Afar ~ 1,000 Players

[Ellie]

Yeah, ideally I'd rather keep the whole game free and open. But I need to find money from somewhere unfortunately


Santa Hats

I said there'd be a reward for the first 100 members. Well, it's so close to Christmas that instead I am giving everyone who joins before Christmas a rare item: a Santa hat! This is not buyable, but is sellable and tradeable.

How rare it is depends on how many people join before Christmas. I estimate less than 150 altogether. So it will be worth it :D

You won't need to do anything - your santa hat will appear in your inventory the next time you log in.

This is a wearable item.




This also announces a new feature which is the gift system - allows me to give people items only if they log in within a certain period. :D

 

[Jason]

Ooh, so if we already have our accounts, and just log in, say... right now (Or after you've added it if you haven't already), and we'll have a Santa Hat?

 

[Ellie]

Yeah, if you log in, you have a santa hat.

If you don't log in before xmas, you won't :p

The new look landing page.

Twitter feed provides quick news. Forums now have post counts. Resume game button takes you to the last area you visited so you don't have to retrace your steps when you open the game again.

Plus there is plenty of room for expansion now.

The bottom box, with the forum links in, will change soon. Not sure how, but it will.

 

[Jason]

Yay just logged in and got it :biggrin:

The new look is pretty cool too, lol.

 

[Ellie]

If anyone accidentally gets two, please let me know. I'll know anyway, but if you tell me then uh... idk, it's helpful.




Started drafting up a concept for dungeons. Replayable chains of enemies with some maps inbetween and a reward at the very end.

Will have to wait and see how enemy balancing turns out first.

I'm going to draft up a quick questionnaire for battles to see what people think of them. I know they're currently very basic, but they shouldn't be too easy or too difficult, or even too random.

 

[LiquidMetal91]

Yay at the 4 different enemies |D
*Wulf, Orc, Bee, Snake (for those who havent looked around)

also ive found more things...
Look at Tec Support...

AND THIS:

Where's my 30.000.000.000.000.000.000 gold?
Also known as 30 EXA gold (30x10^18)
A billion = x10^9

Spoiler: YAY

K, i know i wont be getting this
It's me messing with the link
But it seems real :D

 

[Ellie]

Aye, that is open for exploitation. However all that scene does is show how much gold you gained, it does not do any processing with it other than printing it to the screen as an integer. There is no way of hacking the game through it - it's just fun to play with.

There are some more serious things:

- messing with the number in buying items
- messing with the p=area-x

However these are switch controlled, so you can only buy items if they're buyable and you've reached that shop.

 

[Ellie]

Let me see, when was the last update...

16th December (Thursday)

Adverts

Added advertisements to the game. Their placement is temporary while I see how well they work (or not).

Battles

Battle damage now takes your stats, your enemy's stats, and your equipped weapon into account.

Working out how much damage you will do...

a = (0...damagestat)
b = (0...weapondmg) / 2
c = (0...enemyagility) / 2

damage = a + b - c


damagestat = either melee, sight, or perception (depends on your weapon equipped). If you have no weapon equipped, this defaults to '1'.

weapondmg = the damage stat of your weapon. Steel sword, bow = 5; silver sword = 10. These are temporary stats.

enemyagility = the enemy's evasive skill.


Let's take an example:

Equipped weapon: steel sword (5)
Melee: 10
Enemy agility: 5

a = (0...10)
b = (0...5) / 2
c = (0...5) / 2

Max damage: 10 + 2(.5) - 0 = 12
Min damage: 0 + 0 - 2(.5) = 0

Random Encounters

Leave the port heading East and you will be able to test out the random encounter system. This involves four new enemies, which do give gold as a reward.

Last location

Created a "last location" system which remembers the last "area" you visited and can take you back there. This is being implemented in the battle system for obvious reasons.



17th December (Friday)

• Santa hats!
• Gift system (for delivery of santa hats)
• Random encounter button added to a few maps
• A few graphical improvements added about the place
• New route: Tiben to Straupuft (fair few scenes, under construction still tho)
• Redesigned home page
• Set up a twitter account for quick news feeds; integrated with homepage

18th December (Saturday)

• New graphics plus coastal areas
• New route from Tiben/Straupuft to the Sea Fortress
• Opened the Sea Fortress, nothing to do there yet however
• vengeancerpg New merchant selling baskets of apples
• created mechanics for enemies blocking areas (a troll on a bridge, for example)
• New "causeway" background graphic to neaten up the coastal areas
• Rearranged the "discussion forums" section to look nicer

19th December (Sunday)

Friends lists
View someone's profile and you can choose to add (or remove) them as a friend. Friends show on your profile (character sheet) at the bottom in a nice little list. Benefits of having friends will become clearer later on.

Leaderboard
Created a basic leaderboard based on gold on hand. Better leaderboards will come soon, including the ability to create your own leaderboard for a group of friends, or perhaps a gaming clan.

User find
You can now enter a user number to find their profile. In future I will update this to allow username searches.

Additions
Created space for some new NPCs and added some new graphics about the place in preparation for future updates.

Backend
Minor to you but a lot of rearend coding changes which will smoothline the production process for me.



20th December (Monday)

• It is snowing.
• You can now travel to a new world map - but there isn't anything to do there yet.
• Preparations done for a possible Christmas event
• Major battle system algorithm changes to put more emphasis on items equipped and stats rather than random as hell
• You have to wait five minutes to battle on the same map... so explore the world! There are battle areas all over the place if you know where to look
• Stat changes on most equippable items
• Armour now affects how much damage you receive. The damage is an average of all your items' stats
• Slight graphical and positioning changes about the place
• Fixed battle system "last location" error
• Fixed all errors noted in "Technical Support"
• Fixed several errors which may have caused problems in the items inventory
• Slight streamlining of some database tables for easier updating
• Optimised a few SQL queries which should speed them up hopefully

21st December (Tuesday)

• New temporarily barren route from Tiben to West Gate
• Some new graphics
• A few quick tweaks to battle functions

The world map is now switch controlled and you can only travel to areas that you have already visited. By default you can visit the base camp.

There are also now multiple world maps - though one doesn't have much there at the moment. You can travel between ports to switch world maps.

In the map above you can see I can only travel to Tiben, Base Camp, and the Myre.

 

[Ellie]

From the forums:

Battle system plans

Battles are boring, I won't lie. But the current system is not what battles are going to be like. The system at the moment is just the backbone (and was always going to be).

I want battles to be fun, interesting, and require a certain amount of thought to win.

Planned for the (hopefully near) future:


- using different weapons will provide different exp

Use a bow and you will get sight exp. This will train your sight skill, and make you able to shoot more accurately when using a bow.

Use a sword and you become higher in the melee skill, meaning you hit harder when using a sword.


- different enemies have different weaknesses

A flying enemy won't be as good against a bow as a sword. The difference will be quite significant.


- spells!

A selection of cool battle spells... These will use the perception skill. Using a spell will give you experience in it I think.


- elements

Fire, wind, water, earth... different elements with different weaknesses. There won't be any readout of what enemies weaknesses are - you'll have to guess and use trial and error. More fun that way!





How will spells be learnt?

Not decided yet. Current thoughts are quests, or at least dungeons.

A dungeon system will be worked out in time.




I don't like the idea of buying exp and there will never be an occassion to do so, other than with Constitution, which is an odd case. Constitution is your health points calculating skill.

Basically, gold is still an important part of the game, and skills should be trained using the whole game.

Constitution: gold, fishing, other meat grabbing activities
Perception: casting spells
Agility: ??? exploration?
Melee: fighting with a sword
Sight: fighting with a bow

 

[Jason]

Jesus McFucknuggets you've done a lot of updating lately!

Really loving some of these updates, they sound great, I'm going to hop on now and take a look at this new world map I think :

 

[Ellie]

Christmas events planned to start tomorrow. I can't tell you what they are; I'm improvising!

I can tell you a new area is planned as well as several rare, and semi-rare items.

 

[action]

It's been 4 days now and my sig hasn't updated..
Never mind, should've looked before I posted :P

Still the game is looking great - keep up the great work

(could've sworn I posted in this topic already..."

 

[Tuna]

I want to play, but my connection is so suck... :sad:

 

[Ellie]

I'll add you a santa hat if you don't have one already, though if you do login and one shows up you gotta let me know so I can remove the extra one.


Edit: nevermind, you already have one :box:

 

[Tuna]

I managed to grab one. Thanks, though. :biggrin:

 

[Ellie]

Christmas event has fallen through. Too much going on here right now. Really sorry guys. I'll make it up to you next week and not just in bj's.

 

[Ellie]

Thiking big... I'm going to create an iPhone app to play vengeance from. It will be free!

Not sure when it will be done but I'll keep you posted!

Sorry for the lack of updates - it's Christmas time and quite busy around here.

 

[Tuna]

Gurl, you craaaaaaazy.

 

[Ellie]

Oh. You have to develop on a mac!?

Fu.

 

[Tuna]

Do something for Android?