Afar MV

[Nathaniel3W]

So if you can't see what others are selling it for, how would you know how to price your own? Will you at least see a "average last 10 sales" price? Or do you only get the warning for exceeding the 50%-200% range? Also, when you place a buy order, do you have to hand over your money immediately, and it sits in escrow until the order is either filled or cancelled? If you want to buy something but you're on the fence about it, can you place a buy order at what you would buy it for, but then cancel the order and free up your money if there are no sellers at that price?

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Oh, also, does the central bank in this case actually need to have the items in stock? Or is it more of a magic bag into which items disappear and others appear? If, say, I wanted to buy the Ultimate Mega Sword of Doom, could I make an offer to buy it at 200% of the last sale price, and a week later I'll get one? If so, would that become the next last sale price?

Also, I think that showing players the offers that are out there will help with quite a few things: I think players will appreciate the transparency. I think they'll be able to make better decisions on pricing, thus narrowing the margin, and no one gets ripped off. It can also affect their decisions on what to farm: If I see that the price of lumber is up and iron is down, I'll spend my time farming lumber instead of iron.

 

[Ellie]

Players will see three averages:

1. The average price people in the system are asking for
2. The average price people in the system are selling for
3. The average price the item has actually sold for over a period of time (weekly graph)

They will not see individual trades.

So for example if ten people are selling at 100 gold and ten selling at 50 gold, the player sees the average of 75 gold.

 

[Ellie]

I have now added an intro scene to the game, so that I have somewhere to inject some news before the player plays (as I want to keep the actual game homepage uncluttered). There isn't very interesting news to show yet though so it's largely placeholder stuff.

 

[Ellie]

Progress on the marketplace so far.

Nearly done.

 

[Ellie]

The marketplace is now fully implemented. The only problem is that instead of performing the trade, it seems to add 15430903 to the quantity on each side. I have no idea why.

yay!

 

[Ellie]

Merchant's Marketplace

The Merchant's Marketplace is now implemented. You can't access it yet (there's no need to at the moment as there's nothing really to buy and sell).

Please ignore the missing item icons, I forgot that part. Will fix now.

How it works

So you've been traveling and you've accumulated a lot of junk. You have 50,000 pieces of wood but you're no woodworker yourself. You need to offload them on an unsuspecting adventurer and flee.

You go to the marketplace and you put a "want to sell" offer.

The items are removed from your inventory and enter the system. If they match with somebody's buy offer they instantly move to their inventory and you gain an amount of gold.

Likewise, you can place a buy offer, and the same happens.

Minimum/Maximum

You set a minimum price that you want to sell your item for. You will get at least this price.

Your opponent sets a maximum price they are willing to pay for the item. They will pay no more than this price.

The item will go for the middle ground. Any spare gold goes back to the player (so if the item went for 5 gold but they said they'd pay up to 6 gold, they get 1 gold back).

Removing items from the system

As long as your trade hasn't performed yet, you can click the (missing) icon to remove your item from the system, or your buy offer and get your items/gold back.

 

[Ellie]

 

[coyotecraft]

Does the voice bubble move around? Change sizes? I would suggest keeping the 'next' button to a stationary position, like the bottom corner, regardless of where the bubble is on screen.
That's something I hated about interactive flash things, . The button is here, then over here, now down slightly. It made reading it really slow to progress. The text is short enough to read instantly, but your cursor or whatever has to move to a new position after every short phrase.

 

[Ellie]

Introducing the cast.

I am trying to create a tutorial which tells you enough to be a viable tutorial, while still giving you a taste of the story and feel of the game.

I've settled with Kendra, left, being one of the "bandits". You enter the world practicing things with a bandit, and then explore the towns that they're capturing and burning.

During the tutorial something happens which leads you to think the courtship are the bad guys, but then you're quite clearly shown that the bandits are the bad guys. The general point being that "bad guys" is subjective and nobody is perfect or completely evil.

Middle is Princess Amy, Princess Consort of the town of Tiben.

Left is an unnamed Wizard, I haven't got that far yet. I think she's Merlin though. Possibly.

Kindof turned her into a battler. It sucks.

The tutorial will look something like this with cutscenes and tasks inbetween.

This is her sprite and setting:

 

[Ellie]

Desert town names..

Jusascus
Al'Telya
Tamarra
Juswait
Isworfit

 

[Jason]

The woman in blue, her skin colour changed since October... guessing she took time off wizard work to get a nice tan? :thumb:

 

[Ellie]

Yeah she's been sunbathing it up in Al'Telya.

 

[Ellie]

I alluded earlier that Princess Amy is not the leader of the land but is Princess Consort.

That's because this is Queen Esmerelda.

Been trawling through the makers and resource packs I own, some community resources and my own edits and have picked out the first few enemies which look nice in this game window size. I just want to give a sense of scope to my plans for the game.

And these will be my desert characters.

 

[Ellie]

So, two expansions.

Recipes for metalwork. (You can buy a hammer from the Port for 5 gold) - Number is your metalwork level.

And 17 of the above enemies added. Need to create movement patterns for them.

We also have new music, from the RMN Music Pack and the Classic Fantasy resource pack.

 

[bacon]

I really like what you are doing with the battlers. Are you making them from scratch or doing edits?

Great job Amy

 

[Ellie]

Edits.

Tomorrow I think we'll see recipe books and armour crafting, getting lots of work done while I procrastinate over the tutorial...

I need a book store.

Blacksmith Basics by AA Kiln
Armour Trimming by Jane Usetin
Nulenvojd Armour by Nordic Mailer
Beginner Woodwork by Margaret Cutwood
Colourful Capes by John Stainback

Each book has a couple of pages explaining the basic principle of what you're making, then provides some recipes you can click to make.

As an example:

Corinthian Armour
Ingredients: Steel x 6, leather x 2, Corinthian Bronze x 1 for trimming

Armours adding tomorrow: Bronze, Iron, Steel, Trimmed (amalgam), Spectral (bismuth trim), Corinthian, Nulenvojd (Nordic gold trim).

 

[Ellie]

I should stop saying "tomorrow I'm going to x" because invariably it never happens and I get sidetracked.

Some updates.

Theme Tune

We now have a main theme tune, from the RMN Music Pack, which can be heard from the login screen.

Inventory Cursor Tooltips

You can now see the names of the items when you hover over them.

Inventory Tabs

Inventory is tabbed for future use. Currently one tab shows you your merchant skill levels.

Miner has been renamed Metalwork.
Lumberjack has been renamed Woodwork.
A future planned skill is Hunter Gatherer, which will include picking farm items, fishing, trapping animals and various things like that.

Some new enemies to fight around there.

In Progress - Not Completed

New Maps

Three new farm maps added. Haven't done the upper layer yet mind,

Recipe Books

These are similar to in... Final Fantasy VIII I think? Basically you have a list of items you can create and their ingredients, click to make them. Not yet implemented, half way.

Armour Creation

Implemented but you can't access it until recipe books are done.

Battle Stats Reform

I am reworking how battle stats work and equipment and enemy stats, so don't worry if enemies currently feel unbalanced. It's on its way.

Dynamic Signatures

Half done. Will look something like this, possibly with some more stats. This was a feature of Old Afar.

Previous game looked like this:

That's a real player by the way, I plucked it at random, happened to be called John Doe!

Currencies

Community points store, etc.

Marketplace

A few things to tweak and it'll be out. I need to work out how and when it can be accessed. Could just be a menu window.

Why is everything all over the place?

I'm suffering from some kind attention thing at the moment due to severe lack of sleep so I am finding it very hard to focus on anything.

If I could just settle down properly for a day all this would be done.

I also need to add: new enemies, merchants, shops in Tiben Town, and new mining spots.

I just need to have a day where I can properly get down and dirty right now I just cannot concentrate at all.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Yeah, FFVIII had the recipe books. I think in my whole playthrough I upgraded maybe one or two weapons. There was always one ingredient I just never found. That game was a real slog for me, for about a dozen reasons. Anyway, I love the idea of crafting recipes. Please make the ingredients possible to obtain.

The dynamic signature looks great.

 

[Ellie]

Since I've got to change a lot of stuff anyway I thought I'd look into changing the resolution of the game.

This is at 1000x680. Reason? Fits in a browser window on a 1024x768 screen.

of course it would be nice if it was dynamic but I don't know how feasible that is.