Angels & Demons

FAN Media
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For 3 years I’ve been very slowly working on an MMO game, thats down to burning myself out as I keep adding features and never get any closer to finishing the game and I’ve had computer problems as well. It’s only a 2D game, but I don’t think that matters much I like the look of it in 2D and 3D would be too much of a drain on the computers with all the content and the size of the game. I’ve not finished the game yet, but I thought I’d make this topic because talking about the game makes me want to work on it.

Story.
Its inspired by DragonballZ, Grandia 2 and Lastknight, I’ve no intention of claiming the story is original but the story is in the background of the game anyway, generally in stories the story is the main focus and the rest of the world is background, I’ve reversed this and so while the players aren’t playing the part of the hero of the story they can be the hero of their own. There will be random scenes played out in the game that the player might come across.

Gameplay.
I suppose its about developing your character and living in the world. Its a player vs player game but there are a lot of mobs to fight as well. There are no goblins, elves, wizards or any of that kind of thing, there are special attacks one of which I’ll show in some screen shots further down. I don’t really have time to list everything right now I have to go to work soon but there will be crafts to learn for example: Bounty Hunter, Cook, Horticulture, Reading, Fishing, Doctor, Mining. You’ll be able to capture towns, rule them, build defences and aid its economy. You’ll be able to buy houses with gardens that you can grow plants in, a bit like Harvest Moon. Buy ships to sail to areas you can’t get to with pubic ship routes and you can fire the ships cannons, even onto land, there will also be a special limited number of ships that will also act as houses. There’s going to be 100s of items in the game and 100s of npc’s all with the own characters and most of which will say different things as you progress through the game, they’ll also be killable and will react to violence or certain events. So yeah lots of stuff I’ll list the rest later.

There will be competitions for players as well, which will be, dance competitions (You can choreograph your own dance routines), battle of the bands (There are working instruments in the game, if I can find all the notes that is), best dressed player, fight tournaments, highland games, football matches, a fan fiction section on the forum (If it takes off and someone writes something that fits my vision of the game I may let them write and episodic event). I don’t want the game to be just about training and fighting, I want a community and for people to become part of the world.

Screen shots:

One of the major attacks in the game, its really powerful and can hit a lot of people, but it leaves you weak after using it:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/744/fgame1.jpg

Oh those brown rectrangles below the player are there to test a bit of code, they aren’t really supposed to be there.

The damage it leaves behind on the map.

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9899/fgame2j.jpg

For those that just want to relax, you can paddle:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9434/fgame3j.jpg

Or take a dip if it’s getting a bit hot:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/825/fgame4j.jpg

The size of the game changes depending on your screen size, here’s the size that I use:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9656/fgame5j.jpg

Ok one more attack, this is called explode, its a last ditch attack which you use all of your energy to explode, killing yourself and whoever is weak enough to be killed around you.

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2167/fgame6j.jpg

Ok and here’s an example of a set of armour. Its inspired by FF7’s weapon monster. I know its not everyones cup of tea, but you don’t have to use it, and its broken into bits so if theres one bit you like you can use it with a different set. The armour is the normal humans version of the angel/demon forms.

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/7314/fgame8j.jpg

Another set of armour. Also if you don’t like the armour at all you can always wear clothes over the top or remove your overlays (Anything thats put onto the main body (hair, clothes, etc)). Oh and there’s a little bit of the Africa area.

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5372/fgame9jc.jpg

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/1305/suits.jpg

In order of appearance Heavy Templaris armour set, Light Templaris armour set, Monks Robe (Hood goes up and down), Santa Suit (A bit of fun for Christmas’), Arch Angel’s suit (With hood that goes up and down), and of course the Green Power Ranger (Something for halloween events I think).

Ok there we go, now I want to work on my game again… but I have to go to work…

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Neat.

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Swell

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Looks like fun!

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It’s odd I’ve hosted my game a few times for testing and I do seem to get a lot of girls playing, I think I’ve seen more girls playing my game than I have in all the other games using the software I’m using. I was very suprised by that I didn’t think my game would appeal to them at all. Which is I suppose partly why I’ve tried to give my game more things than just killing and violence.

Ok here’s that list of things, there is more I might add it later.

I have temperature in the game (this affects what you should wear in areas).

Bounty Hunting (There are skills to help you track down other players).

Hunting (May add foxes and let you go fox hunting).

Ships (Will be added a bit later with ship battles and the will be a limited set of ships with insides).

Thurst Hunger (Hunger is in the game and Thurst is coming and will be affected by temperature).

Lots of items (I’ve already got a lot of items but I’m adding more all the time)

Armours/weapons (The armour/weapons are infinitely upgradable so you can make any armour/weapon the strongest in the game if you put the effort in).

Village/Town/City ownership (I’m going to have a system where they are both buyable and takable).

Guilds (There will be different types of guilds, which will have important uses in the game).

Houses (these will be buyable and decoratable and have gardens where you can grow plants etc).

Nobles (You can buy nobility which allows you access to better places in Cities and also allows you to learn to read).

Reading (will let you discover secrets and let you open secret doors).

Flamable (Dry areas in the game will be subject to combustion so starting a fire on them or firing a fire arrow into them will cause a bush fire. they will also have a chance of starting up on their own).

There will be destructable items (These will be like fences so you can set up your own little base anywhere on the map and also players can attack you and break down the fences).

Skills (There are only a few at the moment but more will be added and hopefully they will be a little more unusual than you usually get).

Events (Rather than you triggering events or being an active part in them, there will be some that happen in the game maybe without you even knowing about it. I’m planning a fight in a town that happens every now and again. There will also be events/quests that you are involved with).

Babies (These will just be AI that once they’re old enough will crawl around. The parents and other players will be able to kill the baby, when the baby grows up they’ll become a new NPC in the game).

Marriage (It’s in other MMO’s so why not mine, it will allow a few different things i.e. babies. But for the most part is just a bit of fun. Gay marriage is allowed).

Highland Games (I’ve been watching the Highland games on channel 4 and I’ve gotten interested in it so I’m adding some of the Highland games, I’ve added the weight throw (Don’t know it’s exact name, thats what it’s called on all the websites I’ve visited) I’ll also be adding the Hammer Throw and the Caber Toss)

Languages (There will be different languages around the game that you won’t understand unless you learn them. That includes players from different area’s, random words and phrases from the area they are from will come up when they talk, unless you speak the language. Nobles will be able to learn languages easier and will be able to speak Latin and French from the get go (Only if they are born noble, if they buy it they’ll still have to learn) Only nobles and monks can speak Latin).

Football (Nothing complex like Fifa or anything actually it’s more kid’s playing in the park with jumpers for goal posts. I’m also going to add code so that you sometimes get the head of someone you’ve killed to use as a ball. I don’t like football but this is quite fun).

Adding Ferret Legging (The character will just go mental for a while).

Added items saved to map (Objects droped in the players house now get saved, like in PSU but there are no fixed locations for things. Also garden items are saved so you can grow plants).

Added a new attack (The player jumps and slams down onto the ground, causing damage to all those around him/her).

Punishment for bad players (swearing, etc) (Burning the Heretic, the bad player will be jailed for a while then it will be announced where they will be burned and when, then when they are burned, they’ll die and in death will be released from the punishment).

salting foods (Some foods will go bad if you don’t salt them).

Hot water bottles (Keep you warm while camping so that you don’t need to worry about someone stealing your fire.)

Day/night cycle (There’s a little bug with this at the moment, it saves everything on the map).

Real world clock. (Working but doesn’t change for daylight savings).

NPC’s (There will be a lot of these buggers, I’m going to make all of them killable and when you kill one in view of another NPC they’ll go crazy screaming “MURDER!!” or something and guard NPC’s will attack the murderer).

Guards (There will be town guards, their job will be to protect players in towns and to stop the entering areas, for example a peasant entering a nobles area).

You can transform (I’m not going to say much about this its a secret in the game).

Sound (I’ve added footstep sounds and others, perhaps more interestingly I’m adding instruments like guitars etc so players can from their own bands. The guitars work really well much better than expected).

Taxes (Town’s will have tax, I know that doesn’t sound like a good addiction to the game but for the most part it won’t affect the players too much. When you buy something from an NPC for example, some of the money will go into the towns funds these can be accessed by the towns king and can be used to buy new things for the town and build the towns defences. The king will also get a cut of the tax).

Gigs (I’ve decided to add gigs to the game so players can book inns/pubs to play their music to the other players, players that want to hear will pay a small entrance fee that the band will be able to collect at the end).

Illness (There will be different illnesses that can be picked up in the game and each one having a different affect, I’m also adding mental illness so you may see things that aren’t there and hear things that aren’t said).

Doctors (Doctors is a craft that can heal illnesses etc. but more interestingly they can create illnesses and infect other players, causing plagues and other trouble in the game, Doctors need to be able to read and so be noble, they will also need to find certain books and do research to create some of the more interesting illnesses).

Void (An underground cultish faction within the game that follow the way of the Void, they don’t understand good and evil in the same way as we do and so do as they like and have a deep interest in the ***** as they feel they are the key to becoming the void. Not actually an evil faction.) (***** is one of the secrets in the game).

Holographic Projectors (I’m adding these as a high technology for the Void faction, they will use these for building their camps, rather than having walls to defend them they will have these which will clone the ground art work and then project it over the place they choose to make their camp, these aren’t magic machines I will explain how they work, Void believe that black holds the answer to every question and so the projectors work by taking a black sheet and taking out all of the colours that aren’t needed to create the image that is wanted (A bit like a giant photo…).)

Dancing (I hate break dancing and the crap movies about it, but I’ve added an item for players which allows them to set up their own dance routine for them and 5 other people, it lets you do fairly much animation in the game (There aren’t that many), it’ll be funny anyway, I may have dance competitions to see who has the most imaginative routine. It started off as just a verb for mods to mess with players by forcing them to dance).

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There will be little nods to anime in there as well, like the FF7 WEAPON inspired costume and FF9’s Princess Garnets wedding dress (Its in the end cutscene) which was a request, One Pieces Zolo’s clothes will be in but not called that and his 3 swords will be a weapon in the game, FF8 Squalls jacket is in there but it wasn’t planned I just made it and noticed it was the same, Edward’s metal arm from Full Metal Alchemist is in there, Tiens clothes are there as well. A sword like Zabuza’s from Naruto is there and since there will be a hidden ninja village and I’ve started watching Naruto again it’s likely a few other Naruto things will appear. And some stuff from Dragon Quest is there, but its just little things that you wouldn’t really notice.

The map in those screen shoots is a little bare, but I intend to fill it with details and make it look like the idyllic England I know, for example I’ll be making traditional stone walls. Like this:

The Void.

Their beliefs are a bastardised version of Miyamoto Musashi’s Fifth Scroll The Void. They believe the answer to everything is the void or in this case the blackness, since white refects all colour and black absords all colour they believe that blackness contains everything and so they want to become black. They want to know everything by experiencing everything from every angle, and so they are unpredictable. Players can join Void but have to learn and understand it to join and to progress within the faction. They have little armour but because of their search for knowledge will have some interesting equipment and they need to hide themselves and their bases.

Templaris Knights (The name for them isn’t final).

A strict order of knight, your generic zealots really, I haven’t put a lot of thought into their perpose in the game but I think its safe to say they will be the military muscle within the game. They will have one of the biggest cities within the game and hopefully the most visual. Players will be able to become Templaris Knights and rise through the ranks gaining better equipment as they go. Templaris Knights will have tough armour and high defence camp defences.

The World.

There will be three area’s based on the real world, they are England/Scotland/Europe, Africa and Asian each very different and have its own unique items. Africa will be the hardest area as it will be more about survival, the heat will be deadly and water will be hard to find, and dangerous to drink without taking the time to purify it.

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Now you got me in the mood to go play a video game!

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If you want to give these kinds of MMO’s ago go to http://www.byond.com/games/ there’s a section devoted to anime, its only really the popular anime like Dragonballz, Naruto, Bleach and Yu-Gi-Oh a lot of the games are clones of each other and few of the games are that deep. It’s free and fun.

Generally the community is good, and most games having 40 people playing at one time which may see seem tiny compaired to WoW but its actually a lot better because WoW is too big and nobody talks, with Byond people are more willing to talk and regular players of certain games all know each other.

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I’ve already dug out my old Playstation, but I might check it out someday.
Thanks.

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Just thought I’d let you know.

Anyway, I’m thinking of making a cut down demo of my game that can actually be played, at the moment the main game is just having its core bits put in so there’s not actually much to play. So I may take a few of the working features and make them into a little game that people can play and build up a bit of a fan base.

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Sounds interesting.

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I know Beyond may not look like a brilliant thing next to WoW and its 3d graphics, but the thing I really love about Byond is that while on commercial MMO games all you can hope for is to be one of the 100s of thousands that reach the level cap, you can never be special or genuinely powerful. However on Byond there is only one level cap and thats called inf# however in the good games you’ll have to play for a massive amount of time to reach that, inf# is a stat of 40000000000000000000000000000000000000000 so in those games you can be the most powerful player and have other players fear you. And well its player made content, which means you can speak to the owner of the game and ask them if they’ll add something and usually they do listen. You can also make your own game, Byond has actually ruined other games for me because I see them as small and uninspired.

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While I liked to be feared, :silly: I like simple things. Guess I am a bit on the lazy side. I enjoy a video game more for the story than anything else. Actually, I have never played with more than one or two people, but I alway thought I would like to try something on-line someday - just to see what it is all about.

Maybe I will just wait for yours!:laugh:

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They do have role playing games as well, I mean you actually role play. I’ve tried a few though and they take forever for anything to happen.

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Training:

A lot of Byond games have very limited ways to train your character, nearly all the anime games have you sit infront of a variation of a punch bag and hold down a button on your key board for hours on end. In my game you do still have that, but only as a way to train, nearly anything you do in the game is a form of training, even getting beat’en up. It works on the basis that physical activity gives you stamina and sometimes speed (If its something involving the legs), lifting or moving heavy things gives you strength and getting beat’en up or generally hurt gives you health and defence, that last bit may seem a bit odd but its from my martial arts training where we beat ourselves to condition our skin and body to take blows. So you can do whatever you like and it’ll still be a form of training, but maybe not the best kind.

Combat:

Combat is based on your stats so first if checks your speed, if you are too slow you may or will miss and there is also a counter that puts your enemy behind you. If your speed is much higher than theirs you will hit but then it comes down to their defence vs your strength, you’ll hurt your hand on them if their defence is a lot higher but if your strength is higher you’ll hit.

As I’ve learnt when you fight it uses up a lot of stamina and the more equal the fight the more stamina it uses up. and not just your stamina that goes down but all your stats. So the longer you fight the weaker you are, this can become interesting because equally matched players will fight and both of them will run out of juice before they can finish the fight (Some of my best real fights have ended like that), and it also allows weaker players to team up and weaken the stronger players till they can finish him. If a player is a lot stronger than a weaker player they’ll loss a lot less because it takes less effort for them to fight.

Now if you have massive stats, and you completely over power them when you hit them they’ll go flying and die. This will also happen if other players attack you, you’ll flick them away like insects and they’ll go flying off to their deaths. I may make this more dramatic in the future.

I wanted to give players options for how they train and to give players who really put effort into playing a real sense of power. Of course training and fighting are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the game.

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I’m going to put a whip into my game, in honour of Slowhand.

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Fenknight wrote:

Aw, shucks! :blush:

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Slowhand wrote:

[quote]Fenknight wrote:

Aw, shucks! :blush:[/quote]

I’m sure it will tan (Ooooh that was a kind of pun, puns suck) many an arse, including mine no doubt.

I’ve got a host for my game now, I would do it but I don’t want my laptop left on 24/7 and my router doesn’t let me host (There’s a whole complicated thing you need to do to get it to work). Anyway its kind of cool because while the game is hosted on his computer its me that can start it up, by using his computer over the internet, we’ve got it set up so that I can open his desktop on my computer and start hosting the game.

Anyway I’ve just figured out a new healing system for my game, you naturally heal but very slowly, to heal faster you’ll need to escape combat and take off your armour to apply bandages which will increase your healing speed, but you’ll be near defenceless while you do it. I don’t want to put potions into the game which just let you heal the moment you use them. Oh and combat will leave scars.

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http://www.byond.com/games/Fenon.AngelsandDemons?tab=index

If anyone wants to try my game thats the like to its hub, click on the waiting list if its not being hosted and it’ll let you know when it is, also you can add me to your pagers friend list and you’ll know when I’m online, ask and I’ll host if I can.

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Cough… as a side affect of my new states players can now hug and while I’m at it I might as well add hold hands. These will go with the already existing kiss and marriage.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/2753/hugjn.jpg

Please ignore the guy with the whip… that screen shot really does make my game look like some kind of gay S&M thing…