Working on the Project Website

A long time ago, I started work on the project website. I managed to upload the first page. Then I got the brilliant (actually stupid) idea that I should make it look nice with CSS or something. That simply led to it not getting done as I tried to fool around with how it was supposed to look in CSS. People don't really decide to play or not games based on how great the website is. The main thing is find the information you need and go download and run a copy of the game.

I had wasted a lot of time prior to that trying to figure out how Drupal works. Drupal is this really bloated content management system that you don't need to display basic information about a game, but one of my friends used it extensively for his website and recommended it. This is before I ever heard of CSS. Of course his website is a whole different animal from making a game website. A game website is just basically information thrown up on the web and organized in some kind of manner. In fact, I just went to a website today that was basically just a wiki for this game engine I was looking at. Wiki's make it look like it is very in progress and anyone can just add anything. However, wikis don't really have the polish of a more traditional website.

Structs and typedefs

My learning of the C code hasn't been an easy thing, as many other people who have tried to learn C programming on their own can recall. I came across an old message board post today when just glancing at some FLOSS websites. It was a discussion about someone giving C programming tutorials. Realistically, I don't think programmers for this project are going to come from the free software community of already existing programmers. If someone is already that good with free software and programming, they probably have numerous, harder projects to actually work on. I think it would be better to find a bunch of retro gamers and teach them to program in C.

The big problem is finding any good programming material on the web and in books. I have already read 4 books on the subject, Problem Solving and Program Design in C by Jeri R. Hanly, Elliot Koffman and Frank L. Friedman is the one I am reading from now. This big blue book is more about teaching algorithms than just teaching the syntax, something that is needed if you want to go ahead with the code. Some the examples are very poor though. There was this problem where they used a bunch of doubles, but then had it scanf as a float. In addition I have also worked from the infamous K&R, Joy of C and a C primer. The primer book was the one that was most geared towards complete newbies, while the rest of them were more advanced and really needed some prior programming experience.

I have started looking at the code for the X11 client again. It looks like a bunch of structs and typedefs. Not really knowing the x11 function calls as well as not really knowing the rest of the code make it hard to figure out what it does. I really have not gotten much help from the other team members as I would like. I think that is why it may be better to look for more programmers in that community rather than trying to get the current programmers to work on the project. People don't really get commited to anything without a personal stake in the end result. On the other hand I do know how much I want a 2d, pvp, skill based, mmorpg. I doubt it is the most in demand
game ever, but there is probably enough demand to get a few other people involved at least.

I'm already thinking of the fun of writing quests and sticking tilesets on the map. I just wish the user interface and current crossfire gameplay didn't suck so bad. Last time I tried to play test it a week or so ago, I ended up crashing again by going into the wrong map. I started to looked a the difference in some of the files, but my lead programmer changed a lot of things, and didn't really document his changes, this being his first free software project as well.

Learning C the hard way

I thought that the C coding job was just something I could assign to another project member. I was wrong. I also though that you could read C programming books and then dive right into the code. I was wrong about that to. Apparently, unlike things such as version control and ht ml, learning the C programming language is going to take a long long time. Part of it is because the books written about programming in C are very bad. And the other part is unlike other things, there is just so much to learn before you get a working knowledge of C. Every semi-colon, every comma makes a difference in being able to compile and run the program. Also, functions don't necessarily work the way you think they should. Take scanf for instance. The whole deal that spaces meant a new entry with scanf took me a while to figure out. Also, you have to be careful that you are not inputting things in that you don't mean to. String processing doesn't work like you think it should. And I haven't even done an in depth study of structures yet, something I will need to do to be able to understand the wograld code. The problem with most programming books is this. they give you examples, but when you try to build something on your own you are left in the dark. Then, other books have algorithms in them, but those algorithms will give you no way to implement that in the C code. You end up spending your time hunting down syntax errors because you can't implement the algorithm.

Why Quest based games are stupid.

I'm really tired of all these Quest based games. Basically, the idea behind the quest based game is this. You run around and do quests for various npcs. They have a checklist of things for you to do, like gather ten rat tails. Then they give you a prize Most of the time, it is not very good, even when it is good, it quickly loses its useage. You could fill the game up with numerious useless quests to fill up a characters quest roster. Then, after you have finished them, you are given several more.
The quest systems seems to be combined with the equally lame level system in order to keep the level grind intresting. Actually, I often feel like quest based games are too much like my life. One tends to pick up a whole bunch of them, and as soon as you stop doing quests, you find there is really nothing else to do in the game, because the rest of the game and its content wasn't filled out.
Now, I am not wholely against the ideas of npcs handing out quests. I just think that it should be a side thing rather than the whole meat and bones of the game. I do not want players to feel that they are checking off a list of things to do for some npc in town. Now, I know some people seem to like that, but then there are 99999 other games for them to play that have that sort of thing.
I think, orginally, the purpose of quests was to give an epic feel to the game, but instead of feeling like some great hero, I end up feeling like some errand boy doing stuff for the townsfolk who sit in the tavern and drink, while I am running around from dawn till dusk killing rats and other vermin.

Losing House Keys, Even when you don't die.

This last couple days, rather than being able to work on much of anything pertaining to Wograld. I have been searching for my house keys. This is one thing that games can easily fix that cannot be easily fixed in meat space. That is losing your means of entering your house. In addition, the bad guy who looted the keys from you can break in and take all your stuff. In my case it isn't so bad since I can (mostly) rely on family members to let me in, since usually someone is home here. It still sucks though because I also lost keys to my storage unit, a dresser drawer key (that fortunately wasn't locked) and my favorite irreplaceable key chain.

I remember when I played Ultima Online in the early days, besides pk stat loss (Crossfire is worse because it has stat loss for everyone not just pks), boring gold only monster loot and terrible lag, it also had this problem that when you lost your house key, there was no way you could get it back or change the locks. Therefore, once someone stole and/or looted the key, there was no way to ever make the house safe again for anyone to store things. The looter could not have it be safe, because you probably had a copy of extra keys as well. The only way to fix this was to demolish the house and start over, but since every time someone used a key on the house, it refreshed it, well you can guess what happened, griefers (intentionally or not) filled the landscape with virtually useless houses.

Anyway, later versions of UO, as well as many other games, don't have that annoying feature. You can have a ban list, and those characters can not enter your house at all. It is like a magic force field just doesn't let them inside, another method is to have an invite list, letting only thosse people you allow access parts of the house. In Uo there were four tiers of permissions owner, co-owner, friend and guest (or something like that) the owner was the only one who could demolish the house, the co-owner could add people at the lower tiers as well as move containers that were locked down around the house, friends were allowed to access certain containers that were marked as friend. It was handy to friend your guildmates and put extra supplies in those chests. Finnaly, on private floors there was a guest status that allowed you to enter into areas you might not otherwise be allowed inside. This level did not allow you to access any containers or anything, just walk around the building. While this was fun and very convenient, some people missed being able to have all out battles in homes without the I ban thee going on. Dueling areas still worked very well, however the maximum housing size was not ideal for some types of combat. In addition archers could stand in windows, shoot arrows out, and be perfectly safe from looting. Since in crossfire, the internals of houses are seperate maps, I can't imagine this to be an issue, although I supposed someone could run between maps to avoid dying or something.

Skill Development Overview part1

As I have already stated, I really don't like a level system in rpgs, I much prefer a skill based system. Many games have combined the two somewhat such as World of Warcraft having a level system for your characters, while crafting is a skill based grind. I have not completely worked out how Wogralds skill and system is going to work out yet, all I know is that I don't want what is currently in crossfire, or another generic level up sort of game.

In Ultima Online, every skill you could use in game from tailoring, to cooking to magic was skill based. But there were also "default" skills, things any character could do as soon as they were made, things that may have actually taken skill points in other games to complete. A good example in Ultima Online is carving the hides off of corpses. This was an easy resource to harvest in that game, while in other games it takes a speacial skinning skill. I often wonder if certain skills should be default, and/or certain skills everyone should be able to learn up to a certain level, such as cooking.

Many games end up tweaking the skill system and the way it works after the game comes out and is play tested. Too many things that seem like a good idea on paper, end up being problematic when there are real people involved playing the game. For instance. Some games have you make thousands of items over and over again to gain a small amount of skill. People find this repetative, and then end up getting macro bots to do the tedious skill grind for them. You can put the macroing into the game, such as in phantasyrpg, where you can simpely tell it how many times you want to mine, typing in a number up to a certain amount of digits.

I like the gain on use idea for skills. I believe this is already in crossfire, with weapons levels going up with usage. There are a couple annoying things with this though. First of all, if you allow skill gaining in pvp, a person could get a sparing partner, train with the same person all day and night, and eventually both people would end up with high skills. The other thing is where newbies fight low level monsters to gain skill up to the maximum amount. We should limit how much you can gain from easier stuff.

Local and Global Chat

I received two more of the x11 books today, so now i have 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8. I heard there wasn't a 7, I don't know if thats true though. Hopefully it will have all the information in it I need to begin programming x11. I am tired of using the buggy default C functions scanf and gets, I heard gets is really bad and you shouldn't use it, but that is no reason to pay any attention until something breaks. There is a problem with them that whenever you run a function before using them, it seems to skip over the input getting step. Hopefully I know enough C syntax to begin programming instead of leaving it entirely up to other people like I was doing before.

But what I really want to discuss is local and global chat. I was reading how in Darkfall there is no local chat. That really changes the social dynamic of the game, making it a less social game. Apparently, most of the chat goes on in guild chat. I think just having global chat is too overwhelming, espeacially since there are more than 8 people on the server. I think that if you are in a large crowd and everything you say has to be directed at every single person, it makes you just want to shut up about some things, because you can't really get to know people as individuals, just what ever they chose to broadcast about themselves. It is like if everyone just read blogs and no one ever used email or instant messageing, you wouldn't really get to know people because when you blog, unless you limit it to friends only, you are broadcasting to the whole internet. Maybe that isn't always such a good thing.

Sometimes things are too personal, and you don't want everyone to know them. For instance, on a pvp server, you don't want every pker in a large area to know that you and a couple other people are going to try and hunt kobolds. Then the pks will come and kill your small band, taking your loot away. It would be better if only you and the couple other people in the area heard it. Then you have a chance of having a successful hunt without the gank squad showing up. Now, there is the possibility that your other party member could try and pk you anyway, but that risk is much lower than if the whole server knows what you are up to.

One possiable way to deal with no local chat is to mostly only have guild chat. Guilds are groups that play together. They could find each
other outside of the game on places such as message forums and websites. The problem is that some players new to the game may not even know about the guilds, or even have an idea of what guild would most fit their play style until playing the game a bit. Also, players may fall out with guilds, or wish to form new ones while in game. If you don't have a local chat, it can be hard to get people to met up and decide if they like playing with the other players enough to want to join the guild. Furthermore, some things make sense to happen outside of guilds. It would be like if you only talked with your family members ever, except when you were blogging or something. It would get hard pretty quickly, since you might end up with the warped way of thinking that your family (or guild) has set up. Seeing other people and talking to them one vs one or on a small group basis can do more to change a persons mind about something rather than hearing everything broadcast over the global channels. I would not want all my personal problems broadcast on live tv for everyone to see. Some people might like that, but I doubt the majority of us would want that to go on.