An instance of Grotto is now up at grotto.wileywiggins.com
This alpha version implements the basics, you can create a character, create polls, and traverse rooms, which leaves behind a trail of visits. Two players looking at the same room page at the same time will see each other’s names in the room text.
Next steps will be adding a simple game loop patterned after the classic game “hunt the wumpus”. This, along with the randomly generated rpg text is all a placeholder however- future versions will allow users to modify room and character text, turning the project into as much a spacialized basic web editor as it is a game. The real work then becomes as much an experiment in managing small anonymized communities as it is a technical experiment. I’m interested to see where the experiment will go.
This project uses Django which uses a cookie to tell if you are logged in or not and which “room” you are “in”. No user info is collected. This is a noncommercial product and I’ll be attaching an anti-capitalist software agreement before I open up the repository to others.
