http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Discussing games, one brightly glowing comment at a time en-US Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:39:34 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.1 q http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/search.php http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings/page/2#post-494 Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:56:23 +0000 pokelover 494@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>I would have to go with 1, changing to 2 when desired </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/another-glitch-in-the-forum#post-493 Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:53:20 +0000 Awesome Dino 493@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p><a href="http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/5933/vscssbug2.png" rel="nofollow">http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/5933/vscssbug2.png</a> </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/milestone-for-myself#post-492 Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:48:01 +0000 Awesome Dino 492@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Putting it up on the main site would probably be the smarter thing to do. I rarely check the forums myself because of the low activity. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/milestone-for-myself#post-491 Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:41:26 +0000 trevor 491@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>So I've been playing with a lot of stuff over the past few months, but I'm starting to feel like I really need to put my feet over the fire, and so I'm setting myself a milestone to meet.</p> <p>My goal is to produce a fully playable miniature version of MMORPG Tycoon 2, representing a portion of the full game's feature set, and to have it done by the end of the first week in January. Let's call it January 4th.</p> <p>I'm calling this miniature version: "MMORPG Tycoon 2: Starting Area". In this, the player is tasked with creating a new starting area for an established MMORPG. He has a particular budget to create the area, and is paid according to the number of subscribers, level 5 or higher, who graduate out of his starting area and into the rest of the game, potentially with bonuses for happy subscribers and/or for generating forum buzz.</p> <p>This version will primarily be based around the building and theming of a single region, and setting out quests and other activities for the new players to take part in. The player will get both on-foot and on-graveship controls. The third game mode I've mentioned in the past will not be included.</p> <p>Crossing fingers. Hope I can pull it all together into a fun experience within this timeframe! :)</p> <p>(And yes, I expect to distribute it once I've finished it, to get people's reactions to it. Perhaps I'll only link to it here in the forum, as I did with the 1.1 development version.. or perhaps I'll actually put it up on the main site. Haven't really decided about that yet. We'll see how it looks closer to the date.) </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/loselose#post-490 Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:23:49 +0000 trevor 490@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>I've seen the coverage of Lose/Lose.. it looks like a headline-grabbing "OMG controversy" gimmick; the game videos which have been posted don't look particularly compelling to me. The gimmick seems designed to ensure that nobody ever plays the game, and so it probably wasn't worth spending a lot of time crafting an interesting game experience. That is, it's a game which is designed to be talked about, not played. (Not that that's a bad thing; just seems to be the intention of the author to garner media attention from the controversy over the gimmick)</p> <p>It's worth mentioning that this type of "do damage to your computer by playing this game" gimmick has been used before in a couple of other games, most notably:</p> <p>"Doom as a tool for system administration" (<a href="http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/</a>) by Dennis Chao, in which you must play Doom to kill system processes.</p> <p>and</p> <p>"Forbidden.exe" (<a href="http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/forbidden_exe" rel="nofollow">http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/forbidden_exe</a>) by Petri Purho.. which I really can't describe without spoiling utterly, but which toys with the same concepts as Lose/Lose, but is (IMHO) a much more compelling and effective experience. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/account-purges#post-489 Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:40:59 +0000 Awesome Dino 489@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Woop woop </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/loselose#post-488 Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:37:31 +0000 Awesome Dino 488@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Lose/Lose is a Mac-only game!</p> <p><a href="http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/loselose.zip" rel="nofollow">http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/loselose.zip</a></p> <p>There is no objective in Lose/Lose. You are given a spaceship, a gun and a horde of aliens that are deadly to the touch. Your gamer-instinct says "Kill them to survive!". Upon death, however, you notice a filename. A filename of the very same thing you've been working hard on for days. Curious, you look in the folder containing it. The file is gone. You panic, checking every subfolder, every nearby folder, the recycle bin, you even Google ways to do system-wide searches for a certain file. It's gone, however, and you have no idea what happened.</p> <p>Lose/Lose is a game where killing an enemy deletes a file. Dying deletes the game. It deletes every side-scrolling shooter rule from itself and punishes the player for failing AND winning. I suppose you could call it an interactive virus. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/game-translations-to-danish#post-487 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:25:21 +0000 Kris015 487@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Nope haha :D Close though ^^ </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/game-translations-to-danish#post-486 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:51:48 +0000 Awesome Dino 486@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Something tells me Kris is derived from Kristoffer. Am I correct in that assumption? </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-485 Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:06:39 +0000 wickedgenius 485@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Thought you might be, I signed up in October 07. I didn't find MMORPG Tycoon there though, I have a nack for finding good games by small developers. I don't tend to post there much really, more of a lurker. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-484 Sat, 15 Aug 2009 03:59:20 +0000 Awesome Dino 484@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>I've been lurking Facepunch for some time before I finally registered in November 2006, so yeah. I reckon that's where you heard of MMORPG Tycoon as well? </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-483 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:27:02 +0000 wickedgenius 483@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Lua may be a very nice way to start so good luck. Also can I guess correctly that you are a facepuncher or not? </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-482 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:44:49 +0000 Awesome Dino 482@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Thanks guys. I've recently begun learning Garry's Mod Lua, so I'd get a better feel for object-oriented programming in general. It definitely helped me understand more concepts, so hopefully I'll be able to do some minor C++ work afterwards. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-481 Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:27:10 +0000 trevor 481@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>I've heard good things about the Sams books, but haven't ever read one of them myself.</p> <p>Personally, I was mostly self-taught. I taught myself plain C first (from a book called "The Mac C Primer Plus", no longer in print, and no longer relevant to any modern computers as it was focused on learning within the Mac System 5-6 APIs), and then (after a few years) moved up to The Waite Group's C++ Primer Plus (which is more of a textbook/reference manual than a really good teacher). And of course, before I even started with C I had many years of experience with BASIC, PASCAL, and a few more minor, specialist languages.</p> <p>But the big thing is experience. You definitely want to start learning early, if you can. I think I started with C when I was about 14, and had moved on to using C++ about a year before I reached university, where an entry-level C++ course really solidified my understanding of C++. Or at least, taught me the theory behind how best to fit the concepts together (as I mentioned above, I'd learned C++ from what was effectively a reference manual, so I knew how the language worked, but didn't know why it was designed to work that way). Your first several projects will be awful; everyone's first several projects are. :) But you have to get them out of the way so that I have the experience to make the great projects, afterward.</p> <p>These days, the popular wisdom is that programmers should learn an object-oriented language like C++ or Java first, that learning procedural languages like C or PASCAL ruin you for ever structuring proper object-oriented code. I don't buy that, myself. But object-oriented purists would probably point at my code as evidence to support their claims. :) </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-480 Sun, 19 Jul 2009 09:36:44 +0000 wickedgenius 480@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>May I suggest a book by Sams publishing: <a href="http://www.informit.com/imprint/index.aspx?st=61091" rel="nofollow">http://www.informit.com/imprint/index.aspx?st=61091</a></p> <p>They are much like the dummies books but use language which doesn't make you feel incredibly stupid.</p> <p>Also try learncpp.com I found it to be a great help and use it regularly to check something I can't remember.</p> <p>I have learnt what I know on my own and I'm just 17 years old using these two resources (and I can do a fair bit of console stuff with what I know, in fact I'm just starting work on a rogue like game). </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/trevor-how-did-you-learn-c#post-479 Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:02:30 +0000 Awesome Dino 479@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>I've been trying(and failing incredibly much) to do some minor things and I can't seem to figure out an effective way. I'm thinking of just getting a book but I'm unsure which, and I'm still too young for any education on it. So, how did you learn it? </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/css-glitch#post-478 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:20:15 +0000 Awesome Dino 478@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p><a href="http://imgkk.com/i/nygvxEKK.png" rel="nofollow">http://imgkk.com/i/nygvxEKK.png</a></p> <p>It's gone now however. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/css-glitch#post-477 Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:55:02 +0000 wickedgenius 477@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>When not logged in the &quot;RSS feed for this topic button&quot; is in the same place as the red swirly plant thingy at the bottom. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/css-glitch#post-476 Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:29:56 +0000 trevor 476@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Imageshack has apparently been hacked (according to information I read elsewhere), and currently seems to be unresponsive. Can you post the image somewhere else, or describe the problem that you&#39;re seeing? </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/css-glitch#post-475 Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:33:52 +0000 Awesome Dino 475@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p><a href="http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4343/vscssbug.png" rel="nofollow">http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4343/vscssbug.png</a></p> <p>Just thought I&#39;d let you know. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/moving-to-amazon-cloudfront-downloads#post-474 Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:50:19 +0000 trevor 474@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Also.. if anyone bumps into a broken download link, please let me know (but I think they&#39;re all okay) </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/moving-to-amazon-cloudfront-downloads#post-473 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:19:38 +0000 trevor 473@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>There we go, done. Now we let it run for a few weeks and see how it goes. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/moving-to-amazon-cloudfront-downloads#post-472 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:43:21 +0000 trevor 472@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Just a quick note that I&#39;m in the middle of migrating the main VectorStorm downloads (the ones available via the &quot;Get-Games&quot; links) over to Amazon&#39;s CloudFront service. This should result in faster downloads, and also stop the site from collapsing if/when a major news portal links to us, as it did back when MMORPG Tycoon 1 was initially released.</p> <p>Or at least, that&#39;s the theory. This is kind of a trial thing, to see how moving the downloads elsewhere affects load and bandwidth usage on the main webserver. Should be finished migrating download links within a few hours. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-471 Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:43:44 +0000 wickedgenius 471@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Spore&#39;s procedural generation isn&#39;t worth looking at. To sum it up reasonably well it&#39;s pretty naff. I think trevor is doing really well anyway. He doesn&#39;t need to be Sporing it up at all. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-470 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:57:19 +0000 Kris015 470@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>How about games like Spore and Oblivion? You know with the procedural generation of stuff from Spore and the RPG from oblivion </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-469 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:04:58 +0000 trevor 469@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Well.. I know that Squidi had a similar idea (although he designed it very differently and never actually started development on it), but I think that the main reason why there aren&#39;t any games like this already out there is that it&#39;s actually really difficult to make a game about making a game without either becoming hugely abstract (see Petri Purho&#39;s &quot;The Truth About Game Development&quot; for an example of making it extremely abstract), or becoming unwieldy and non-fun.</p> <p>I mean, I&#39;ve been working on this concept on and off for well over a year now, and I still haven&#39;t really nailed down how to make the game fun.. though I think I&#39;m getting a lot closer, and have been being heavily inspired by things like Dwarf Fortress (which I wrote about earlier) and Minecraft and The Sims. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-468 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:48:37 +0000 Kris015 468@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Kewl, i wonder why no one has ever thought about making this before you...<br /> You know the &quot;professional&quot;. Not that you aren&#39;t, but you know what i mean... Like Blizzard and Valve. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-467 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:58:58 +0000 trevor 467@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Well, the game isn&#39;t playable at all, yet; it&#39;s really just a tech demo at this stage (although most of the gameplay code from version 1.1 is now in the new codebase, most of it isn&#39;t yet being used). And the next couple of big features I need to add are also tech demo sorts of features (procedural buildings and plants, and then more customisation to the world). The gameplay will come after all that.</p> <p>So the release won&#39;t be for several months, although I am planning to put together a basic tech demo once I have procedural buildings working, to see how well it runs for everyone.</p> <p>On my (reasonably fast) laptop, it currently takes about five seconds to build the world on startup. But that&#39;s because it&#39;s currently generating perlin noise to set up the heightmap. In the end, I&#39;m expecting to have the user (or his simulated designers) place terrain features into the world (&quot;mountain here, put a lake there, a forest over here, etc&quot;), and use those placements to generate the heightmap. That should be substantially cheaper to calculate than perlin noise, I expect! Also, it&#39;ll result in terrains much more appropriate to place an MMORPG in. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-466 Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:52:44 +0000 Kris015 466@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>haha 2 hours ago :P<br /> Oh well, when are you planning the release? </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-465 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:52:46 +0000 trevor 465@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Thanks, Kris! I&#39;m really pleased with how it came out! </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-464 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:32:26 +0000 Kris015 464@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>wow man!!! Epic sky :D :D :D </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-463 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:41:25 +0000 wickedgenius 463@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Very nice. </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-462 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:13:25 +0000 Kris015 462@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>Looks great! :) </p> <p>It&#39;s funny i always reply one hour after you :P </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/i-am-not-a-web-designer#post-461 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:12:54 +0000 trevor 461@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>You all know that the look and feel of the forums has been annoying me for an awfully long time; how they didn&#39;t provide a link back to the main site, how they looked kind of cheap.. things like that.</p> <p>I&#39;d been considering moving over to a different software with integrated forum support (Drupal), but that seemed like too much ongoing hard work. And I&#39;ve looked at a number of different Wordpress-integrated forums, but they were all either ugly or slow.</p> <p>So in the end, I bit the bullet and spent far too many hours today learning CSS and brushing up my HTML skills by working on the existing bbpress-based forums, and I think I&#39;ve managed a pretty big improvement. The look is tied in much more closely to the main site now, complete with links back. It&#39;s close enough that I suspect most casual visitors wouldn&#39;t even realised they&#39;ve switched into an entirely different website software when they visit the forums.</p> <p>If you notice anything that looks weird and/or incorrect, please let me know so that I can sort it out. But I&#39;m generally pleased, at the moment. :) </p> http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-tycoon-20-feature-musings#post-460 Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:11:16 +0000 token88 460@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ <p>well after the latest updates on the home pageits sounds like its gonna be a really good looking game. the terrains look really nice, and i certasinly wasnt expecting to see curves as nice as those in the screenies. </p>