Current Tech Challenges - March 2026

Current Tech Challenges

There will be a page detailing all the technology in use once it’s up and running, but in the meantime I’m keeping a lot of the challenges, in the expectation that I’ll be documenting progress, and problems solved.

This log entry details isuses with the current technology in place. It’s as good a place as any for me to record what needs doing, and also it gives others an opportunity to offer known solutions.

All part of “working in public”, and also to remind myself how far I’ve come while the actual game isn’t running yet. Also it means that anyone following the project can forewarn me if I’ve made any especially bad choices.

Development website and Azure

The game’s development website is the one you’re reading now. It’s a static website hosted on Microsoft Azure, written in markdown which is then turned into web pages by Hugo.

This is because I can see the benefits of this being hosted with such a provider, especially if several games are run in parallel, so I can “copy and paste” the configuration into a new setup.

The DNS for the domain this website, and this game, uses is also hosted on Azure. But this seems to work more by accident than intention. I’ll document how that works to help others, but I expect to only make time for that when settings up a second game.

Wiki

A wiki that players can use and update seems essential, for this kind of game ensuring that everyone has a “common operating picture” is crucial - and also that maintaining that doesn’t fall to a single game organiser.

I’ve started on this, I’ll share links once it’s got a little more material on it and configuration around it.

Flood map

A key part of the game is an authoritative map of flooding, with the following requirements:

• be approximately true to reality, but minor discrepancies can be waved away.
• user alterable, so it can react to player actions. In one of the playtests a team tried to build a “bridge” from where they’d evacuated to - in the emergency - back to the village they’d left, a mile or two away. If successful, that would have made a difference, and would need to be reflected on the map shared by everyone.
• potentially have “local” or user-specific versions, so that a user can track future estimations of where the water might be.

Mailing list server for updates

I think the best way to keep players informed of updates to the game, such as the results of moves and so on, is by using a mailing list server. All the solutions I’ve looked at, that are existing services, seem to be aimed at newsletter distribution, which is more open and simplistic than the requirements for a game.

This will probably be just for emails from the game runners to the players, but also it might be where players communicate with each other, and where significant announcements are made within a team. Regardless of where the majority of the game happens, such as Discord or a similar online forum, I think email is the best way to “push” notifications to players and keep them engaged.

Where the game, and discussion around the game, happens

Optimistically I’m keeping my options open, so this should support both real-time and asynchronous communication ( like an online web forum, or a WhatsApp discussion group ). Discord is the most obvious choice, but there are many questions around that platform, who and what is allowed on it, and how it might develop in future.

Therefore this would be something like Discourse, which seems to meet all the requirements.

Of course this is all very ambitious, rather than just throwing ideas about the game onto a Discord server and getting started. But I’m very conscious of how the right platform choice now could affect all sorts of workloads and potential solutions down the line.