We don't need discord, we need Discourse forum software.
I love how you can just get to the latest topics and don't have to check through every category all the time, but you can if you want to like if there are a lot of posts.
Well, for one thing, we wouldn't be using this outdated forum software all the time.
Discourse takes away the the part where you have to check each sub-forum to see if there are new posts, but you also have the option of going to a specific sub forum. Discourse also has a better member moderator system than other types of forums, making it it easier to get rid of trolls and spam.
I currently belong to and regularly post on a couple Discourse communities and I have found it to be more fun and enjoyable than posting on other types of forums. I know the FSF uses it internally for associate members and participation went way up since it was implemented.
Wograld has a nice engine that does a lot, actually, the whole thing does too much and the java client needs updating. On the other hand, if we could make it easier for end users to compile/install, it really does have all those crafting features and whatnot. It is actually a retool of old crossfire, but I tried to take on the task of polishing the user experience, and I found it to be beyond me.
I guess that's one way to do it, either make a simple game from a simple engine or code you understand, or try and retool some unwieldy thing. On the other hand Wograld has lots of nifty features like client/server, crafting, gathering skills, random dungeons (ok, well flare sorta has this) etc.
Money in Diablo2 was pretty worthless when you got right down to it. Players almost never used it to trade. Instead things like gems, ruins, and the infamous soj were used. Just because something is the official currency doesn't mean it is worth anything or you can buy what you want with it.
I disagree. I like the idea of items exclusive to crafting. It makes crafting feel worthwhile rather than some stupid side add-on that no one ever uses because you cannot make anything better than what you get from the elite boss drops or trading with npcs, or gambling. I know there is always the idea that you should have multiple ways to obtain the item, but sometimes socketed items could be found in shops or dropped various places. (if you have ever tried to buy or find crafting supplies irl, you may find out it isn't as easy as you think either, depending on what you want to craft.)
I mean, yeah, diablo2 didn't have a boring mining skill where you hit a rock 100 times, get some ore, and then craft socketed items on a forge. I will be honest that style of crafting is actually kinda boring. It would be better if there were more randomness, both in the quality of items you make and the properties they have. Also, always getting ores and making mining too safe.
Real mining is dangerous, there are cave ins, underground infernos of flame, noxious gasses, not to mention that there should be random monsters attacking you in an rpg. It is stupid that rpg mining is so much safer than real life mining. (My great-grandfather died in a mining accident, he went to rescue some fellow miners and he didn't make it out.)
You defiantly have to pay attention to things like level design and loot if you want the game to be fun, not to mention having enough variety of enemies. You can keep the same basic game play throughout more or less, but it is important that you do not get stuck in the same area for too long before you can move on or people will get bored with your game and quit. That is why I quit playing the mana world after a very short time back when I played it.
It is also important to have different enemies and areas so it doesn't get too repetitive. Sometimes, all you really have to do is recolor sprites rather than make totally new ones and mix them up a bit.
The most important part to keeping it fresh is to add new stories. Otherwise, people might wonder why they should go through the whole game in the first place. Sometimes, that can actually be the hardest part. The best stories have some sort of symbolic representation of things that isn't directly stated. It is hard to describe what I mean, but its like the difference between Diablo and Depression Quest. One is a a symbolic representation of going to hell, and the other one is very literal. One is considered to be a more fun game than that other, and you have to think about why that is before you can answer that question.
I'm of the opinion that game development is a soft science kind of like psychology or sociology. Like, for instance, you could have great programing and great artwork, but in a game if the game design keeps you for hours of playtime in the same area it gets boring. It has to be limited to an hour max in the same looking level. So basically the point is to keep it feeling like you are making some progress, without it feeling pointless or frustrating. Other design mistakes include sandbox games where you are overwhelmed with options but don't know what to do next, games that take hours of tutorials till you can get up to speed and actually play anything, and platformers aimed at kids beginning to learn them with super hard levels in the first world.
It is just a general rule of Linux, that with the exception of games that have/had a large project team (+20 or more active people) and are at least ten years old, you really shouldn't even bother expecting to get a decent game out of the package manager, particularly something like Debian.
Smaller project teams really can't afford the overhead of doing all the work to get into something like Debian anyway and still actually have a creative and playable non-demo version of a game. In the case of wanting the latest version of a game (most games, unless the criteria in the previous paragraph are met) You will want the developer version straight from git and all the developer libraries, as long is as it is a version that compiles and runs. I know it sounds intimidating, getting a bunch of programmer tools and developer libraries just to play a game, but Linux doesn't really have the separation between users and developers that windows does.
Maybe this is too much to ask, but I was hoping for some other types of terrian besides grassland, maybe some desert, swamp or even a field of flowers.
Please please have more variety of graphics than the The Empyrean Campaign. The Empyrean Campaign was nice and long, something really good to see in a free software rpg, but oh boy did some of thosse graphics get repeatative.
Have leveling up actually make stuff better, some of the level ups on skills didn't really seem to improve them.
Equipment was a bit boring, basically just levels and it was too easy to see what gear was better than what other gear, so like more variety, say, multipule atributes on a piece of gear.
Writing - Despite what some people say, I really don't think The Empyrean Campaign was badly writen, while I won't pretend it was the best pieces of ingame lore ever, it was not bad, and quite enjoyable in places.
If you would like some help with quest/storyline writing, I would love to help.
I always liked the castlevania style games, that is, basically a platformer with some rpg elements.
Have you played Ardentryst? It is a free software Castlevania style game that uses free cultural assets. It is a little on the short side, but what I did play was fun. I remember wanting some of the things like changing screen resolution to be more polished though.
I wish more people knew about it, people don't seem to talk about it, mostly I guess because they finish it (in like a day) and then forget about it.
The other thing I found really endearing about castlevania was the bad voice acting found in symphony of the Night. My husband and I spent hours poking fun of it.
We don't need discord, we need Discourse forum software.
I love how you can just get to the latest topics and don't have to check through every category all the time, but you can if you want to like if there are a lot of posts.
Well, for one thing, we wouldn't be using this outdated forum software all the time.
Discourse takes away the the part where you have to check each sub-forum to see if there are new posts, but you also have the option of going to a specific sub forum. Discourse also has a better member moderator system than other types of forums, making it it easier to get rid of trolls and spam.
I currently belong to and regularly post on a couple Discourse communities and I have found it to be more fun and enjoyable than posting on other types of forums. I know the FSF uses it internally for associate members and participation went way up since it was implemented.
Wograld has a nice engine that does a lot, actually, the whole thing does too much and the java client needs updating. On the other hand, if we could make it easier for end users to compile/install, it really does have all those crafting features and whatnot. It is actually a retool of old crossfire, but I tried to take on the task of polishing the user experience, and I found it to be beyond me.
I guess that's one way to do it, either make a simple game from a simple engine or code you understand, or try and retool some unwieldy thing. On the other hand Wograld has lots of nifty features like client/server, crafting, gathering skills, random dungeons (ok, well flare sorta has this) etc.
Money in Diablo2 was pretty worthless when you got right down to it. Players almost never used it to trade. Instead things like gems, ruins, and the infamous soj were used. Just because something is the official currency doesn't mean it is worth anything or you can buy what you want with it.
I disagree. I like the idea of items exclusive to crafting. It makes crafting feel worthwhile rather than some stupid side add-on that no one ever uses because you cannot make anything better than what you get from the elite boss drops or trading with npcs, or gambling. I know there is always the idea that you should have multiple ways to obtain the item, but sometimes socketed items could be found in shops or dropped various places. (if you have ever tried to buy or find crafting supplies irl, you may find out it isn't as easy as you think either, depending on what you want to craft.)
I mean, yeah, diablo2 didn't have a boring mining skill where you hit a rock 100 times, get some ore, and then craft socketed items on a forge. I will be honest that style of crafting is actually kinda boring. It would be better if there were more randomness, both in the quality of items you make and the properties they have. Also, always getting ores and making mining too safe.
Real mining is dangerous, there are cave ins, underground infernos of flame, noxious gasses, not to mention that there should be random monsters attacking you in an rpg. It is stupid that rpg mining is so much safer than real life mining. (My great-grandfather died in a mining accident, he went to rescue some fellow miners and he didn't make it out.)
You defiantly have to pay attention to things like level design and loot if you want the game to be fun, not to mention having enough variety of enemies. You can keep the same basic game play throughout more or less, but it is important that you do not get stuck in the same area for too long before you can move on or people will get bored with your game and quit. That is why I quit playing the mana world after a very short time back when I played it.
It is also important to have different enemies and areas so it doesn't get too repetitive. Sometimes, all you really have to do is recolor sprites rather than make totally new ones and mix them up a bit.
The most important part to keeping it fresh is to add new stories. Otherwise, people might wonder why they should go through the whole game in the first place. Sometimes, that can actually be the hardest part. The best stories have some sort of symbolic representation of things that isn't directly stated. It is hard to describe what I mean, but its like the difference between Diablo and Depression Quest. One is a a symbolic representation of going to hell, and the other one is very literal. One is considered to be a more fun game than that other, and you have to think about why that is before you can answer that question.
I'm of the opinion that game development is a soft science kind of like psychology or sociology. Like, for instance, you could have great programing and great artwork, but in a game if the game design keeps you for hours of playtime in the same area it gets boring. It has to be limited to an hour max in the same looking level. So basically the point is to keep it feeling like you are making some progress, without it feeling pointless or frustrating. Other design mistakes include sandbox games where you are overwhelmed with options but don't know what to do next, games that take hours of tutorials till you can get up to speed and actually play anything, and platformers aimed at kids beginning to learn them with super hard levels in the first world.
It is just a general rule of Linux, that with the exception of games that have/had a large project team (+20 or more active people) and are at least ten years old, you really shouldn't even bother expecting to get a decent game out of the package manager, particularly something like Debian.
Smaller project teams really can't afford the overhead of doing all the work to get into something like Debian anyway and still actually have a creative and playable non-demo version of a game. In the case of wanting the latest version of a game (most games, unless the criteria in the previous paragraph are met) You will want the developer version straight from git and all the developer libraries, as long is as it is a version that compiles and runs. I know it sounds intimidating, getting a bunch of programmer tools and developer libraries just to play a game, but Linux doesn't really have the separation between users and developers that windows does.
Maybe this is too much to ask, but I was hoping for some other types of terrian besides grassland, maybe some desert, swamp or even a field of flowers.
Here are my suggestions for a new flare mod
Please please have more variety of graphics than the The Empyrean Campaign. The Empyrean Campaign was nice and long, something really good to see in a free software rpg, but oh boy did some of thosse graphics get repeatative.
Have leveling up actually make stuff better, some of the level ups on skills didn't really seem to improve them.
Equipment was a bit boring, basically just levels and it was too easy to see what gear was better than what other gear, so like more variety, say, multipule atributes on a piece of gear.
Writing - Despite what some people say, I really don't think The Empyrean Campaign was badly writen, while I won't pretend it was the best pieces of ingame lore ever, it was not bad, and quite enjoyable in places.
If you would like some help with quest/storyline writing, I would love to help.
I always liked the castlevania style games, that is, basically a platformer with some rpg elements.
Have you played Ardentryst? It is a free software Castlevania style game that uses free cultural assets. It is a little on the short side, but what I did play was fun. I remember wanting some of the things like changing screen resolution to be more polished though.
I wish more people knew about it, people don't seem to talk about it, mostly I guess because they finish it (in like a day) and then forget about it.
The other thing I found really endearing about castlevania was the bad voice acting found in symphony of the Night. My husband and I spent hours poking fun of it.
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