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Author Topic: Chat Lounge  (Read 197350 times)
Sean
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« Reply #45 on: July 22, 2016, 10:29:32 AM »

One of the most adorable things I've ever seen is cats yawning and meowing at the same time.
Sometimes my cat squeaks when he yawns Cheesy
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"People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Rayblon
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« Reply #46 on: July 23, 2016, 03:49:45 PM »

Sometimes my cat squeaks when he yawns Cheesy

Oh my god! I thought everyone but Paul and I were dead! It's a miracle!
« Last Edit: July 23, 2016, 03:52:56 PM by Rayblon » Logged

Rayblon
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« Reply #47 on: August 01, 2016, 12:41:27 PM »

So, uh... How's everyone's summer been so far? Mine's been more of the same, but I've gotten some work done on a few of my major projects.
« Last Edit: August 01, 2016, 05:02:31 PM by Rayblon » Logged

Michael
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« Reply #48 on: August 01, 2016, 07:57:01 PM »

I have about two weeks left of summer vacation; then, I get to go catch up with the girls at school. Wink
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Rayblon
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« Reply #49 on: August 20, 2016, 07:52:01 PM »

I got on runescape after god knows how long... and wow. It's not even the same game anymore.
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pspeed
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« Reply #50 on: August 21, 2016, 05:07:37 AM »

I got on runescape after god knows how long... and wow. It's not even the same game anymore.

In a good way or a bad way?

Never played it but I looked in on it from time to time way back in the day.
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Rayblon
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« Reply #51 on: August 22, 2016, 09:25:41 AM »

I got on runescape after god knows how long... and wow. It's not even the same game anymore.

In a good way or a bad way?

Never played it but I looked in on it from time to time way back in the day.



Well, they enhanced the graphics and sound design. The retro feel is no longer there (unless you're playing the 2007 edition), which I personally like. Everything is prettier, save for sections that didn't get updated yet. They knocked the sound design out of the park for the most part. You even hear the torches as you walk by them. They added water shaders, if you could call them that(Two alternating texture maps that fade into eachother, essentially), which look good as long as you don't spend long looking directly at them. That said, the actual texture maps are awful when you focus on them, in that they look like paint that was brushed onto the surface more than water. Oh, and they have voice acted stuff now. It's pretty sweet.

They now have a standalone launcher that runs the game... better than it would have run otherwise. I can't get more than 20 fps at any given time, but it's better than falling into the seconds per frame hell that  the new graphics would be in a browser. Hell, I got a better framerate running The Witcher 3 on max settings. (Oh and screw large crowds -- they easily quarter your fps)

Gameplay wise, it's probably another thing that's up for interpretation. They added a skill system (which gives you abilities for each of your combat skills), which can be toggled on and off... though there's no practical reason to toggle it off. They have a neat feature with the skills called "revolution" which automatically cycles skills for you so you can just click on mobs and enjoy the show. Setting up skill bars pretty much revolves around getting it as compatible with revolution mode as possible.

Now, what's really fascinating, and this isn't really a change, but lots of resources are unlimited and easy to get. You can harvest and make unlimited wood, runite, adamantite, mithril, food, armor, etc using resources that regenerate fairly quickly, but there's still an economy for all of it. Through the inventory restrictions, lots of goods are able to retain their value. It always fascinated me how, in runescape, you don't even need to pick up a sword to make it big. It's an MMO that seems to really give you the ability to choose your path... or all of them, if that's your cup of tea.

One issue that has only grown is... Jagex seems increasingly eager to get you to subscribe to their 10$ a month membership. In the new UI there's a "subscribe" button that you can't get rid of and that forces you out of the game and into a pay screen if you click it. All you can do is move it in the UI editor(The UI editor allows you to adjust the size and location of hud elements like bank windows, minimap, etc which is actually pretty nice).

With every expansion, too, there are more "only members can access this" or "Only members with an agility of 12 can climb this 1 foot pile of rubble", and the list of member's only skills only grows. More than half of the unlocks in the skills that free players CAN level are reserved for members, and a fair number of the ability unlocks that f2p players are barred from are noticeably overpowered. They added a way to 'earn your membership' through bonds, but bonds cost about 12 million gold. To put it into perspective, a full set of runite armor, two weapons, and a runite pick and hatchet cost about 100,000 gold, probably a bit less. To get the scratch for one bond would take selling 120 sets of runite armor, weapons, and tools. For the uninitiated, runite is only avaiilable in extremely dangerous areas for f2p players, in the back of what is known as "The Wilderness", which you can't teleport out of and will lose almost everything on your person in if you die. Most people struggle to make 100k in a day, so you can probably see how restrictive the bonds really are.

I'm not a huge fan of only being allowed to consume ~10%(and shrinking) of the content in the game, but I'm not going to hold that against them. They probably think of f2p as a free trial more than anything... but each expansion makes our slice of the world feel that much smaller.

I guess, to put it simply, the only bad things about the changes are how they approached monetization, and the horrid optimization. Regarding monetization, the immense capacity with which they hobble the f2p crowd just makes me want to not pay them out of spite. I've paid almost 100$ into another mmo that had paid content  be simple bonuses, cosmetics, that kind of stuff. And frankly, that game didn't even get close to the depth of Runescape. Honestly, if they spent more time pleasing people BEFORE they decided to pay, I probably would have paid into this game for those little things because I'm pretty confident that ten years from now, hell, maybe even 20 years from now, I'll be able to come back to Runescape.

It just refuses to die, and I can respect that, actually... but as it stands now, if I were to get a membership and get into the big leagues... when that membership runs out... I can't use any of the stuff I got as a member. I wouldn't even be able to go to the house I build, or the clan citadel that I tirelessly gathered resources for, and I wouldn't be able to use any of the cool gear I got as a member... until I paid them again. Granted, that has always been an issue, but it's ever more apparent the more you progress... the more you understand that content, the scope of it, and the better the gear that you're eligible to use as a member as you keep levelling, the members items that you come to realize you can afford, but can't touch... and so on. If it looked like I was, I wasn't sent into a blind rage over them trying to get a return on their investment... I just think there's much better approaches to it than this.
« Last Edit: August 22, 2016, 10:27:23 AM by Rayblon » Logged

Rayblon
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« Reply #52 on: August 22, 2016, 09:37:43 AM »

Yeesh. Sorry for the novel. xD
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Rayblon
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« Reply #53 on: August 29, 2016, 08:47:58 PM »

uh Paul... there's a tidal wave of shoe advertisements.
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pspeed
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« Reply #54 on: August 29, 2016, 11:00:49 PM »

uh Paul... there's a tidal wave of shoe advertisements.

Yeah, always great that nothing happens until I'm away from my computer for a few days.

By the way, if you don't want to pollute the forums with posts about the pollution of the forums then you can simply flag the posts with the "Report to moderator" link.  You don't even have to do all of them as one is enough to get my attention and then I will ban the spammer and delete all of their posts.
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Rayblon
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« Reply #55 on: August 30, 2016, 01:43:45 AM »

Yeah, always great that nothing happens until I'm away from my computer for a few days.

By the way, if you don't want to pollute the forums with posts about the pollution of the forums then you can simply flag the posts with the "Report to moderator" link.  You don't even have to do all of them as one is enough to get my attention and then I will ban the spammer and delete all of their posts.

I forgot the report to moderator button was there. It's so rare that any of us have occasion to use it, which is a good thing I guess.
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Rayblon
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« Reply #56 on: September 10, 2016, 10:16:29 AM »

How're things progressing with the networking and Death March and such, Paul? It's been a while since someone dropped the question.
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« Reply #57 on: September 11, 2016, 12:51:25 PM »

How're things progressing with the networking and Death March and such, Paul? It's been a while since someone dropped the question.

I finally polished up the SimEthereal library and released it.  That was supposed to be step one for Mythruna network integration while my wife and kids were out of town... but that took me longer than expected and day-job work encroached more than I wanted.

I even documented it and stuff: https://github.com/Simsilica/SimEthereal/wiki

There is a rather large (in number of online players) commercial space MMO project that is using SimEthereal which is nice validation.  He has a _ton_ more users than I'd ever expect on a single Mythruna server.  So that's nice.

As an example app, I've made a really really simple space game to fly around in.  (Not the 2D ESpace because I needed to test some 3D specific issues)...
https://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/t/simethereal-basic-example-plus-public-server/36636

I've recently started a fork of that project that incorporates my other entity system library... since most people will probably want to use them combined and because it's the easiest way for me to add a bunch of objects to test message splitting:
https://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/t/simethereal-example-with-es-blog/36853

Neither of those is supposed to be real games so will generally only get features that test some specific networking thing.

Basically, I'm doing what I can to get my ducks in a row for next time I have a large chunk of time.  I also need to reorganize the Mythruna code to use the newer build system.

re: DeathMarch, it's on hold until I can get some time to add multiplayer.  I've gotten a lot of design feedback on it from some guys who will likely help work on it and resolving most of the 'this or that' style issues is going to require head-to-head play testing.

So my free time is being devoted to shoring up my tech and cleaning metaphorical house.  Doing projects that are easily definable, finishable, and with side benefits.  For example, I already get some nice bug reports and patches on my open source projects and that's work I didn't have to do myself.
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Rayblon
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« Reply #58 on: September 26, 2016, 12:57:17 PM »



Sorry about that. It's just getting so dusty in here, I couldn't help it.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2016, 01:01:41 PM by Rayblon » Logged

Rayblon
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« Reply #59 on: September 30, 2016, 11:38:52 AM »

Oh dear. Has there ever been a slump in activity like this before? ._.
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