VectorStorm Forums » Tag: MMORPG Tycoon

VectorStorm Forums » Tag: MMORPG Tycoon - Recent Topics http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/tags/mmorpg-tycoon Discussing games, one brightly glowing comment at a time en-US Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:14:09 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/search.php trevor on "Milestone for myself" 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/ 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. 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. 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. 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. Crossing fingers. Hope I can pull it all together into a fun experience within this timeframe! :) (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.) trevor on "Some quick general musings" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/some-quick-general-musings#post-436 Sat, 02 May 2009 14:28:46 +0000 trevor 436@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ First issue: Save games. VectorStorm, as a library, was built around the idea of emulating a fictional vector graphics game console on the PC, complete with a basic game engine wrapped around it. You can see this behaviour in many places, particularly how most of my games refer to the "A" and "B" buttons (which typically are mapped to the <space> and <alt> keys on the keyboard), because they're thinking about this fictional game console. Similarly, in the original release of MMORPG Tycoon, it had three "save slots", exactly as used to be done on old cartridge-based games. For MMORPG Tycoon 2.0, I'm thinking about saved games again, and how they'll be handled. I see two possibilities; either I can continue with the way things are done now (which can lead to conflicts under certain multiple-user-accounts-on-one-computer issues), start storing the saves in per-user directories (maybe somewhere inside the "My Documents" directory under Windows, and the "Documents" or "Library" user directories under OS X), or else actually use a standard file selector box to save and load your saved games to wherever you want. This would, of course, mean that you could have as many saved games as you want, and put them anywhere you want. It would also mean that the standard OS GUI would encroach into the game.. so I'm a little hesitant about that. I guess I could also do a FPS-style "we pick a save directory somewhere and have an in-game file browser that lets you pick from anything inside that directory". Second issue: The bloom visual effect. I really like the "glowing vectors" bloom pass that's automatically present in VectorStorm games. However, making that effect look good for glowing lines drawn over black has caused some problems for games which don't draw over black.. the issue is that it makes absolutely everything on-screen about 50% brighter than it would otherwise appear to be, so if anyone plays the game with bloom disabled, then the game appears extremely dark. I'm thinking about seriously toning back the bloom shader, to make bloomless-rendering appear closer to bloomed rendering. (On the other hand, I still want some glowing-wireframe-over-black sections in MMORPG Tycoon 2.0, so I'm not quite sure how to reconcile the two. Maybe I just require people to support bloom, in order to run at all?) You can see the problem if you go back and run 'Lord' with bloom switched off; it becomes a very dark game, because most of the light shades were only appearing due to the brightening of the bloom. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Third issue: I'm arguing with myself over the user's interface to MMORPG Tycoon 2.0. Whether to give him an interface much like he had in 1.0 (omnipotent deity looking down upon his creation), or whether to give a more up-close interface; put him closer to the ground, looking forward. The big benefit of being closer to the ground is that you get more bang for the buck out of the 3D terrain and constructions, which can be much larger on screen, and can tower upward into the sky. The downside is that it really isn't what people expect from a "Tycoon" game.. and maybe it'd hurt gameplay, compared against a facing-downward, north-oriented view that can simply be panned across with arrow keys, as happened in MMORPG Tycoon 1.0. Anyone have any input on any of these things? Am curious to hear any thoughts, to maybe kickstart something in my head. :) trevor on "The Official 1.1 Progress Log" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/the-official-11-progress-log#post-130 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:18:12 +0000 trevor 130@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Stuff to be done for 1.1: <ul> <li>Rendering optimisation: Finished</li> <li>Monsters actually present on map: Finished</li> <li>Animated vector sprites for adventurers and monsters: Finished</li> <li>Player AI to cope with real monsters: Finished</li> <li>Revised map look: Finished</li> <li>Revamped road system: Finished</li> <li>Player pathfinding: Finished</li> <li>Queued building system: Finished</li> <li>Additional building types (shops, taverns, etc): Finished</li> <li>Updated player AI to use these building types: 50% implemented</li> <li>Finite quest-giving system: 70% implemented</li> <li>Player AI modified to form parties: 50% designed</li> <li>Tutorial: 50% designed</li> <li>Modified player manager to support infinite number of subscribers: not started</li> <li>Final pre-release optimisation</li> </ul> CogDissident on "Publishing" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/publishing#post-84 Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:23:50 +0000 CogDissident 84@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ MMORPG Tycoon is extremely well made and you're adding stuff all the time, but once you have it close to a "final" vision you may want to consider publishing it. I'm sure that if you posted it on Steam for 10$ or so you would get a good number of sales. And they handle distribution of updates and other things as well. <a href="http://steamgames.com/steamworks/" rel="nofollow">http://steamgames.com/steamworks/</a> Even if you want your game to be free, you can sell it on their store and give it away free on the site. Plenty of people walked to a store to buy a physical copy of Counterstrike, even though they could get it free (at the time). Aeon on "Dungeons?" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/dungeons#post-57 Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:43:38 +0000 Aeon 57@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Somehow whenever I play this game it feels like I should be able to add dungeons in the same way that you add towns. It has always bothered me that you can't do that. :P BTW, is there anywhere where I can find some detailed information on what everything does? I mean, do certain statistics actually effect anything for characters and monsters, number of employees, etc..? JP on "mmorpg not loading" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-not-loading#post-132 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:02:54 +0000 JP 132@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ when I try to load MMORPG it goes straight to a "MMORPG.exe has experienced an error and has had to close". The stdout file reads as follows: VectorStorm engine version 0.0.1 Loading preferences... Checking supported resolutions... Available Modes 0: 320 x 200 1: 320 x 240 2: 400 x 300 3: 512 x 384 4: 640 x 350 5: 640 x 400 6: 640 x 480 7: 720 x 480 8: 720 x 576 9: 800 x 600 10: 848 x 480 11: 1024 x 768 Initialising [800x600] resolution... Successfully detected all required extensions for bloom shader. Screen Ratio: 1.333333 OpenGL Version 2.0.5757 WinXP Release Red size: 8 bits Blue size: 8 bits Green size: 8 bits Alpha size: 8 polo150 on "mmorpg wont start" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/mmorpg-wont-start#post-121 Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:56:31 +0000 polo150 121@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ A window opens but it just stays a white screen what should i do? i have the windows version Street Wolf on "So, any word on 1.1 coming out soon?" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/so-any-word-on-11-coming-out-soon#post-116 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:10:10 +0000 Street Wolf 116@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Just dropped in after a few weeks of absence, and it doesn't look like muc hhas changed. Any progress reports trevor? Agamemnon on "Very nice! A few ideas." http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/very-nice-a-few-ideas#post-117 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:52:17 +0000 Agamemnon 117@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ A definitely nice find. I've been reading around a bit and I see you are planning on touching on a few problems. Just wanted to voice some issues myself. What exactly is money good for? Or employees? Ever think about giving zones "upgrades" to their stability with the use of money, or that employees could work out the crinkles in the system? I also saw that you thought about doing two different modes of "starting." Hopefully when starting from scratch money will be a much bigger issue, such as starting off with fewer classes and enemies that you can later "buy" as an add on (like an expansion). One thing that has really got me scratching my head is how you can build zones instantly. Ever thought about it being a "process" where the time it takes to build a zone is relevant to the number of employees you have (plus how strained they are with other things)? I saw that you also planned on adding barriers. Thank you! I have five different starter areas with five different progressive areas that my players can go to, but they all seem to end up at three of them, so those zones are ALWAYS being stressed out. Would definitely like to refine it so the players can't cross over to zones. Last thing I'd like to mention; XP scaling much? Existing players seem to hit the cap within a day or so. Anyways, hopefully you expand more on options as far as designing and business goes. Can't wait to see the results! itschris on "can't start windows version" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/cant-start-windows-version#post-96 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:17:13 +0000 itschris 96@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ When I try to start the game, I get the standard error message that the program encountered a problem and needs to close. I'm running Windows XP, and I don't know if this helps, but the stdout.txt file says this: VectorStorm engine version 0.0.1 Loading preferences... Checking supported resolutions... Available Modes 0: 320 x 200 1: 320 x 240 2: 400 x 300 3: 480 x 360 4: 512 x 384 5: 640 x 400 6: 640 x 480 7: 800 x 600 8: 1024 x 768 9: 1152 x 864 10: 1280 x 1024 Initialising [800x600] resolution... Successfully detected all required extensions for bloom shader. Failed assertion: incomplete framebuffer object due to unsupported format Failed condition: (false) at .\VS\Graphics\VS_RendererBloom.cpp:44 lemmily on "Not to be annying but...." http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/not-to-be-annying-but#post-88 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:52:22 +0000 lemmily 88@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ I'm still highly intrigued as to what the next version will be like! So i was wondering (again) what you think the estimate on the release will be? If you have one, if you're unsure no worries. I jut like to know when i should expect these things! :) Aeon on "Alternative Map Views" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/alternative-map-views#post-67 Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:54:38 +0000 Aeon 67@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ It might be nice to have a few buttons that you could click to change what is displayed on the game map. So instead of just area levels, maybe you could display things like user density and - well, I don't have any other ideas, but user density would be nice. Street Wolf on "A few things I'd like to see added to the game. . ." http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/a-few-things-id-like-to-see-added-to-the-game#post-22 Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:36:17 +0000 Street Wolf 22@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ Just a few things I'd, personally, like to see added into the game. -The ability to rename player classes, and monster names. -A couple choices for what players look like. (In options, you could pick to make them look like stickmen, swords, etc) -A third option added to player classes, called power. (It represents, magic, mana, energy cells, etc. Whatever the MMO is themed in the user's head). It would factor into how strong a class is, but provides an alternative to raw attack. -Possibly a fourth option labeled Speed (or Agility). Physically makes the player move faster or slower. Maybe it could somehow factor into happiness. -A generator that lets you choose a different shape for your game world. I know they aren't really easy things to add, but if development continues on this, it'd be cool to see them in eventually. trevor on "1.0.14 release" http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/topic/1014-release#post-3 Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:08:30 +0000 trevor 3@http://www.vectorstorm.org/forum/ New in version 1.0.14: <ul> <li>Fixed a bug which would sometimes cause roads to be placed incorrectly after two save/load cycles.</li> <li>Added keyboard controls for panning and zooming the view. Arrow keys will pan, and 'a' and 'z' will zoom. These are alternate controls for folks stuck using a trackpad or other alternate input scheme; using the mouse is still the preferred interface.</li> </ul> Comments: Save files are still compatible with all saves from version 1.0.10 or later. If your save game contains the "incorrectly placed roads" bug, the game will realise it and do its best to figure out where you'd intended to place the roads, but it's likely to make at least a few mistakes as it repairs the damage, so you may need to perform a few road fixes manually, when importing a saved game into version 1.0.14. Apologies for that bug, everyone; it was a silly thing that I should have spotted a long time ago!