Opening post by Vael Victus
07/24/2010 21:49
Before you get excited, let me begin by saying that the game is not going to die. Somehow the game has managed to stay alive with around 40 players active, though I have not seriously developed it in about 9 months. The reasoning is, as most of you know, that I've been coding a second game titled MurCity, now close to being released.
I decided to code MurCity because of how much work MonBre needs for it to become a playable game. I know I seem to have hit a small niche of people who enjoy it a lot, and I'm thankful for them, but honestly most of my users are visually impaired and the others are just into this sort of game.
The game needs to be reworked, but I don't believe we'll lose the soul of MonBre. I'm now going to tell you the plan for MonBre's development.
I project that MurCity will be ready for a standalone (without facebook) release in September. Following that, I will spend much time perfecting the game's systems and making sure that everything is well for the Facebook release. Following release, I will undoubtedly spend time developing it and doing whatever, but it won't be as fast as I am developing now. I'll finally take a break.
I will later begin work on MonBre. I'm planning for the week of Christmas vacation. I have a few things I want to do:
Test out a new quest style. Our quest system is a big wall of text, and that's absolutely going to be changing. With this quest style will come more style around the game in general: shopkeepers will have pictures, and I'm going to attempt a new layout.
I'll be spending a lot of time doing "coder stuff" - I made monbre as I learned PHP, and there's just some awful structure to a lot of my code.
I'll spend a lot of time really thinking about where the game can go. I don't believe that its core design is hopeless, but it does need to be fine-tuned for a browser game. Things like employment agency need to be made more obvious, and of course exploring will be shrunk and just made a whole lot sexier. (you will not refresh the page to explore or see the results of exploring)
I wish I could tell you I know exactly how to save MonBre, but I don't. If I cannot come up with a way, at the end of vacation, to convince myself that this game is worth porting to Facebook, then I will have to condemn it until I find a way to make it work.
I want to thank this great community... I have seen some incredible measures of effort put forth by some of my members. Killer, Sledge, Demi and Garr especially... have helped me to the point where I actually feel a bit emotional over it.
I look at the quest designs and sigh happily. This game really has its moments. It would break my heart to just abandon it, not to mention all the work I put in. I really hope I can muster out a resolution. Thank you all for staying with this giant, slobbering-but-lovable beast of a game for this long.
Vael Victus
I decided to code MurCity because of how much work MonBre needs for it to become a playable game. I know I seem to have hit a small niche of people who enjoy it a lot, and I'm thankful for them, but honestly most of my users are visually impaired and the others are just into this sort of game.
The game needs to be reworked, but I don't believe we'll lose the soul of MonBre. I'm now going to tell you the plan for MonBre's development.
I project that MurCity will be ready for a standalone (without facebook) release in September. Following that, I will spend much time perfecting the game's systems and making sure that everything is well for the Facebook release. Following release, I will undoubtedly spend time developing it and doing whatever, but it won't be as fast as I am developing now. I'll finally take a break.
I will later begin work on MonBre. I'm planning for the week of Christmas vacation. I have a few things I want to do:
Test out a new quest style. Our quest system is a big wall of text, and that's absolutely going to be changing. With this quest style will come more style around the game in general: shopkeepers will have pictures, and I'm going to attempt a new layout.
I'll be spending a lot of time doing "coder stuff" - I made monbre as I learned PHP, and there's just some awful structure to a lot of my code.
I'll spend a lot of time really thinking about where the game can go. I don't believe that its core design is hopeless, but it does need to be fine-tuned for a browser game. Things like employment agency need to be made more obvious, and of course exploring will be shrunk and just made a whole lot sexier. (you will not refresh the page to explore or see the results of exploring)
I wish I could tell you I know exactly how to save MonBre, but I don't. If I cannot come up with a way, at the end of vacation, to convince myself that this game is worth porting to Facebook, then I will have to condemn it until I find a way to make it work.
I want to thank this great community... I have seen some incredible measures of effort put forth by some of my members. Killer, Sledge, Demi and Garr especially... have helped me to the point where I actually feel a bit emotional over it.
I look at the quest designs and sigh happily. This game really has its moments. It would break my heart to just abandon it, not to mention all the work I put in. I really hope I can muster out a resolution. Thank you all for staying with this giant, slobbering-but-lovable beast of a game for this long.
Vael Victus
MonBre is an unlisted game of Tinydark Studio.
Personal Website: vaelvict.us