The Magic Man is setting your head on fire!!

So, I am about to make a magic system for a game I am working on, and the question is how should I go about doing it.

The two choices are predetermined spells, or user made spells.

Predetermined spells are what you see in most games, you just learn and use them.

The player made spells would be a system where players pick 2-6 "words", these words have effects tied to them, and based on the words used, a spell is made.
The first word is a target/shape of the spell, such as a line, projectile, cone or explosion.
The second word is an attribute, fire, healing, a shield, darkness and so on.

Those two are always needed, no exception.
The other 4 words are additional effects. These can range from increasing power, duration, area of effect, to adding status effects, to making spells do stuff like jump from one target to another and so on.


Now, here is the ups and downs of each system.

Predetermined spells...

Ups
Easier to make.
Allows for more unique spells, if it can be done in BYOND, it can be made into a spell.
Easier to balance.

Downs
Less spells, a lot less.
Once both systems are in place, adding new spells to this system would take longer to do.


Player Made spells

Ups
Lots and lots more spells.
Adds a lot more replayability to the game due to there always being new spells to try and play around with.
Probably easier to add new effects once the system is in place.

Downs
Harder to make.
Harder to balance.
Will probably result in a lot of min/maxing, players will probably use the same 2-3 spells because they are the strongest.
End result is more spells, but lots of boring spells. You will be shooting out fire, making fire explosions, or walls of fire. But not making chunks of fire rain down from the sky, or shooting someone with a homing laser, or teleporting someone into a volcano.


So, which system would you prefer?

Sup? Decided a few days ago to start work on a new, or old project.
Generiquest to be specific.

And it is going through a fair lot of changes.
The major change is the code looks better, and is more organized. Might not seem like a major change, but when you're sifting through tens of thousands of lines of code spread over hundreds of files, it can be pretty hard to find anything. Which in turn makes working on the game really hard to do.

Other major changes include...

All maps are to some degree redesigned. Some are fairly similar, but more interesting, others are completely different and you probably would not recognize them.



Here is an example. It is the new town map.
The town is the relatively small top left section of the map. It has everything it previously had, but looks better and is more compact.
It also has a few new stuff, a castle like building which is a school (and place to get quests), farm land to the south and a graveyard in the middle. But everything else is more or less in the same place.
(Blank areas on the map are blank because players cannot access or see them, no point in mapping an inaccessible area)



That is what it looks like in game.


The next major update is quests. There will now be two types of quest.
The first type is usually related to a specific character or dungeon, and usually has some sort of (rubbish) storyline behind it. These ones are generally harder to do, but give better rewards.
The second type is called a task. Tasks are basic no nonsense quests, collect items, kill monsters, kill a boss and so on. They have no storyline behind them, and exist purely as a source of extra income/exp. All dungeons have 6 tasks (2 of each kind), and the bosses you have to kill for each task are unique to the task.

The quest log also looks much better, as seen below.




The next major update is with the general content of quests and dungeons themselves.
It should all be more fleshed out, more balanced and more fun to play.
Enemies (and bosses in particular) will be smarter, and more challenging to defeat.
Quests may provide more rewards than exp/money, such as access to new areas of a dungeon, or special ingame features.


The next thing to change is items and equipment.
All equipment will now have a minimum level requirement to be used (as people were previously abusing the no level restriction by giving their low level characters strong equipment).
Additionally, all items now have a "rarity" rating. Which is just a general indication of how rare it is.
Common items have a white name.
Uncommon items have a cyan name.
Rare items have a magenta name.
Epic items have an orange name.
Artifact items have a green name.

As seen below...



Item rarity obviously determines how rare it is, but it also determines roughly how powerful it is. Rare items are generally more powerful than Uncommon items of a similar level.


In addition to this, all store bought equipment (and some equipment gained from quests or dropped off of monsters) can be upgraded.
The upgrading process is simple enough. You take item, choose what to upgrade it too, then pay some money, and items to upgrade it.
To facilitate this, pretty much every enemy in the game will drop new items. Humans will drop stuff like metals or fabrics, animals will drop animal teeth, claws, horns and so on. Some will be rarer than others.

You can see the item upgrade window below.



As you probably noticed. All equipment will have multiple upgrade routes.
The most basic route is upgrading it to the next best of it's kind. IE, upgrading a Longsword to a Scimitar, there is nothing special about this, but it is cheaper than buying a new Scimitar from a shop.
The other route first involved reinforcing the weapon. A longsword becomes a reinforced longsword. Doing this opens up access to an entirely different selection of upgrades.
A reinforced longsword can be upgraded to an Orcish Sword (+str bonus), or a Military Sword (+bonus damage to human enemies).
An Orcish Sword can be further upgraded to a Warlords Sword (a high +str bonus).
A Military Sword can be upgraded to an Officers Sword (high +damage to humans) and then to a Heroes Sword (even higher damage to humans, and a small bonus to all stats).

The selection of 12 swords the shop sells can be upgraded to a total of 75 different weapons. (Only swords are finished at the moment, but other weapon types and armor will have similar routes they can be upgraded).



Those are pretty much all the planned stuff to be added at the moment, other than more of the game content finished (new skills for classes and so on).
I have no idea when these will be ready, but I expect sometime by the end of the month at the earliest.

A retarded brick wall!

So, recently I made a game.
It is an action game, but puts heavy emphasis on stratergy and team work to win.
It was probably partly my fault, as I cannot predict everything in the game and make it work exactly the way I want without extensive testing and adjusting.

But people were not using stratergy, hell, they were barely even using team work.
Most of them sat around the game, barely active. Slowly getting stronger, and gaining money. Basically they were grinding.
Once they decided they were strong enough, they'd try to win the game on their own. And this was a very long, and drawn out process.
They'd charge into combat, dealing minor damage to the enemies, get killed. Respawn and do it all again. Eventually they would win, but due to stratergy, team work of skill. But due to persistantly attacking an enemy.
It was taking anywhere from 3-6 hours for a game to end. When it should take no more than 1-2 hours.

Over the course of the past 3 weeks I have been gradually adjusting the game, to make it conform more with the original concept I had for the game.

Apparently players did not like this.
They do not want to use stratergy to win, they do not want to use team work. They want to sit around for a few hours, slowly getting stronger (kind of reminds me of punching bags), and once they were strong enough, they wanted to go out and dominate everything.

As I changed the game, a few players started to dislike the changes.
They are arguing that I am trying to force them into playing the game in a way they do not want to play it. Sure, I am, but that is because they are playing it wrong.
In a racing game, the objective of the game is to race, in a fighting game the objective is to fight. If people are playing these games, and not doing that, they are playing them wrong.

It is the same situation here. It is partly my fault because the original design of the game was not the greatest. It is hard to make an action game require teamwork and stratergy, which is why I have been progressively making changes to it, to make those elements more essential.

Some of the players still do not like this.
And they just wont be reasoned with. They seem to think because they can play the game, they have some sort of special right over it. They think they should determine how the game is developed, and how it should be designed and played.

And now, one person is like... Trying to take the lead or something stupid like that. I made the mistake of making the host files public, and he has them.
He is like... Trying to make people play the old version of the game he has (before a lot of changes were made), like it is the superior version of the game.

The game was not designed for people like him. So instead of being a reasonable person and playing another game, suited to him, he is instead demanding the game be changed to the way he wants. And at the same time trying to defy me or something by hosting this old version of the game.



I knew that parts of the BYOND community were bad. But it turns out, the vast majority of it is actually really bad.


Pro tip to anyone thinking of making a game with BYOND.
Do not give your potential players ANYTHING. Don't give them hosting files, do not give them a voice, do not let them have opinions. Rule them with an iron fist.
Show them even the slightest glimps of freedom or weakness, and they will try to use it to pervert your game into their own ideal.

I deleted the host files to the game, I changed the hub password so old versions will not show up, I am not giving out host files again.
And I will most likely add subscriber bonuses to the game in an attempt to raise a bit of money to get a decent host for the game (I could pay for one myself, but I'm not going to).

Oh wow, it is official.

I think about 90-95% of BYOND consists of casual scrubs, and/or underage kids.

I made a game, and it has so far had exactly 46 different people play it, about 40-42 of them have quit within 5 minutes.

Usually they quit after being killed once.
Chances are none of them read the help files that come with the game, and blindly charged into combat, and got slaughtered.
The help files specifically say, "Don't blindly charge into combat, if you do you will die. And dying is bad".
Hell, even the hub says STRATEGIC action game. Since when did stratergy involve blindly charging into an enemies base, and getting slaughtered in seconds?

The chat log in the game kind of looks like...

"Ranger killed SpartanDeath!
SpartanDeath has left the game.
Tower killed Nopok1!
Nopok1 has left the game.
Imp killed Benblu!
Benblu has left the game."

(There is no login message, but if there was it would say they logged in, got killed, logged out)

Maybe I should add a "Log training mode" to the game. Where the objective is to stand around, hitting logs all day?
Or maybe I should add a medal to the game "I am too casual to play real games, going back to play my AFK log training game now", which you get if you log in the game, get killed, the log out, without even reading any of the help files.

BYOND... I am dissapoint.

In other news I'll probably update the game later on today with items (and log training mode + i am a casual medal).

Finished the game I was working on. Suprisingly, it only took 2 weeks to finish.

You can find the hub for it here...
http://www.byond.com/games/TheMagicMan/WoH

I'll host a server for a few days, depending on whether people even care about the game or not.
Again, depending on whether people care or not I may or may not update it in the future (and I may, or may not bother using BYOND ever again).

I'm still not sure if I should even bother submitting it to a guild, and if so what guild to submit it to.
The game has aspects of a RPG, is an action game, but cannot be won without stratergy.

Also, the game is probably buggy. But should have no major or game breaking bugs.
It is also strictly multiplayer only.

Anyway, about the game.


It is a multiplayer, PVP based game. The general objective is to kill enemy players.
The game is suppose to be played in rounds. You organize a few friends, and play a game 3vs3 for example. Once the game starts, no one can join (or leave) until it is finished.
But there is an optional "free" mode where anyone can play and join and practice (which is what the server I am hosting is set to).
The game is largely inspired by games like DOTA and HON and is a similar genre of game.

You can play as either Humanity, or Legion. Each team has 16 heroes to play as, all of them are different and have different role in combat.

Depending on the game mode selected the objective is one of 3 things.
If the mode is Deathmath then the objective is to kill enemy players. The first team to a set amount of kills wins.
If the mode is Protection, then the objective is to kill the enemies king, while protecting your own. You have a variety of NPCs in the form of grunts and towers to help you protect your king. The objective is to fight through these, until you finally reach and kill the enemy king.

There is also a "free" mode of the above two. This mode has no technical objective, it is more of a practise mode than anything. But is otherwise played the exact same way.