2007-02-20 18:34:23

Ideally, as I said, we might not even have to deal with ads, but I will talk to the owner and see how easy it would be to put ads at the bottom where screenreaders aren't forced to encounter them. Definitely a tweak worth considering if ads are necessary in the long run.

Also, our game will be built with easy URLing in mind. If we do have collapsible panes, the URLs for the missing links will still definitely work (as long as it's legal, of course), and they'll make sense.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-20 20:49:00

Yeah I said the same thing lol.

2007-02-24 11:07:12

Hey. You can try
http://www.travian.nl (english gamers kan try travian.com
http://www.knightfight.nl (english gamers kan try knightfight.com
http://www.onlinesoccermanager.nl (english gamers kan try onlinesoccermanager.com

2007-02-24 20:51:16

Hello Leonard, welcome to the forum.

I've heard of the online socker manager game (assuming it's the same one), though not being a football fan, I haven't tried it.

As to the other two games, a litle more information would be nice, sinse I've never heard of either one. Are they rpg's? battle stratogy or economics games? where are they set? Are they muds, or can they be played directly through a net brouser like Internet explorer?

If the games are rpg's or muds, the big question is of course, how much stuff there is to do in the game besides stat crunching.

Jayde, I also agree, if we must suffer adds, let them be banished to the bottom most frame of each page, and sealed there forever to prevent their evil power escaping and corrupting the entire game.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-02-25 09:38:45

Ads are often one of those necessary and tolerable evils.

The Travian game, or whatever it's actually called, is a resource-management type of game, I believe it's about Roman civilization.
The other one makes me think of a boxing sim, but I haven't tried it.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-25 18:37:36

For those of you who play the kingdom of loathing.
There is a very easy way to get to the content you want. Just go to the next frame with the m key. All the content that's relivent to the current page is on the mainpane frame. This makes KOL very easy to play.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2007-02-25 21:40:09

Hmmm, i didn't know Kingdom of loathing had hotkeys ----- but then again, I probably didn't read the help faqs as extensively as I could have.

so Travian is yet another resource management game. You'll forgive me if I'm not overly enthusiastic, it's not as if there's a scarcety of such things.

A friend of mine who's just starting work as a software developer actually says such games are the sort of thing programmers learn to write as a first exercise, before going on to something more complex. it's therefore incredibly depressing that the net is full of these.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-02-25 22:45:34

I'll just point out that whilst muds are often stat crunching they hide it well, and the stats are usually more complex than the fighting fantasy type games so the variance tends to balance out a little more. It is also common for there to be some way to impact the outcome, in the case of Alter Aeon for example you have either spells or additional attack abilities such as kick. In my current favourite Awakened Worlds there is less to do admittedly, but you still have a substantial impact in the way you set the "dice pools".

Also remember muds have the options of exploring, which is always fun, and even the potential for roleplaying if you are so inclined.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2007-02-26 08:07:01

hmm, knightfight is very cool! you become a knight, you can read the instructions on the homepage. Travian is a browser game featuring a world with thousands of other real players. One begins the game acting as a chief of a tiny village. You can become a roman, teuton or gaul, you can read it too on the travian homepage.

2007-02-26 15:34:16

Knight fight sounds interesting, I'll look into it. Perhaps it.

Cx2, I wasn't particularly thinking of Muds in my miner wrant above, sinse I know Mud's have a hugely different interface, a good deal more exploring (I believe some even include in game quests), and as you say combat that is actually quite interesting, I'll certainly be trying out some muds myself as soon as I move out of colidge.

However, I must admit I'm getting rather sick of things that call themselves "Online text rpg's" where the only role you play is that of a glorified calculator, and program set on repetitive loop performing the same actions over and over again just to grind up more and more stats.

I've been looking into these things for three or four years now (longer than I've been playing audiogames infact), and I've probably checked out at least a hundred or so, and the shear amount of rpg games that are nothing but number manipulation is truly unbelievable.

Of course, there are some quite legitimate and complex stratogy and resource management games, like Warring factions, but these never claime to be rpg's in the first place, and usually the stat management in such things is so highly! complex, that it takes quite a deal of exploration on it's own.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-02-26 18:03:50

Consider something, if you will: an RPG, if it is a game with a goal, is GUARANTEED TO entail stat-crunching and other such management. The critical point, of course, is whether or not the manipulation is worth it (this is to say, if a world has stat-crunching and exploration and the story/exploration is more worthwhile, the stat-crunching is worth it, while another game might focus on stats to the exclusion of everything else).
If you want an online RPG without stat-crunching, keep to interactive fiction or fighting fantasy and the like, because you will find stats everywhere else. If you want games where the intrigue and plot and all that jazz wins out over stat-crunching, then by all means keep hunting and you'll find stuff. Even the highly vaunted Sryth is thinly-veiled stat-crunching. Go back and read the quests you've done, and think of how the GM writes things/how quests unfold. Yeah, there's storyline, but don't you think sometimes it's a bit thin? Moreover, if you're not an AG member, you're not strong enough to encounter half the stuff on that game...thus the reason I brought it up.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-27 05:06:24

dark empathy wrote:

Hmmm, i didn't know Kingdom of loathing had hotkeys ----- but then again, I probably didn't read the help faqs as extensively as I could have.

so Travian is yet another resource management game. You'll forgive me if I'm not overly enthusiastic, it's not as if there's a scarcety of such things.

A friend of mine who's just starting work as a software developer actually says such games are the sort of thing programmers learn to write as a first exercise, before going on to something more complex. it's therefore incredibly depressing that the net is full of these.

Its a jaws hotkey, dark, not a KOL hotkey. I'm surprised you guys don't use jaws hotkeys in IE. sheesh. Look at your scripts people!

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2007-02-27 09:03:35

It's funny. I neither use nor need this particular hotkey. Moreover, I tried using it and it didn't work.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-27 09:48:33

Stirlock:
Before you get on your high horse consider that not everyone uses Jaws. While I do, Dark for example uses Hal. Thus in all likelihood Dark has never heard of the hotkeys you mentioned and telling him to look in his Jaws scripts does not do you any favours.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2007-02-27 10:36:27

Indeed Cx2, assumptions don't help when people are using different programs. in fact, it's people who make assumptions are always evil, fowl corrupt pot noodle eaters! ;D.

I'm already using Hal's version of the same key in KoL, I just think it would be preferable if I didn't need to, as in sryth.

Now, as to stats. Jayde, I have no objection to stats in games, in fact, handled well they can be a highly useful thing, allowing the charactor freedome while stil keeping elements of danger in the game.

My big problem is with those hundreds of so called Rpg's that actually don't have a plot, just various stats to grind and ranks to attain, with almost no game areas to explore or other tasks to perform, just links on the main page to the item shop, and fight a random monster.

Imagine a tabletop game run by a gm like that ------ it just wouldn't work at all!

While I agree, there are points in sryth where the plot is a litle shaky, and finding a reason for you to do in random monsters is a litle thin, at least there actually is! some plot, and a litle more reason given than the usual "You want to be a stronger warrior" or "You want lots of treasure"

Also, I have no objection to leveling up charactors abilities, so long as this isn't the be all and end all of the game, and there actually is a reason why being a higher level is a good thing, other than that you have bigger numbers after your name.

In Sryth, as in World of Warcraft and quite a few other mainstream graphical rpg's, improving your charactors stats lets you perform more difficult tasks (killing stuff only being one of them), and advance the plot. take for example the curing of the Sea captains' daughter in Talinus.

To get my charactor in a position to do that I had to spend quite a bit of Xp on the power of restoration, and in the end, I didn't actually get much from it in terms of rewards.

It was however a nice litle episode in my charactor's life, which might have significance later on.

In the end, it all comes down to what the main emphasis of the game is. Plot? or stats.

Interactive fiction is all plot, but finds certain situations extremely difficult to represent, such as combat, a charactor's reflexes and involuntary reactions, and the learning and improvement of different skills or jobs.

i'd personally love to see more games that can balance these two things accurately. Sryth is, at the moment, the only game that even attempts to manage this task in a world that goes beyond about 500 pages of text. Though hopefully your game Jayde will do it as well, ----- and maybe improve upon Sryth in the process.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-02-27 19:32:15

Our game will be laid out differently than Sryth, but I flat guarantee you that stat-crunching for purely its own sake will be discouraged, because quests, areas and challenges/ranks will be available that do not necessarily depend on stats or, when they do, can be finished in a myriad of ways.

Don't forget KoL when it comes to plot. Yeah, I know that game is hilarious, and more a spoof than anything, but to give credit where it's due, that game THRIVES on quests. The only problem is that once you hit L11 (or whichever level you beat the NS at) you're screwed, or else you can go back and do it all again.

If actual frames bother you Jaws users, it's very easy to disable frames. I've done it, and it works well enough for me.

Hmm...sort of on-topic and off-topic at the same time: don't you folks hate games that have a constant auto-refresh (for a chat pane or something?) Just think of trying to read KoL or Sryth and having it refresh every fifteen seconds or so.
There are several text-oriented games that do this, and it drives me nuts!

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-28 01:57:42

I certainly like the sound of this game of yours Jade, Is it programmed in such a way that you'll be adding new areas and stuff on a semi-regular basis? or will we get one version to begin with, then have to await an entire new version update to get a wodge of new content?

KoL does indeed have it's good points, I should probably play that game a litle more seriously, sinse I only got to level 4 I believe, and only just did the rats quest.

As to auto refresh, I'm not sure how it is in Jaws, but Hal has various ways of dealing with it. the Antistutter mode often works when only a small area of the page changes, and for more drastic situations there's the "Screen lock" command. If these both fail, Hal has the option of disabling page refresh in Ie as wel, though I assume there's another way of doing this directly in settings of Ie without the use of Hal.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-02-28 04:52:20

The game I'm working on will be one fairly large piece that goes live to start with, and then there will be updates on as regular a basis as we can rightly manage. It's not like you'll get a new area every day for a month or anything, but you won't get one huge update every seven months, either.

I have not yet found any refresh-disablers for Jaws. Mostly it isn't a problem, and our chats auto-refresh out of necessity (but I can handle that)...it's only the actual game that bothers me if/when it does that.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-28 10:29:13

Well, while new game areas every week would be good (another reason I wish I could play world of warcraft), I like the idea of smaller updates more frequently than one humungous update twice a year. While I know you can't be precise, is the game likely to be up and running relatively soon, ------ in March or early april, or will we be waiting several months.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-02-28 18:15:57

I can't make any promises on that. If I had to give you a vague estimate I would tell you sometime in April or May if things pick up and then keep going, as a great deal of the stuff is done. We might be able to launch in April or May, then add on in quick little bursts for awhile till we're up to speed, then level off.
In related new, our first quest (simple though it is, but interesting) is done! Yay!

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-02-28 18:21:34 (edited by cx2 2007-02-28 18:22:56)

I'm using the old 4.51 version of Jaws and can attest to the fact that there is a refresh supression option. There are 3 options:
Refresh as needed
Refresh once
And another to entirely supress it
Go into your configuration manager, enter the set options item on the menu bar then find "HTML Options" it's called "Page refresh filter".

And to the best of my knowledge IE doesn't have a supression option sadly. A key command to turn on and off refresh supression would be very nice though, since with some pages it can be necessary to refresh a time or two.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2007-02-28 20:44:53

Hehehe, oh wow, I'm going to go try that out right now.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-03-01 12:09:03

i'm glad there's another way to fix the refresh issue.

I hope you won't rush game developement too much Jayde, I'd personally rather have a nice complete game at start up with plenty to keep me busy, than just a couple of areas that might be updated later.

Pluss, if there was a problem with updating the new areas of the game after start up, imho it'd be worse to have the game hanging with a small amount of content than no game at all, sinse I know (from personal experience), people will whistle in, play through what's there, and then leave assuming that's all there is.

As far as update frequency goes, one idea might be at some point to produce some sort of editer that would let players of the game create their own game areas, quests etc. This is something I've always fancied seeing in sryth, and it's something that I think would deffinately increase the frequency of game updates.

There would be no need to have it interfere with the game's central plot. Say, at one location in the game your charactor comes upon a temple (perhaps that could be a quest in it'self, and only attainable for more experienced charactors), with portals to various other planes.

Each portal could lead to a selfcontained, user created location, which could either use elements (monsters, objects items etc), from the game, or create new ones dependent upon the editer.

Because the user created worlds could be as small or large as possible, people could be free to make anything from symple dungeon crawls to completely new and large scale worlds with a series of quests of their own. Having each area as completely separate would also prevent people from mucking up the main world and plot of the game with their own ideas. Other limits could be set in the editer to prevent cheating, such as only allowing creation of items of a certain power level, lower than that of the strongest in game items.

Of course, you haven't even built the game yet, so me suggesting this type of thing might be slightly premature, but stil, perhaps it's an idea you might considder in the future.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-03-01 17:33:50

This may seem to you to be power-hungry or simply too controlling but I'd rather not allow such editing to occur. It's a neat idea, but it's not something I want to see...mostly because, as development staff, I want to make sure that the game stays within guidelines. Besides, we have writers and coders to create new areas and they can do it fairly quickly.
The game won't just have one area when it's released, but it won't be as big as it's going to get. Very likely, we will have a few things done and a whole bunch of things halfway done or almost done when we go live...that way we can release things periodically as they become finished and entice folks to stay.

BTW: the refresh thing does not exist in my version of Jaws. I went digging. Mind, it is Jaws 4.0.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2007-03-02 09:39:19

There is one thing. Why don't you consider making that as a mud? It's quicker, better, easier and, ads wouldn't be annoying if there are going to be any. Come on, it's kind of tiring to cllick click click on links! Lol!