Afar

[Ellie]

Afar is a free-to-play MMORPG playable from your web browser.

Afar is an extensive game based around exploration and questing. It is a mix of graphics and text, with an animated battle scene, and a large array of items to collect and use. Afar implements a mix of common features of MMORPGs often with slight twists, such as item crafting. If I had to fit it into a category it would sit alongside Discworld, or would aim to: it is a serious MMORPG, but at the same time attempts to be a witty homage to MMORPGs.

Afar is ever growing, and it's many systems and large amount of content can seem overwhelming to a new player. There are new things to be discovered at every turn.

At present, there are:

• More than 275 items to collect
• 8 quests throwing a storyline your way
• Over 300 interactive maps implementing merchant skills such as lumberjack and metalwork
• 59 NPCs to talk to (will be expanded heavily in the future)
• Over 1,000 players
• A wide covering Wiki userguide and active message forums
• A variety of interesting and unique towns to explore

The world map, using graphics by The Inquisitor

An example of an NPC conversation

A graphical map

Afar's battle system is turn-based sideview, using animated sprites.

Various character customisation options

The inventory screen

The game uses PHPBB as an absolute basis (but is heavily custom work).

Graphics used are by:

• Refmap (First Seed Material)
• The Inquisitor
• Myself

Music:

• RMN Music Pack: Jasprelao, Jeremiah "McTricky" George, Jude, Gamesfreak13563, Tarranon, Cornflake, Xcalnarok, Lana42, Kunsel, Subaru, NathanGDay, Snowy Fox, ReclaimedGlory, Apoc, hyde9318 and 800 M.P.H.
• Additional tracks by: Quigon at RPGMakerWeb.com

Previous thread: viewtopic.php?f=77&t=76940

 

 

 

[Ellie]

~

I'd like to announce something that, for me, is a major step in Afar, and something that's taken a lot of working out to do. I'm happy with it, and while it's very early steps, it's pretty damned big.

We have Music!

The music I'm using is from the RMN music pack, and appropriate credit will be given when fully implemented. Thank you RMN for creating it, it's amazing.

What's the big deal?

Having music that plays inbetween maps in a game based on web pages isn't easy!

I have managed to create a system that allows me to track what's going on in one iframe and use it to control the contents of a second iframe. The first iframe acts as the game, while the second essentially acts as it's soundtrack.

So if it picks up that a desert map is being shown in the game iframe, it might change the music iframe to a deserty song.

Oh. Does it work?

Well, I've uploaded a demo to show it off, and you can tell me.

How do I play it?

Register at http://www.afar.ws

Then use this link: http://www.afar.ws/musictest to play the game in musical mode.

No longer in beta, now implemented.

 

[Xilef]

May we report bugs in this thread?

I got stuck in the Damascan embassy in Tiben
http://i.imgur.com/8n5EkOS.jpg
Where the assistant talks in the Damascan language

 

[Ellie]

Sure, that's fine. I've fixed it (dunno how I missed that one), although I need to make a different door sprite for stone rooms.

I also need to stop peoples' names defaulting to "Adventurer", it's confusing.

I might get rid of chat entirely, I'm not sure. It's little used.

I also don't like the scrollbar that's appeared on your screen. That's not supposed to happen...

 

[Xilef]

Chrome 100% zoom 1920 1080 maximized on windows 7, if that helps solve the scrollbar thing

 

[Ellie]

I've now fully implemented the music system, and enforced it; the game is now accessed by afar.ws/game, but will take you there anyway if you're not already.

Credits will be up shortly.

Also added a mute button.

Some updates:

• Battle music is now only for random battles - so you won't keep changing tracks while walking through battle based dungeons.

 

[Ellie]

March 20th Updates

World Expansion

Extended regions:

• The Farm has been expanded to 12 maps (from 4) with some new objects. This includes the Farm House, which isn't enterable yet, but serves as transition between the Farm and Marsh.
• The Marsh has similarly been extended, to 20 maps. The background has been changed slightly to make the transition more obvious, and both have new background music.

New regions:

• The Darker Forest is an extension to the Dark Forest, and sits at the end of the Earth Caves dungeon. 16 scenes, it serves as portal to several key locations for future quests.
• The Dark Castle now sits at the end of the forest, and is the first new World Map location in a while, unlocked on entering.

There are now 453 explorable scenes in the game.

New Quest

A very short quest has been added to Tiben Town, to encourage newbies to explore the world. It involves two NPCs and leads the player to discover the Sea Fortress.

World map fixed

The World Map scene has been remade so as to avoid overlapping issues, should now work fine.

New music

New music has been added to several areas, and others have had their music tweaked to better fit.

All dungeons now have their own unique track.

New map objects

Some new map objects have been created, including livestock and different tree varieties.

Bug Fixes

A few fixes. Pixel placements, etc. Also fixed the start of the Herbs quest, botched NPC and incorrect map locations.

The River Lumi is now a region in itself, and has a separate music track, etc. This will be extended in the future.

Milestone

We just reached 1,250 players!

 

[Ellie]

Let's see... a selection of updates and changes.

Graphics and bug fixes

The Ice Caves dungeon and The Myre region have been given new backgrounds to differentiate themselves from the snow fields and dark forest respectively.

Straupuft Town has been fixed - the market is now accessible.

Various quest items that might have been difficult to find previously have been added to other stores around the world, such as general stores.

World Expansion: The Myre

Six scenes added to the Myre, bringing the total in that region up to 13. Hurrah, more exploration!

River Elm

The River has now been extended, from 3 scenes to 10. This will act as a route to a new town and a new woodland in future.

Dark Forest

Once more, the Dark Forest has been significantly expanded with nine new scenes, bringing the total in that region up to 16. Some new map objects around. This makes the Dark Forest feel much less like a gap filling exercise, there is clear room for exploration. Remember this zone is split into two sections - one unlocked after the Bloody Vampires quest leading to the Earth Caves dungeon, the other unlocked during the quest.

Elmgate

Say hello to the town of Elmgate - located on a bridge on the River Elm. It is a new World Map location, unlocked on your first visit. There's nothing to do there yet but to click back. How fun!

New articles scene

This is going to be rolled out one at a time, but basically scenes which used to look like this:

Will now look like this:

I'd like to think things are improving.

 

[Ellie]

Town - Elmgate

The town of Elmgate is now explorable! You'll currently find a useful general store, and some other enterable buildings. The area'll grow significantly later on.

On top of this some work has been done making older parts of the game look nice. A fair few scenes have been remade: quest journals, the spellbook, settings such as character name, password, referral links and character biographies, the credits page, and various other scenes. Generally they look or work a lot better than previously.

Quest - Trading Plaices

Elmgate has it's first quest! Trading Plaices introduces fish merchants, whom are dotted around the world. It's a short quest which involves exploration. This is Afar's tenth quest!

Quest - Desert Trek

A new quest has been released, taking the player into a new region to the South-East. Desert Trek is an exploration quest using previously made mechanics, introducing more of the storyline of Tiben and Damascar and the couple's turbulent relationship. This will be built upon in future quests and books, and the quest will be neatened up soon.

The quest involves a new dungeon - the largest in the game now - the Desert Cave - although this dungeon is currently under construction (sorry!). Enemy graphics and detail within the dungeon are missing and will be added in soon; at present the quest is completable, it's just not as pretty as it will be.

I'm going to try and overhaul quests to be a little less ambiguous and such, reword things, make new conversations, and remake the quest end scene.

 

[Ellie]

Bug Fixes

Forums link now works properly with the new music frames.
Typos, reordered conversations, etc.
Fixed some link boxes in towns.
Fixed some redirects after NPCs to go to the correct map of each town.

Books

All books have been remade.

http://afar.ws/m/index.php/Book#List_of_Books

Examples:

New Books

Some new books have been added. Details in the wiki link above!

 

[Jumping Jack Flash]

Where did you get the book graphic from? I recognise it.

 

[Ellie]

I made them in Fireworks. I know they're not great, but they serve their purpose and look nicer than beforehand:

Before:

After:

I made that texture a while back and have just been whoring it out anywhere I can as it looks alright. Probably bad practice. I just drew some borders for the book shape, erased them, and then added inner glows and shadows to get the shape. I think it works, kinda. The text doesn't follow the shape of the book, but if it did it'd be unreadable so I think it's an OK compromise.





TODAY'S UPDATES

New Quest!

Buried Treasure is the 12th quest in Afar.

New items, books, etc

New items for the quest, new books for the quest, and other books (see Wiki for more info).

Tiben extended

Some new buildings in Tiben and others reorganised, mainly for the quest.



State of Afar

Quests: 12
Items: 297
Scenes: >450
Enemies: 92
Dungeons: 5
Switches: 149



Edit:

Quest end scenes

Quest endings have been replaced. Once more a before and after.

Before: (No excuse for how bad these looked...)

After:

 

[Ellie]

Apologies to those still playing it. A Firefox update has killed it for that browser, not sure about others... I'm not sure how to fix it, and don't have the time to do it properly (and doing it PROPERLY properly would be to make a new game, which I am doing). Thank you to everyone who played and anyone who still plods on while it's borked.

 

[slothx]

oh my, that is basically what i wanted to build for over 10 years, but never found anyone able to program / script it! ^^; i even have it all planned out to the detail, with graphics ready etc - lucky you..!

 

[Ellie]

Thanks. Unfortunately there are a few problems with it at the moment that I'm not sure how to resolve, but if it works for you that's great.

 

[Ellie]

Fixed the game killing bug.

Considering whether to get back into this again again. Would I just be beating a dead horse?

 

[Xilef]

Fixed the game killing bug.

Considering whether to get back into this again again. Would I just be beating a dead horse?

Why don't you join an existing project?

 

[Ellie]

New message system

Before:

After:

May take a bit of fine tuning, as everything happens on map now rather than a separate scene.

 

[Ellie]

Battle quick fix

Changes to Jquery broke the battle system a bit, so for now the attack bar doesn't fade in/out between attacks any more.



New Enemies

Pirates have invaded Tiben. A few roam the coast. They are a rare, higher powered enemy, and offer better rewards.

Map Interaction

All interactive map objects now have tooltips briefly saying what clicking them will do.

Graphical Improvements

A few enemies and objects have been properly aligned / positioned relative to the player as they were slightly out (or completely wrong, in the case of the scimitar weapon).



New NPCs

Six more new NPCs bringing the total up to 85.

 

[Ellie]

I realised I dived out before even completing the Lumberjack skill. I've finished it now and put the guide in-game in the merchant skills page (accessible via character -> merchant skills, which tells you your levels and gives quick guides). I'll update the wiki guide soon.

And the wiki guide:

http://afar.ws/m/index.php/Lumberjack