What is Eleven?
It is a project to get the publicly released Glitch code back up and running; a strictly volunteer effort by "Glitchen" who want to see the revival of Glitch. We don't have any rights to the name Glitch as a brand, hence our name Eleven (after our eleven giants).
Couldn't you just put the released files on a server and run them?
No, because the code that allows the original client and server to talk to each other is missing. We are working with the parts of the puzzle we have (which, thanks to Tiny Speck, is a huge amount) while building some brand new pieces along the way. We have decided to use node.js to rebuild this layer, which is already proving more efficient than the original code. Since the code we have to make up for is, for all intents and purposes, "invisible", the game will look and function exactly as it did before.
Wait, wasn't Flash responsible for the demise of Glitch?
Not exactly. There were numerous practical and financial concerns afoot that were a bigger part of the shutdown. The performance issues were more due to memory leaks than Flash. For more details, including quotes from Cal, aka Bees!, from Tiny Speck, please refer to our blog post, Eleven, Flash, HTML5, and You. We've also made some excellent progress with regard to memory leaks, as explained in this post.
How will you get the game up and running?
To start with, we're taking a "goal line" approach: the minimum path to getting the game up and running, using the code base already supplied. Once the game is up and running, the project may continue with re-factoring, improving, possibly reducing the reliance on Adobe Flash. We have lots of ideas to continue development too!
How are you collaborating on this project?
Tiny Speck were gracious enough to give us an instance of their new product Slack to develop Eleven. It allows a project level chat, individual person to person chat, and sharing of editable documents with everything being searchable. We are also using Trello, which is a to-do list and task manager. It's very versatile, and ensures that everyone has an idea what tasks are being worked on, and what needs attention. This is a very large project, and it's even more useful that it integrates with Slack!
Why don't you have a playable demo yet?
Aside from the astonishing complexity of getting all the game functions back as they were with brand new code, there are several other factors we'd like to have in place before we open the doors. In order to preserve the original experience, we need to have the webapp functioning, which was not released with the code. The webapp was responsible for the single sign on abilities, hosting the auctions, forums, character customization (with automatic spritesheet generation), and of course the snaps! We're not saying that all of these things need to be 100% complete before we launch; we just want to make sure a good amount of basic functionality is in place before we can consider it.
So...when can I play?
We want it to be finished as much as you do! We're making significant progress with each month that passes, but we're currently unable to estimate a full release date. The fact that this is a volunteer effort is partly to blame for the ambiguity. Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates; our blog pushes updates out to these services, but you can also subscribe to us via RSS. Right now, Eleven is undergoing limited Alpha testing, but everyone is welcome to sign up on our forum. The forum account will be linked to your (eventual) game account, so if you'd like to reserve your username, sign up now!
Can I help?
For now we'd love more help from technical types, so head on over to the Contact Us page and drop us an e-mail. For everyone else, we'll have plenty of opportunities to help coming up, such as testing the forums and the game once it's to a point where we can let people play around. Your best bet in that case is to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for any other kind of opportunity we may think of.
