Stuffed Titans (MMORPG)

[Plubyblop]

Earlier today we ran a closed alpha with a small group of friends, and it seemed to work out pretty well.  Being an early alpha a lot of the features were left out, but we got a feel for the workability of the system as a whole.  There were a lot of bugs, but this was expected being the first test of the engine in a non-controlled situation.  Luckily none of them were major problems with the engine, so all we have is a list of small bugs to squash, and then the base server-client system is finished.

Here's our plans on what's next:

Once my brother finishes the inventory system and visual equipment, and I finish up a couple more sprite pieces (mainly battle animations and interiors), we'll package the tutorial area and release it to a couple people as a closed beta.  Once we feel this has been thoroughly tested and fixed, we shall move to our next stage.

Open beta.  this will be the same tutorial area from the closed beta, but hopefully with considerably less bugs, the goal of this beta is to find any remaining bugs, get some real critique on the game, and stress test our server (which if todays small alpha was any indication, that shouldn't be a problem).

After we've dealt with any bugs and any serious complaints about the game, we shall next release the first real city (with an accompanying overworld, quests, etc.)  This will be considered the first real release of Stuffed Titans.

Anyways, I'm not going to give any definitive dates; unfortunately it never seems to work out that way, and we still have a lot of work left to do.  Though I will say things are progressing faster than I expected, especially considering school (I thought that would kill us).  I'm confident we can pull this off, I'm just not sure when.

 

[Avgen]

Unique game.
Most of the MMORPG makers wants to make their games really serious and classic but unique in some way. But this... Well... This is unique in all way but... It may not become VERY successful (sorry). If you want it to be successful, i prefer making it as balanced as possible. Also, just my suggestion: Do NEVER make a player bored, add as many quests or something that keeps the player playing.

 

[Plubyblop]

Actually, making it a not boring experience is actually one of the first things listed on our original design document, right up there with creating an immersive and interactive community.  The main way we plan to achieve this is through mini-games, and secondly quests.

I understand that it may not become very successful; especially since it deviates pretty far from the norm (and  having a stuffed animal theme might turn a lot of people off of it), but it's a gamble we felt was worth taking. As long as it's a high quality game, we hope we can interest at least enough people to keep the game running.

 

[Programming_Elf]

I just finished all of the bugs found in our Alpha test. Now we begin work on the other stuff.

 

[Plubyblop]

I changed the story around a little in the first post.  It's still the same basic story, mainly I just changed the way it was told.

I also had an idea for farming:
The way farming was planned out, it was going to be way to close to the way Harvest Moon does farming. I like Harvest Moon's farming, but I want something a little more original.

Every idea I had was really boring, I just couldn't think of how to make something as boring as sitting around staring at crops intersting.  Eventually I realized that the only game I've ever had fun with where all you do is sit around and watch is...  Johnny Castaway! (Not really a game, but close enough).  So taking some basic concepts from that, I give you, farming:

The basic concept is that when you click on a farming patch, you are sent to a seperate screen, this screen is basically a hand-drawn back drop where slightly interactive random events will go by.  Each event can either hurt or help your crops.  You can influence the events in small ways, using a few pre-determined tools (such as a slingshot, or wood for building small barricades).

It's kind of a concept mix between Johnny Castaway and Pokemon Snap.  I think it will probably make for an interesting farming experience.  I would post a mock up screen-shot, but I need to get my hands on a hand-drawn farming scene. Hopefully I can convince my sister to make something like that.

 

[Plubyblop]

Hello, we haven't abandoned Stuffed Titans. We have in fact been working on it quite a bit.  The main problem is that we have been having trouble getting the engine to work the way we had hoped.  Originally we had hoped to build an engine that used many of the RPG Maker XP's functions on the server (such as maps and events), and the connections and the client would be done in C#.  We were having a lot of trouble getting the event system to work, to the point where my brother had started building an entirely new event editor from scratch.

Basically, we couldn't release Stuffed Titans any time soon using the current engine.  We looked at moving what we had finished so far over to NP+ 1.6, but we felt that it was far to insecure, especially if we ever wanted to take the game commercial in the future. We also looked at NP+ 2.0, this was more promising from the outset, but it really isn't a workable system we found.

Luckily, it was around this time that Me(tm) announced NetPlay 3.  It looks like a promising system, much more secure than 1.6, and from what Me(tm) has said about it, much more workable than 2.0.  And it will probably be released soon. (You hear that one a lot on the internet, but this time I'm fairly confident that it will happen).

So now we have decided to move what we can of Stuffed Titans over to NP 3 when it is released, and start building from there.  If NetPlay 3 comes out before the Christmas break, we could potentially get most of it done before the break is over.  Maybe that's me being overly optimistic, but I'm hoping.