dacypher

Equipment durability loss through use and dying, at least how it has been implemented in commercial MMORPGs, has mostly been about removing currency from the game. Without sources for gold to exit the server, and only ways for more to come in, inflation happens very rapidly. That's why most games have an NPC do repairs, as opposed to a player. While it would be fun to have players do repairs, the gold paid for said repair would stay in the economy. I don't think item durability has ever really been used for item balance.

I appreciate it! If there is interest in some design tutorials, I would be happy to try to devote some time to writing them. I have written 4000+ pages of design documents over 4 different games in the last 9 years and have studied all I could on general (and MMORPG) design and balance. I was just not sure if there would be interest since most tutorials are strictly technical (scripting, mapping, etc.).

It is definitely interesting. I know you said that it is not complete and some things may still seem vague, but some clarification on the first paragraph could really help with overall clarity in the rest of the story. I really didn't have much of a grasp on what the syrn are. What exactly is the "merging"? How do they react to the merging? What do they get out of it?

@Amperglyph: > Not true, actually. According to the predictions of Hawking radiation, a black hole can only sustain itself for a finite amount of time, as based on a ratio of its initial mass. At this point, the amount of gamma radiation within the black hole, as generated by supercompacting of the atomic constituents, will exceed the capacity of the hole, and cause it to rapidly expand, simulating the "evaporation" of the gravitational singularity. > > This property of black holes is why, if we were to manually create a small superdense object, or a tiny black hole, it would only be a threat to the planet if the global consensus of physicists is wrong, or if someone severely underestimates the mass of the singularity. > > As to the idea of using a real-life object as the replacement for Earth, I would not recommend Pluto, because, even though it is extremely popular with the misinformed youth of America, it lacks an atmosphere, any valuable resources, and has such a peculiar orbit that it can never be reliably terraformed. I would suggest Europa for that purpose, since it's a world made largely of frozen water, sort of like a "frozen dinner" version of Earth - just waiting for someone to heat it up a little. This is true, but it takes a lot longer than 18,000 years for a backhole to go away. At least I think so… Also, as far as Kreator's rewrite of the story: The people who "managed to escape" could have perhaps been pessimists during the experiments. The same people who, on 12/31/1999, were hiding in an underground bunker with 10 years worth of canned goods and fuel. There would not have been many of them who left the planet when the experiment was being conducted, but they are the planning, survivalist types. They banded together on Earth several weeks before the experiment to determine what their course of action would be if what they thought was going to occur happened. Maybe that could add a bit to the people who "escaped the planet". Because if it was possible for them to escape (and I don't think it would have been if a blackhole opened up with the force to destroy a planet), then I would think many people would have been able to. Unless, of course, it was total chaos on the planet, and those who made it out where the ones who pushed everyone out of their way, held people at gun point for their space shuttles, etc. Then a lot of them would likely be thugs and personal malitia men. Just a couple different ways to go there.

@Munro: > I was using that site as reference for the pictures. Ahhh, I gotcha. Still stands, though. Get them from the doctor.

Unnatural colored contact lenses just look goofy to me, and I believe most of society. The aqua and blue look pretty good, though (in the pic at least. See below). I have a couple of things to say here, though: 1\. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY. Their site looks quite unprofessional, which would make me question their product. **Bad contact lenses can permanently damage your eyes**. There have been several cases of people getting scratches and infections on their eyes from using novelty contacts. If you want colored contact lenses, you need to go to the eye doctor and get a set of non-prescription colored contacts. They will be much more expensive (probably about $120 - $200 round-trip), but you cannot skimp out on these things. You could go blind. [Here is a link](http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/Novelty-contact-lenses-offer-great-looks--great-risks-6758-1/) with a bit more info. It appears the FDA has advised international packages containing novelty contacts to be seized at the border. 2\. Remember that these are just photoshopped models in those pictures. Real color contact lenses can look VERY bad if they are cheap. And $30 is probably the bad ones. Again, this just goes back to point #1\. Go to the eye doctor.

My girlfriend got into Runes of Magic a few months ago. She finally quit out of frustration: 1\. Many quests are not yet translated as you get higher level. You will just accept some and use the map markers to try to complete them. Some are not possible unless you speak the native language of the game. 2\. The Arcane Transmutor is a horrid system. It needs serious help for many reasons. 3\. It is scary how much this game resembles WoW. I was even able to give her advice on what to do without knowing anything about Runes of Magic. 4\. Just like most other free-to-play MMORPGs, the community is garbage. You ask someone for help, they don't respond and steal your resource node. 5\. You will need to spend real-life money in the cash shop to do well in crafting. I heard most of this second-hand, and saw some of it first hand. I will say, however, that this is by far the most deep free-to-play MMORPG I have ever seen. For anyone looking for a f2p WoW-type game, it doesn't get much closer than this. I think it could be a good game once beta is over and the game is finished.

There is no language that learning it will "go to waste". Once you have learned and mastered one language, learning another is a trivial task, since most of the beginner's learning curve is just mastering "programming logic". Not the syntax itself. VB6 is probably the easiest language available to learn, and it makes a great intro to programming. It is still quite valuable to learn it today, since there are still many, many programs in use that are developed in VB6\. And once you learn VB6, picking up VB.NET will be much easier.

The supposed "female" questions were MUCH easier than the male questions. I mean, compare the "which house below looks like this house" question to the one where you had to determine the perspective of the brick shape. The "which house…" question was something from Highlights for Children :huh:

Unfortunetly, I doubt it. Microsoft officially supported VB6 when Vista came out, so they had to make it compatible. Now that VB6 support has been dropped, if it does work on it, it will be by coincidence.

Read through these tutorials [here](http://www.touchofdeathforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=36286.0). They should answer most of your beginning questions. This forum is for programming, like Visual Basic, Java, C++, .NET, etc.

I am assuming your question is regarding the server splitting, and not really implementing the penalty itself. It would not be a very difficult source mod, I believe. If that is out of the question, I think the only other way would be to have a separate client.

Fantastic Contraptions was one of the coolest free web-based games I have ever played. Although it could get very frustrating in higher levels, it was still really satisfying when you beat a level. I am not really ware of any games like it that are better.

Just…soo...expensive... I have always wanted to play Warhammer, but the cost and the fact that I don't like painting figures just turns me off. Personally, I would love for Game Workshop to make a computer game of it, but have it follow the Warhammer rules 100%. No RTS, no RPG...just the Warhammer tabletop game. They could make it online, even sell digital packs of figures. Make it free to play with purchases for in-game pieces, similar to the Magic the Gathering online game.

Here is my general rule of horror movie thumb: If it is rated PG-13, don't see it. Why? Because a horror movie can actually carry an R-rating just for "disturbing scenes". This means that a PG-13 movie just can't go past a certain line. I have seen dozens of them, hoping for something scary before I figured out that they are all the same. Something creepy is about to happen, and then it just seems to fall-apart and pull back. Pretty much every PG-13 horror movie I have seen in the last 7 years (since The Ring) have relied mostly on "jump out of the closet" bits to make the audience flinch, but there is nothing creepy in them. I guarantee The Unborn is exactly like the others I have seen. I am not very familiar with The Uninvited, though.

@>~(Squiddle)~ 15 votes have been cast, thanks everyone ^.^. I will not give away who is in the lead, though. Once you vote, you can see it :)

Aren't there 3rd party COM/Java interoperability add-ons?

The only way that you could fit any kind of relevant ads into your game without breaking immersion would be if you are using a modern-era setting. And not many successful games have used modern-era, real-world settings. Also, ads in games are kind of a catch-22 for indie developers. No one is going to pay you for ad space unless your game has a proven community (probably over at least 10k, and even that is small for in-game ads), but you need the money to try to bring in a reasonably-sized community. And I would have to say no to adult ads, unless your game is somewhat adult-related. A good portion of MMO players are underage, and you will alienate them (or at least their parents lol) by adding adult ads.

@gamernick1: > do you get payed cuz of the game ? > because i use sprites from other games so will it be legal ? Technically, you are getting paid because of your website. Or more accurately, you are getting paid when people use the ads on your page.

I can be ok with them as long as the cash shop items do not give a player an advantage in PvP, or really even PvE, performance. There really is not much wrong with "+25% xp per hour" tokens, since both the item shop player and the non-item shop player will get to the same place. One will just get there faster. So one person using them will not really affect the gameplay of another player. Other such items/services I have seen like this are extra bank space, gender changes, costumes (with no stats), permanent mounts (versus renting them), etc. These items and services have little impact on the players that choose not to use them. I have a serious problem with item shop games when they start selling powerful gear, crafting items to enhance gear, added damage potions, etc. These gives purchasing players large advantages in PvP games, and can even disrupt non-purchasing players in PvE-only games. If the items are giving a large advantage, it is not uncommond to see players yelling "I need a healer for raid! Must have __!", because the item gives a huge advantage. I know that game companies have to make money to keep the games going and pay to play models have not been working well for downloadable, internet-based games. But they just need to keep balance in them.

@Greendude120: > but the process would be slow > > i hope ur server is running real good, chckn all the .inis can be long thru vb6 Why not write this application in another language then? .NET performs much faster than VB6 COM-oriented languages, and the file services are pretty nicely optimized.

If all you want is an ATB-type system, that would be easy. From what I can tell (I have only been looking at Eclipse for a couple days), there is a timer that is counting before you can attack again during combat. If there wasn't, then you could attack probably 60 times in 20 seconds. All you would really need to do is find the code that holds that counter, and give it a graphical representation. Probably as a bar that would reside under the small avatar health bar on the world screen (the one that appears after you begin attacking). And as an extension to what Anna is saying, I cannot really see the reason for this. The ATB system employed in the earlier Final Fantasy games was simply used as an illusion of real-time combat within the constraints of a turn-based platform. If they had the technology to make it real-time back then, I think they would have, since that was the goal of the ATB system.

Unfortunately, I don't really have the web development skills required for that job, but I was wondering what the theme of your forum is about. I am always looking for more forums to lurk in. That, and posting more information about what you want the theme of the forum to be and other info may help you attract someone who can help you.

It does look unprofessional. While it is true that a typical user will spend vastly more time in the forums, this is just a case where indie and hobbyist developers should try to follow the "best practices" laid down by commercial AAA titles if they want their game to be commercial. On the other hand, if you are just making a hobby game for people to play, and are not too worried about commercial success (or charging at all), a forum is fine. I wouldn't go so far as to say "never, ever use a forum only", but rather, if you have commercial plans for your game, it should have a commercial website. And that means a homepage including a forum, not just the latter.

@softbagel14: > I never said ANYTHING about Buy to Play or Pay to play. I'm fine with those two. It's Micro-transactions that I don't like. B2p and p2p are fair. Everyone pays the same amount and gets the same content. Everyone has a chance to experience the full game, to experience every update and item equally. You said: @softbagel14: > Make it Buy to play, with no pay to play or micro-transactions (I hate that word). If you typed the wrong thing, I can totally understand that (I do it all the time). I personally much prefer pay to play as well, although I do like having a downloadable client with a free trial so you can try the game out before purchasing the box. The sad truth is, though, that smaller games (and basically all indie games) have been doing much better with cash shops in the last 5 years than trying to go with a pay to play model. I guess tons of players get pulled in with the "FREE TO PLAY!" crap. Then they are already hooked when they realize they need to shell out about $100 a month to stay competitive.