Imagination Land

I ask a little help from you writers out there.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:32:29 GMT

As you may have read in my last post, the game I'm working on is taking a heavy turn away from fan game, and in that course I've come up with alot of unnamed territores and such.

Anyway, I'm led with some areas that I'm having trouble naming... Not the main ones in the story mind you, but just general zones. So I'm calling out all of you wordsmiths that follow my blog for help.

I ask of you to provide a few fantasy-sounding names for general climates. Forests zones, Mountains, Strongholds/forts, villages, caves, pubs, inns, and maybe a few names for some fantasy-sounding NPCs. I'm sure I could come up with all of this on my own, but naming things can get a little tedious and I figured while I'm at it I may as well allow my players to have some sort of attachment to the game. If I use your name I'll credit you of course, but please don't recycle things from popular media like LotR, Eragon, Pendragon, etc... (Although using them as a basis isn't against my nature)

To help with the naming I might as well provide some information about the races in my game:

Humans: Like to inhabit fertile lands near bodies of water, seldom forests. Very proud and diplomatic.
Dwarves: Inhabit mountainous areas, living inside of them or hills if there is no mountain close by. Well known for their adept abilities to craft from rock or metal.
Elves: Inhabit forest areas, generally stray away from the other living races with a few exceptions. Take pride in their magic and their ability to work well with wildlife.
Uurks: Elves who were tainted by dark magics, exiled from their home lands many centuries ago. They live inside cavernous areas and are known for their dark powers and merciless tendencies.
Sayns: An old race of savages who are said to be ancestors to the humans (I'm sure you can guess my basis for the characters by the name :p). They tend to live in large tribes similar to native americans and are well known for their strength and spirituality.

I'll post a bit more about the game sometime over the week, currently I'm working alot of overtime however in lieu of the holidays.

<3 Ken

Information

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:02:38 GMT

Well this may drive some of you away, but hopefully a good deal of you will appreciate this...

Fighters of Legend is dead, I am no longer working on a Dragon ball(Z) game.
Let me explain...

I love the series but the more I tried to do with the game, the more it was becoming less "Dragon Ball (Z)". During my last actual content post, the game was generally my own creation with minor references. The only "Dragon ball" parts of the game really were the race names/models and some terms like "Super saiyan"... I didn't even have actual Dragon Balls, because they wouldn't work well in an online game without severe restriction.

For a while now I've realized that I wasn't even really making a Dragon ball game anymore. I had no training, no kamehameha waves, and none of the characters from the show since the time frame was far into the future. Because of this I've decided to broaden the game into something completely original, 100% my own, without resorting to minor references to make the game interesting to some outsiders. Honestly I really don't want to solely draw in the anime crowd around here anyway, I didn't even release anything besides a few plain images and my page turned into a breeding ground for ePenor flexing, idiots, and people being accused of ripping from something that doesn't even exist yet... That's not really what I want.

As for this game...

It'll still be the same basic game in a sense, except I wish to introduce races and classes that aren't Dragon ball. I also want a game with trade skills and a reasonable player economy, and honestly I couldn't think of a logical way to design that in the Dragon ball universe.

I do realize alot of you were looking forward to me making that "ideal DBZ game", and I'm sorry to let you down. In all fairness if that's what you're looking for, Dragon Ball Online II is amazing from what I've seen of it, and Quaddw is working on a newer version of Onslaught, both are very good alternatives and I honestly couldn't provide better.

As for my graphics

They're kinda on the back burner too. They were looking really nice and were fun to make, but honestly I think I was in overkill mode with the alphas generated to produce that kind of smoothness. Imported they had at least 40 different colors per base, and would be very inefficient for a little extra eye candy. To save myself time I've moved into generally smaller graphics, something more in the 32x32 range. That should at least allow me to progress a little quicker, since drawing all of those icon_states was such a time killer, and there was no way I would ever finish all of the overlays in the next few years as a solo artist... lol.

In short...

FoL has become a currently unnamed project. The whole story and gameplay will remain practically unaltered. From this point on this is no longer a fan game, but an entirely original creation with some similarities.

<3 Ken.

My favorite SNL skit, ever.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:11:45 GMT

FireLight - with Taylor Swift. My girlfriend's a huge fan of the Twilight series so when my friend linked this to me on facebook I nearly pissed myself... Enjoy!

Secret

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:44:01 GMT

Working on something, not saying what, BYOND related.

:)

I think I figured out how to get this done.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:17:10 GMT

Initially I believe I bit off alot more than I can chew with Fighters of Legend, and after a while I was starting to feel it. Overtime with work picked up, events outside of work covered most of my free time, and FoL was getting harder and harder to work on. Also I was having alot of trouble working the combat system around the differences between client and server delays.

I took some time today to reflect upon most of this and worked out something that seems very possible. Firstly I limited the animations and icon-states to about 26 (down from close to 60), which may cause some actions to not look as awesome as I would hope, but these animations should cover all aspects of the game I wish to present.

Secondly, I was trying something so complicated with stats (for me at least) that getting the math right for all levels, variations and aspects of combat was proving to be wicked tough. Combine that with the timing offsets between clients and outputs were scaling in two completely opposite directions. I'm gonna simplify (if not rework entirely) all of the stats in the game, so they're back down to the initial 5-6 and everything works around them. Adding in an automatic hit-or-miss element based around these calculations was also proving to be very tough.

Thirdly my approach with styles and mastery would make for alot of tweaking, instead I may have a dynamic class-type system in its place. I was thinking heavily about it and I believe that this would not only be easier to work out as a sole developer (especially in terms of balance), but would also produce the same type of results.

And finally the world. For some reason I had it in my head that having a planet for each race would be plausible, given that at most I'll have a hundred or so players per server this would be a terrible idea. Instead I plan on having two similar areas for each level throughout the entire game, initially at least. I'm sure I can rework the story to flow around this concept, and it'd allow for more player interaction (as well as saving me a ton of work).

I'll try and keep everyone updated, I apologize for my lack of postings but alas real world calls and this kind of thing isn't a paying job :)

- Heart, Ken.

theletterj is single... match.com?

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:45:56 GMT

Check it out and be sure to comment.

The future of Fighters of Legend.

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:30:14 GMT

I do realize that it has been a while, as stated things have been taking a turn for the worst in my personal life, thus hindering my developer's life but I do wish to push on.

With my little time away from working on the game I had come up with a few new ideas I wish to incorporate into the game in place of certain concepts, as well as expressing the remaining necessities before testing.

The combat system itself is still incomplete, and I feel I may have gone too far involved with the stats for my own good, so I'm going to simplify them. No more power or anything bogus like that to worry about. Strength will directly effect melee damage, Body will deal with the damage you receive, Mind will directly effect KI effects, and so on. I feel I bit off more than I (and the byond engine itself) can chew, so I'm going to take a little time simplifying everything before I pick back up on the combat system itself.

This should speed up the process a little and make it less involved and confusing, yet more straightforward and fun. Of course I do still have a lot of work to do with the game, but it will be ready when it is ready. I stopped doing this for myself and tried focusing on doing it for potential players, and that took me off track. I won't rush anything or even try to speed anything along for anyone, but I'll work at my even pace and hope that when it's released people still want to play it. Basically I was working on the game for the weekend updates, and rushing my ideas... I lost a little interest by doing that.

Screenshots will be held off until I actually have something pretty to show, as of now it's just confusing people who stumble upon the game and building up speculation I really don't want yet. If you care about my progress as a developer and maybe some aspects of the game then this is the blog for you, if not then haunt the hub entry until it's available :).

Concept
As I started the game I was working around an equipment system being the basis of stats for the game, which I eventually realized didn't really make sense for the category and people would be pissed if they had to wear a certain clashing combination of clothing just to have their stats where they want them. Gear as of now will simply be cosmetic for the most part.

In place of gear will be this idea I've had for some time now, Training Slots. Initially you will start out with one slot, which would hold place for exchangeable card-like items based on your style and/or race. As you level you'd get more of these slots, and the objects themselves would contain stats or passive effects that directly effect your character. In the future I would probably have up to 3 different types of these slots where only corresponding cards would fit.

It's still a rough concept but I like it better than the gear idea. Say you do a quest line based on gravity training, at the end there would be a choice of training cards that explain and represent the level of your gravity training, or you train under a master for a quest line. The ideas are very open-ended and should provide a good outcome.

I hope to have more updates in the future, but please realize that this is just a self-fulfilling project, and having players when it's ready is only the perks of it.

Bored... Two youtube shorts.

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:51:04 GMT

For some reason the best way around the economy stress is youtube!

They may be very random, but they were fun to make!

Time Machine (digg) and Guitar Hero the 13th?(digg)

Fun stuffs!

Twilight Drinking Game...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:10:04 GMT

Because we had a little free time and alot of beer. Enjoy.

Don't forget to DIGG IT.

Postponed :(

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:57:05 GMT

Real life is getting sucky, might be a couple weeks before FoL progression. Lotsa job worries but I'll keep you all posted.

Yay economical problems! :(

Note: The game is not abandoned, just getting a little dusty with the absence of my current free time, this is not a permanent situation just a temporary lapse.