I’ve added a simple set of forums to the site; logins are shared between this blog and the forum.
Casual comments here on the blog still only require an e-mail address, but you’ll have to actually create an account to post to the forums. Sorry about that; it’s a requirement of the forum software I’m using.
Anyhow, I’m closing off comments to the static game pages to keep them from becoming any more ridiculously lengthy, so we can have some proper threaded discussions now, and hopefully make those static pages load a little faster. 
Check out the new forums. If you’re having trouble with a VectorStorm game, or want to make comments or suggestions, or just make idle chatter with like-minded individuals, then this is the new place to do it!
So now that the PCG competition is over, it’s time to consider future directions for MMORPG Tycoon. Development will be slowish, of course, as it’s really a side project for me. And I do expect to continue to do occasional “Game in a Week”s, just to stay fresh.
But on MMORPG Tycoon, I have a pretty good idea of what I’ll implement for version 1.1.
More beneath the fold.
Continue reading “MMORPG Tycoon development timeline”
The results are in!
I’d like to congratulate everyone who entered the competition; there were lots and lots of really good entries, many of which I’m still playing in my spare time!
So how did MMORPG Tycoon do? Well, by the current count, it looks like it came in seventh out of sixty entrants; not bad at all, considering how badly it needs a hold-you-by-the-hand tutorial to help out starting players!
For those who haven’t yet played the various games entered in the competition, I highly recommend you check them out. Every last one of them is an interesting play!
Just a quick note that I’ve uploaded the final new version in the 1.0 series of MMORPG Tycoon. 1.0.11 adds an “Options” screen which allows you to change the game resolution, enable/disable shaders, modify the music volume, enable/disable the rotating arrow cursor, etc.
I’ve also fixed a bug which occasionally resulted in offline or unsubscribed players appearing on the map, after loading a saved game.
Other little improvements.. I’ve slightly optimised the bloom shader, so it should run a wee bit faster than it did before. There are some improvements to the mouse UI (clicking through the toolbars if you miss a button has been fixed), and the little ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons on most of the report screens have been replaced with up and down arrow icons. Much more attractive that way, I think.
Saved games from 1.0.10 should be fully compatible with the new 1.0.11 build; just copy the SlotOne.sav (etc) files into the new version’s Data/Saves directory.
It was a little silly that MMORPG Tycoon didn’t support them before, but I’ve just released version 1.0.8, which does now support saved games; your game is automatically saved every time you exit (either using the ‘close’ button on the window, or exitting back to the title screen, within the game).
So if you’re interested in this, go grab it from the link in the sidebar!
Next on my plate is in-game adjustment of resolution, fullscreen, shader, and other options settings. (Yes, music volume and the rotating cursor will both be part of that!). Once all that’s out of the way, I’ll be moving forward on the big new gameplay features planned for version 1.1.
And maybe I’ll even do another Game in a Week, sometime soon.
Quick note that due to a mistake I made in previous OS X builds, MMORPG Tycoon wouldn’t run on OS X 10.4 as I claimed it would. I’ve put up an 1.0.7 build for OS X which adds 10.4 compatibility.
If you’re running OS X 10.5, there’s no reason to upgrade; there are no major changes other than 10.4 compatibility.
So it’s been about a week since I released MMORPG Tycoon for the TIGSource procedural generation competition, so it’s probably about time I wrote about what went right and wrong.
But all the same, I don’t feel right calling this a “Post-Mortem”, as I’m not actually finished with MMORPG Tycoon. In fact, I’m taking a break from coding on it right now. But I’d like to talk a little about where I think it is right now, and where I see development going.
What went right:
- Having the “Procedural Generation” theme nicely focused my attention on the procedural aspects of MMORPG Tycoon, including the prebuilt level configuration, the names of the various players, the names and sizes of the competition MMORPGs, etc. This theme also convinced me to avoid spending time letting the player change any of these procedurally generated factors. This is why, for example, the player cannot unzone water, or change the names of player classes or monster types, simplifying the UI work dramatically.
- Substantial hustling to get the basic game framework up and running quickly. I had the zoomable map interface and basic zoning within the first week. The second two weeks were taken writing the user AI, and the final week was spent writing UI classes. Most of the reports you see were written within the final 48 hours of the competition.
- Grabbing this game concept on the first day of the competition really meant that I didn’t waste any time trying to figure out what to do. Being able to think about it for a few days before the compeition started also helped me hit the ground running, and get the most work possible done during the one month limit.
- Also, I happened to have some time off from work during the competition period. This was purely by chance; I’d arranged it long before the competition was announced, but it gave me some extra time to work on my entry, and that polish really showed up in the final entry.
What went wrong:
- The big “went wrong” issue here was that I hadn’t accounted for how long it would take me to implement the mouse control and UI features. I wasted a lot of time trying to get the mouse scroll wheel to behave properly (needed input system modifications to support multiple ‘clicks’ per frame), and to implement a vector graphic UI system from scratch. This UI implementation time thing really sucked up most of my time, and stopped me from tuning the MMORPG simulation nearly as well as I should have, and prevented me from implementing some very important “Quality of Life” features.
What’s still to do:
- The big obvious features that are missing are: Fullscreen, changing video resolution, changing music volume (or disabling it altogether), and the big one: save game support. I’m working on these right now, and hopefully should have a 1.1 version within a week with all of these implemented.
- As for the game itself, there are some real bits that should get fixed. Raising the box price of the game doesn’t slow people from purchasing the game as much as it should. Raising the subscription price of the game makes people unsubscribe more than it should. Class and monster attack/defense ratings aren’t taken into account when generating “too easy/too hard” complaints. And the “Issues” report is much too vague anyway; I need to find a way to really hilight the problem areas on the map view. I’d like to revamp the way that roads work, so you actually get a real road network, instead of merely paint roads directly between two buildings. User AI should be more aware of roads. Users should have marital and social statuses displayed in the “Inspect” dialog box. The game should generate names for regions and towns. The player should be able to change the names of virtually anything in the game. Maybe allow more in-depth construction of towns, or at least procedurally generate real town floorplans, instead of the current iconic “there is a town here” indicator. Etc.
So overall, I’m extremely happy with how the compo edition of MMORPG Tycoon came out, but there’s still plenty of stuff left to do. But I’m still actively working on it, and so hopefully there’ll be some exciting updates soon!
Just a quick note for those who follow my front page articles (you know who you are), that I’ve made a number of crash fixes and game tunings to MMORPG Tycoon. Fixes a couple of crashes, a number of niggling interface bugs, and completely overhauls player reactions to your MMORPG. You can grab the updated build from the usual spot in the sidebar.
I’ll post a post-mortem once I’ve had a few days away from it. Though I’m sure I’ll eventually return to this one to fix up some of the more obvious shortcomings (save games, etc)
Well, it was a bit of a push, but my entry for the TIGSoure Procedural Generation Competition is finally done! (Actually, it was done about an hour ago. I always forget how long it takes to update pages everywhere on the web)
Go grab MMORPG Tycoon binaries from the sidebar, under “Full Games”, and leave me feedback about what you like an don’t like from it!
