I have an idea for a game - but this is a game with a limited market. Programmers. If you're a programmer, you know the feeling. Stuck in a job, itching to do something creative with your powers, but stuck in the soup that is what passes for organization in your organization. Free yourselves, and prepare for The Realm!

The general idea is thus: you are given the operating system to your space ship. It has a rudimentary command line or partially graphical interface, allowing you to interact in a basic way with the "universe" this multiplayer game places you in. From there, you can code your ship in any number of ways - inventing new purpulsion methods (several already being supplied as "modules"), weapons systems, targing systems, scanners, you name it. The thing is - you have to write it yourself, or use existing open-source code to get what you want.

Take the example of Dash Riprock. This poor soul has nothing but the basic ship - impulse purpulsion for in- system travel, and a fairly standard warp system for system-to-system travel, running at around 20c. Weapons are standard X-Ray lasers, and a missile pod. Communications are where it gets specific - and real world. OGG audio w/ DIVX video, using GPG public/ private key encryption. P2P (line of sight) communications are automatically secure. Fleets of ships can share processing power - distributed computing at a galactic (digital) level.

- GothAlice of kyhmforums.