legacy, in java

We've decided to focus on Legacy, and to do it in Java.

Java was a bit of a tough choice for me. But it has several big advantages over c++:

• I'm familiar with it enough that I can be effective immediately, so is Nick.
• It ports easily to mobile devices (trivially, in the case of Android), and to the web.
• It's a great language to write a server in.
• Faster iteration, and higher overall development velocity.

It has a couple disadvantages too:

• Not quite as performant.
• Can't release on consoles.

But fact is, we are a two man shop and we don't need the extra speed; we won't hit those limits. And consoles were never going to be our primary market. Java makes sense. We'll be using the libgdx game library to bootstrap our efforts. It won't be a perfect fit but it seems to provide enough value to be worth the weight, and it should make our path to mobile very simple.

I am so, so excited to be working on Legacy. It almost doesn't feel like working at all. But there is a big change for me. Up till now, Legacy has been purely a passion project. I could work on whatever interested me the most and avoid the things that didn't. But now that we're on a clock and burning resources, we need to be very focussed on making something fun that we can show people, as fast as possible.

More on that soon.