After reading a book on Game Programming Patterns I was inspired to write a game that I used to play as a kid.  It was based on ANSI but since that technolgy is gone I've been working with an ASCII version instead.  I started working on this project not to learn advance graphics programming but more about game programming and core engine development.  During the develop of this project it shaped a lot of solid ideas I have had over the years.

The primary language for this engine is C++ using modern design patterns.  It also helped the book I was getting ideas from examples were all written in C++ so using the same language was very useful.  The other bonus is C++ is a very power language to use and I wanted to hone my skills as a C++ programmer.  Not much C++ is used in web development these days unless your writting web servers.