MMORPG Tycoon 1.1p1 Available for Testing

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MMORPG Tycoon 1.1p1 Available for Testing

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Started 1 year ago by trevor
Latest reply from token88

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trevor
admin

PC: http://www.vectorstorm.org/downloads/MMORPG-1.1p1-Win32.zip
Mac: http://www.vectorstorm.org/downloads/MMORPG-1.1p1-OSX.dmg (universal binary, requires OS X 10.4 or later)

Latest update:
PC: http://www.vectorstorm.org/downloads/MMORPG-1.1p2-Win32.zip (exe only; need the libs and data files from the 1.1p1 archive linked above)

I'm most interested in whether people have any trouble starting up or etc, (I hope this won't have the "didn't create all the needed directories" problems that the 1.0.x series did), general performance, and whether people think I've gone too far with the stretchy cursor and moving UI elements.

I'd also love to hear if people have particular bits of information they'd like to see added to screens, or other thoughts.

General suggestion (from my short time playing this full version) is to zone a region as level 1-3, place a respawn, a town, and a starting point in it (optionally adding roads), then kick up the speed to maximum for a little while. After a very short while, you should have enough subscribers to start placing quest givers (the exclamation mark), and then you're really into the meat of it.

And of course, if you manage to make it crash, then I'd be thrilled to hear how. (For example, I fixed a crash bug about an hour ago. To get the crash, you had to place a quest-giver, exit the game and reload, delete the quest-giver, and then exit the game and reload again. On that second reload, the game would crash)

Posted 1 year ago #
moncheese
Member

It's running, but at 25% CPU.

Vista x86
Quad core 6600 (2.40ghz)
4gb DDR2
ATI Radeon 4850

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin

Heh, this is true; MMORPG Tycoon will only use one core right now, so that'd show up as using a maximum of 25% CPU on a quad core machine; the simulation is complicated enough without introducing multithreading just yet!

I'm sure I'll do this eventually, but not until it's further into development. :)

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin

From further testing, it appears that something weird is going on with hunt quests, but I'm not precisely sure what it is.

It kind of looks like players are only picking up the first hunt quest at a particular questgiver.. or at least, there's a huge crowd of players in that hunting zone, and even though people do complete the quest (eventually), they don't seem to go to visit later hunting zones. But I'm not sure why not.

Possibilities:

Could be a bug in the code that's causing players to take the same quest repeatedly (only with hunt quests, though?)

Could be that there aren't enough monsters generated inside hunt zones, leading to players becoming so frusterated waiting to fight monsters that they unsubscribe after finally completing their first hunt quest.

Or it could all be working perfectly correctly; maybe people just tend to bunch up at the first quest, but disperse out more evenly at later quests.

Need to investigate. If anybody else observes anything suspicious about this or other behaviour in 1.1p1, please do let me know!

Posted 1 year ago #
Street Wolf
Member

Woo! Well first thing I've noticed is that the stretchy moving mouse seems much more bearable than the rotating mouse from 1.0. I don't know why, but it feels easier to work with. I like it. :)

Edit: And now that I'm in game, the new UI looks very nice. I really like the rotating menu when you zoom in.

Double Edit: Ok, first bug I noticed, I shut down all the servers, and went to build my starting zone. Everything was good until I noticed that my money wasn't dropping below $4,000 after buying towns, respawn points, etc.

COMBO Edit: Let's see, what else. It's looking really good. :) One thing that seems strange is if you zoom in really close to buildings, they stay the same size on your screen, although other entities (monsters, players, admins) seem to get bigger as you zoom in. Is there any chance that buildings can do the same thing? Or at least shrink up until a point when zooming in, but then remain the same.

MULTI Edit: Hmm, maybe that money glitch wasn't true. My money count a few minutes later was in the negatives. (D:) Also, I went to click on the fastest speed, and my game crashed. Is there any way I can send you some kind of crash log or something?

Yet Another Edit: I deleted my first saved game so I could start over, and I noticed there's no "Are you sure" kind of screen. Maybe that could be added in.

Shocking, another edit: I noticed when I go to change a name of anything, I have to repeatedly hit backspace instead of simply being able to hold it.

Edit: What I've noticed is that when you start to get a good sized MMO, you get a lot of spam at the bottom of the screen. Maybe it could Be limited to whatever zone you're viewing. (I.e., Zone's A and B. If you're in Zone B, you only read messages of people leveling up in Zone B but not A.)

Posted 1 year ago #
jasond315
Member

First bug I found -- If you change the resolution, then go back into options, the apply/ok buttons are gone.

EDIT: some comments
- Since I have already played many hours of MMORPG Tycoon, I didn't go through the instructions. So it took me a few minutes to realize I needed to put a respawn point down before I could place a starting point. I figured the starting point would be the first thing needed.

- Once I had my first zone set, and pushed play, I immediately loved the little cursor/devs placing the mobs.

- I noticed the first few mobs placed in the zone were the ones I gave extra def./hp to. Do you recommend keeping the mobs balanced, or scale them up to have almost a trash mob/mini boss/boss setup.

Posted 1 year ago #
jasond315
Member

First crash --

I had it in 1280x720
bloom off

1 zone for 1-3
dev's placed initial mobs
5 subscribers

I had paused a few times, ff a couple times.
it was on normal play mode, and when I clicked ff (probably 3rd time ff was clicked) the game crashed/blacked out/says 'Not Responding'

Not sure if it was the click, or it just happened as I was clicking.
I'll reopen it and see if it happens again.

Posted 1 year ago #
jasond315
Member

I just tried to play it for the first time after the crash in the post above, but it crashed as I clicked to enter the MMORPG. The save is unusable even after manually changing settings.

Posted 1 year ago #
jasond315
Member

I forgot to mention this is with Windows Vista Home Premium, 1.7 dual core

I started a new game, and did not crash after trying a few different play/ff/play/pause combinations, so I built up.
I had 12 zones, 600-700 players, everything was going great.

I scrolled back over to one of the level 1-3 zones, and placed a tavern, the only tavern in the 1-3 areas, but when I placed a waypoint on the road, to connect the tavern to, the game crashed. That save is now unusable.

stderr is blank, the only new info in stdout are 'create quest' lines.

I don't remember how many of those waypoints were already placed, but the building numbers were around:
towns - 9
start - 3
respawn - 12
tavern - 6
dungeons - 3
waypoints - about 12/14

Off to do another :)
**even though this is just testing, and it's not very likely we'll get extremely far into the game,and some stuff isn't functional yet, I am having a blast!!!!**

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin

Jason, can you e-mail me the save file? I'll see if I can figure out what went wrong with it. (but I've never gotten that many users, myself; keep having to re-start after implementing new major features!

trevor at vectorstorm dot org.

Other quick comments.. Yes, you're currently charged for a building when a developer comes along to build it, not while it's still pending. Users also won't use the building until it's activated. That way, you can avoid paying for the building if you remove it before it has been activated. Though it means you can queue up more expenses than you have cash for. Maybe I should use a deposit/refund system instead...

Posted 1 year ago #
moncheese
Member

Further to my previous comment. Not only does it seem like 25% is a lot of CPU usage, everything seems very sluggish and unresponsive. Is this just me? If so I can take a look and see if I can stop it from happening.

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin

25% is the maximum that MMORPG Tycoon could use on a quad core system. I wouldn't be surprised if it could max out with a highly developed MMORPG, but I wouldn't expect it to be using that much when you're starting out..

Unless maybe your device driver is set up to ignore vsync even when the game requests it? If you do that, then the game will use all the CPU it can, and will try to run at as high an FPS rate as it can, rather than capping at your screen's refresh rate.

But that's no different from any other VectorStorm game; they all do that.

Posted 1 year ago #
moncheese
Member

That may be it. It's Vista, I don't think it could disable vsync if it wanted to. No chance you could limit the framerate? It's not just that it maxes out a CPU, but it makes the game far too slow to play comfortably.

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin

Hm.. if that's it, it wouldn't cause the game to slow down. Can you check the stdout.txt after quitting the game, and let me know what FPS it's been running?

Posted 1 year ago #
Aeon
Member

1. It crashes when you create a new world without naming it.

2. Can't seem to turn off your stretching, rotating mouse.

3. Your floating menu sometimes floats far enough left that I can't read the text descriptions for menu options anymore because they're partially cut off.

4. I have trouble selecting the names for things in order to rename them, especially in the class design screen.

Posted 1 year ago #
moncheese
Member

## Frames rendered: 2637
## Average FPS: 75.621574

Oh, I had the Options screen buttons disappear too, which has been mentioned.

Posted 1 year ago #
Anonymous
Unregistered

Same problems as moncheese, also on Vista. Also, menu buttons are a pain to select stuff in. I keep thinking it's deselected because of the very faint glow that kinda fades in and out.

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin

Okay, interesting.. can you two check your monitors' refresh rates? I wonder whether they're set to 75hz, or something of the sort. That shouldn't cause any problems, but it'd be another piece of information for me to use. :)

Are you on 64-bit machines? That could also potentially be involved in the issue.. having a high frame rate shouldn't cause any timing problems for the game..

Posted 1 year ago #
moncheese
Member

At 60mhz, windowed, it runs at a little over 100 fps. It's Vista 32.

Posted 1 year ago #
trevor
admin
Okay, moncheese, you've definitely got vsynch disabled, then (as if your video card was waiting for vsynch when I ask it to, you couldn't run at more than 60hz). That'll help me track this down.

I've just put up an update (Win32 only, right now); new in this update:
- Fixed a crash bug when loading a saved game if you had placed a road which was connected to a single building at both ends. (This generally happened unintentionally)
- Fixed a bug which allowed you to place a road such that it was connected to a single building at both ends.
- Experimental change to try to make moncheese and Meerkat's gameplay speed problem be improved (please let me know if this helps, guys!)
- Worked around a weird RNG issue which was resulting in far more fetch quests than hunt quests being generated. Now much closer to 50% of quests are hunt quests.
- Hunt quests now have 20 monsters placed within the hunt zone, instead of only five. Should help with the "huge crowds of adventurers waiting for monsters to respawn" problem.
- Fixed "Single Player" mode; name a MMORPG "SinglePlayer", and only a single player will enter your MMORPG at a time. Additionally, all buildings will be available for placement from the start. This is my typical way of debugging AI.
See the top post for the download link for the update. Note that the update is only the updated executable; just replace the old exe with the new one, no need to redownload all the data files. :)

If someone wants an OS X version of the update, please let me know. But as of this moment, nobody's actually downloaded the OS X version of 1.1p1, so I'm going to assume that nobody here needs it. :)
Posted 1 year ago #

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