at agonizing on it---in that I'll hop to the next thing that's related as soon as things go horribly wrong before it gets under my skin too much, well, unless I wind up stuck on everything.
Otherwise, another Darkhorse engine candidate has entered my frame of mind to compete with RAGe's C++ lib mystery and Elemental's Python monstrosity in terms of Roguelikes and figuring good stuff in general---Preditor! I love this video so much...this kind of video quality would be my dream on streaming or youtube, at leas the HD one.
http://www.torchlightgame.com/developerblogs/2009/08/28/preditor-scripting-101-part-1-of-3/
