All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

Okay, if you don't know which movie I just quoted in my topic, then please go Google it. If you did see the movie, "redrum! Redrum!".

Seriously though, I have been thinking and breathing this MMO for almost a month now. Not to mention all the work I did on the project before this (also an MMO). Heck I even started having dreams about the game. I was updating my blog as I drove, which was very dangerous, and I felt it was getting to be too much for me. Having the weekend off was perfect. I got some shopping done over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was Thanksgiving right? I am in Canada, we had ours a month ago.

I came back this evening with a clear head and a new set of ideas. I even did some research and found a well written article on creating and managing an effective economy. Although I do not understand some of the points the writer was making, nor do I agree with all of his ideals, it was a very informative read and has changed my economic model for the better, I hope.

Last night I was putting together some tilesets, again, and figured out a way to cut my work in half. Instead of making a blended tileset for each type of terrain, I can just make it half grass and the other half transparent. This way I can mix dark grass with sand or rock or whatever at any time, with out having to do any extra work. This will also cut down on my file size immensely.

I quit!

I quit! No, not really, but I feel like it. I know graphic design is probably the hardest part for me and that things will get easier, eventually. But it's such a time consuming and stressful process. I did figure out how to make my tilesets more vibrant which is a huge improvement to the look and feel of the game environment. Other then that all I can say is, "headache"!

I won't be getting much of anything done today. I got real life stuff to take care of and I gotta prep for Christmas. Setting up decorations and do some shopping.

I plan to release a playable client in January 2012. So stay tuned for that.

Beach Creation

As I said before TileForge is amazing. I really wish I knew who made this program. They deserve a donation.

I finished my beach tiles tonight. They turned out a lot better then I had hoped and they look far better than anything I have seen in other tile sets. Even the tide coming and going looked pretty good.

Unfortunately I had no real time to advertise today. This is showing in my blog stats. I am down to about 13 views a day. I was reaching over 75 a day, last week. I can't wait to see the turn around after my work is done on the advertising part.

TileForge is my Friend

I got some mountain tiles finally. Its better to look for "cliff faces" instead of mountains. I started looking at some of my rock tile templates and considered blending them with grass and water. This is where TileForge came in.

This little app is very powerful when it comes to tile blending. It's able to take up to three different tiles and blend the edges together. There is even a 3D blending feature for those more realistic drop offs. The only limitation I have found was that my output tiles are limited to 64x64 pixels. This just requires more creativity. Right now the Dark Grass and Ocean blend that I made is looking nice. Although a full grass field running straight to the edge of the ocean looks out of place. I am going to have to add some sand, rocks, and other shore like tiles. It seems like every time I unlock a door, two more open.

I also have to figure out how to animate the half water and half grass tiles. Well I know how to do it, I just don't know if I have the patience today, haha. I could actually re-render the two tiles in TileForge, using the rippled water, and come out with a pretty close tile. The random stitching will obviously not match up but I am hoping this will give a "waves coming and going" effect.

One last thing I am going to change is the ripple effect of the ocean. It looks good on paper and even in the examples. But, when it's actually animated in the game, and you are in full-screen mode, it's a real distraction. I want to keep the ripple effect for sure but intensity will need to be re-done. This sounds easy but it's not :(

One last thing I wanted to cover was the engine it self. There is a huge update coming next month. I plan to pay to get into the beta. With this new engine I am hoping to really get away from the pen and paper side and start putting out testable content. I have my server ready and waiting to go. Along with funding for a web site and domain. One of my maim concerns starting out is my bandwidth usage. I may have to limit the amount of time the server is up.

Landscapes

Yesterday I realized we are going to need mountains in this game and I have no idea how to make them. As usual I did a google search but came up with nothing. I don't even know where to begin with drawing a mountain. I guess at the bottom? Lol

So the sake of time I am going to go with the traditional rock face on a 90' angel. This is a short-cut I really did not want to take. My whole design idea is based around beautiful scenery and pushing the boundaries of a 32x32 tile. So this is a little bit of a let down but I need to be flexible. On the positive side I can always update the graphics later on in an expansion. Nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to online gaming. Write that down kids.

Tomorrow, or I guess it's today now, I will be free for about eight hours. During this time I hope to get the foundation for Human Starting Island completed. In between that and my mountain research I will be working on my ad campaign. I won't be doing direct advertising because I really don't have a product yet, but I will be doing demographic research and looking for any joint advertising leads. I believe working with other small time game makers, like my self, will be the most beneficial to both parties.

One last thing I wanted to mention tonight was the name Eternal Light. This was never fully researched by my self and I have recently come across other games with the same name. Now I don't believe those two words are copyrighted but this has made me reconsider alternative names. I have a few written down just in case. In fact I actually like this other name better. For now though, I will keep Eternal Light and do some research. There has to be some way I can figure out the copyrights on those two words being used together.

New friends!!

I posted on Facebook today looking for anyone who might interested in helping and I actually got three people who are. I went over a few ground rules with them and offered to send out my GDD. If you don't know what that is its a Game Design Document. It's basically a list of ingredients for your game and you share it with all your staff so we all can stay on track and know what is expected and how things will work together etc etc. If you are designing your own MMO, or any game for that matter, I highly suggest you get a GDD template and fill it out. It's a lot of extra work, yes, but it will help you out in the long run.

Mine is about half way done. I just started writing it today haha. I will be finished writing tomorrow and then I will be able to share it with my, possibly new, team members. It's a little nerve racking sharing your ideas with other people. I am not worried about their opinion. I am mostly worried about people stealing my ideas.

So all four of them, two guys two girls, seem to be more focused around the story/quest writing part, which is good. My sister would be my fifth team member. She is strictly a pixel artist and a damn good one. This is going to leave me with most of the work, which is fine. I really hope I can get a web designer into the group soon as well. I just don't have time to learn PHP.

Trees and shrubberies

Using my new techniques along with the grid tool I have been able to push out some nice tiles. I always say work smarter not harder, and that's exactly what I did today. Until I came upon trees and shrubberies.

These bad boys are so crucial to any environment. They seem so common and simple but yet they are so hard to design. And to actually make them look realistic is another story altogether. I looked on line for tree templates and tree generators with not much luck. Although there are some good resources out there, I cannot find that perfect tree. I may have to take Blender out for another spin and create my own trees from scratch. This is going to be a nightmare!!

Day 2 of tree'ing!
Well I was to find some nice resources online. A lot of editing is needed but they are going to look amazing after I am done. Even got some nice cactus and other plants to use!

Back to the fut... game!

Oh man, after all that testing I had to clear my head and just read a good fantasy book. The Element of Fire by Martha Wells is pretty good is you love the fantasy genre. I was amazed and excited way before the first chapter was over. Give it a read if you are interested.

I came up with some more tricks in Photoshop for producing tile-sets. I even found the grid feature, which will help me out nicely. All in all I have improved my production time greatly. What took me an hour before is taking me three minutes.

I will upload some tile samples when I get home later. I won't share too much because of the influx of uncreative leeches around the web. I mean I don't mind sharing a template and having others use it as a base for their own work. But when it's copy pasted it's just offensive.

No time to post!

Today has been rough. Studying and testing all day today. Plus another full day tomorrow of testing, gah. The only work I have been able to get done is in my head. I have decided to start an ad campaign for this blog. My focus right now is to raise awareness. Luckily I have a strong marketing background. More on this tomorrow. That is if I don't pass out!

Milestone #1

Most game designers may not call this a milestone but for me it is. I created my first house in about two hours! Pretty bad I know but I am proud of my oversized house, haha. Literally the house is three floors high, easily. The roof looks good but the walls need to be scales down.

I have been doing all of my art work in Photoshop which really hasn't been that helpful. I find that Paint is easier to use in the end. I need to find a decent program with with a grid overlay. This help me greatly. I know I have one on my harddrive somewhere I just need to find it.

My test is tomorrow so it's an early night for me. Hopefully I will be able to finish up my house after the exam. One good thing about completing this one house is that I have basically completed 100 of them. Not every house will look the same but there will be replicas for sure!

Issue number 485683-2

I should really start using issue numbers for my blog titles. And by issue I mean total road block.

If there's one thing I learned in school it was planning ahead. Honestly without this skill you really won't succeed in making an MMO. You probably won't succeed in any form of entertainment. Unless it's situational humor. Lol.

So back to the issues at hand. While I was making my first shop I realized that players will be able to block NPCs. Especially NPCs that are behind counters or tables. I did find one fix for this on the forums for the engine. I am able to place an attribute tile that will allow multiple players to walk on that same tile. This really helps the blocking issues and solves the other issue of people blocking door ways or cave entrances.

The other issue is being able to actually interact with NPCs behind these tables. Basically more than one cell away. I asked on the forums if there was a way around this issue and I am still awaiting a reply. If there isnt a way around this I may have to get a little creative. For now I don't plan to share the technique I will use. That would just give my competition a head start :)

Resourceful or creative?

These two words go hand in hand. I have had to be very creative the past few days. Did you know that vert is a word? Thank you auto-correct!

I finished up the rest of Human Island yesterday and started throwing together a resource pack for the island. I don't mind using the occasional icons or potted plants but when it comes to flooring, walls, roofs, trees, just about everything beside doodads, I want to be original art work. And by that I do not mean re-colours! That's how we spell colour up here.

Since I had no base template to work off of I had to go in to the game and measure out realistic sizes for housing, churches, shops, and inns. Pretty easy stuff for the most part. One thing I did get stuck on is house direction. A south-west placement would give players two sides to look at and lessen the feel that you are in a 2D world. On the other hand facing north and south creates more graphic challenges for me. For now I have consider that graphics can always be an update later down the road. Either a weekly thing or a complete over haul every 3 months or something.

On the plus side I was able to upgrade my servers ram by another gig. I also changed the location and added another internal fan so it will now run cooler.

Human starting island

The Human Starting Island. Pretty fancy hey? I might switch it to the Human Starting Isle. Now that has character!

I decided a clean white sheet of drawing paper was going to be my island. I placed a starting town right in the middle and marked the spot where the users character would be washed ashore. It goes with the main story line.

After that I just planned for 5 or 7 levels of training. I threw in a Mage tower, a small farm, and a cave. Typical areas you should see in any starting zone. I am going to guide new players with a quest line around the island. This will give them the experience needed to enter the main game world. For returning players, they will have the ability to skip the training quests and proceed directly to the main world.

Experience tables

Today I wasn't really sure on the curve I wanted to use for the experience table. I considered a 10% increase per level but that seemed too low. I could manually set the experience for each level or use a static curve with my own modifications every few levels. My options are limitless really. I may have to do a Google search and see what kind of information I can come up with.

Baby steps

Nothing today but baby steps. This may come off as me complaining a little bit but sprite animating is hard work! Well, it's more tedious then anything and a lot of redrawing. I really miss Blender right now with it's 3D space and rotation and scale. My eyes are watering up :'( I gotta keep pushing though. Take my breaks when needed, go to bed at a decent hour so I am refreshed, drinking and eating healthy as always. Well, trying to on that last part, haha.

I have been working on Eternal Light for almost a month now which is exciting and scary. I made a goal for myself to have EL come out of beta testing by this time next year. I am going to try my best to honor that goal.

For the next week, research and everything else will be slowing right down. I have to study for a big test at the end of this week. Not exactly how I envisioned my week going but real life comes first. I will try to update a lot over the weekend. If I am not to busy!

Class hell!

Oh my god, I have had such a long day testing and fixing and modifying and using the Human Warrior. Sprites are not going the way I had planned them. Although I did figure out a shortcut for my next ones. Items are not showing up the way I had planned either. I thought I would be able to use a starter pack for items. You know like 10 swords, armors, and what not. I was hoping wrong. I have to go back and reposition all the items. Plus make small edits to each and every items layer. Guess it's a good thing I noticed this now before I started getting all crazy with new graphics.

Other then the issues with the warrior and item visuals I have been having issues on proper documentation on this engine. I am to have to manually test every single stat as well reconfigure my stat plan to fit accordingly. Oh the joys on making your first MMO. I am actually laughing right now.

I decided to lay in bed and clear my head but here I am. Still worrying about the game and updating you on the situation. Let's hope the girlfriend doesn't think she's become second in my life. ;)

I haven't had time to install my scanner so the art will have to wait until tomorrow. Just remember my drawing skills are amateur at best!

Concept Art

Well I wish I had some pretty pictures to show you but I don't. Spent most of my spare time either drawing or playing DC Universe. Aside from the 16 gig download it's a pretty good game. If they had not of made it free to play I probably never would of tried it.

As for my drawings well, I wouldn't call them concept art pieces. Maybe practice is a better word haha. I drew a man eating tree, a fairy, a pumpkin and a few spiders. These aren't going into the game at least I don't think they will be. The eternal light story line has no place for fairies but stories can change and new chapters can be written. Maybe it's best I hang on to any fairies I make lol.

I am going to install my scanner tomorrow, hope it still works. I haven't used the thing in nearly two years. I should also wrap up the previous posts about which engine I settled with.

I think I mentioned Genesis2D. If I haven't Google them. I have had a few issues with their software but honestly it's still the best free engine. Guess I am stuck with it for now. Probably for the better... I don't want to take on too much responsibility. I know when I start coding that's just more time away from content design.

Lineage Eternal

In case you are new here I happen to be the biggest Lineage fan in the world.  I have played since Beta for nearly 11 years and every private server out there after the game shut down.  I had Lineage 2 on pre-order when it came I played it for years.  Now Lineage 1 is being reborn!!!!!!  I cried when I watched this video.  This is going to be the best big hit MMO.

Today or alright?

I can't decide which word I want to use to start each post with. Perhaps I can just switch them up.

Alright, today I thought I would start sharing some of the art work I have been using. Everything I use is either created by my self, my sister Nicolle, or taken from free-to-use galleries. Which reminds me I need to write down that site. They deserve a lot of credit. I find the best art work, that I create, is from a mix of all three sources. I actually created a nice cobble stone path from three pictures online and one I made myself. Turned out nicely. I will post a screen later of what they look like, as well as the roof pallets I will most likely be using.

Cobble Stone

Roof

Lineage Eternal - Twilight Resistance

Pretty funny how I name my first MMORPG Eternal Light and then a few weeks later a new MMORPG is announced called Lineage Eternal - Twilight Resistance.  If you don't know what Lineage is then don't worry.  Very few Americans actually played this game.  Although Lineage II was a bigger success it was really never main stream.  The reason I had to mention this is because it was the first MMO I had ever played.  Heck it was the first online game I had ever seen lol.  Spent a lot of years playing this game.  A lot of good times and a lot of bad.  There is a game-play video being released in two days and the game is supposed to launch in 2012.  If any of you want to check it out then click the link below.  I know I will be playing it!  :D

                                                      Lineage Eternal - Twilight Resistance

Naked girlfriend and boobs

No, not really. But I did figure out how keywords work in searches. Hopefully the results from this topic title will be what I was expecting.

On a lighter note the day has been frustrating to say the least. I spent most of the evening signing up on blog directories, checking confirmation emails, and filling out the same profile over and over. What ever happened to that auto fill crap I always click no to, haha. Over all, I submitted this blog to 30+ sites which should help get some followers. Tomorrow will be forums if my wrists don't kill me first.

One final note, I did add a donation button to the blog. It's feels greedy but it's a necessary step. Tomorrow, I think I'll throw together a list of things I still have to do before we can open for alpha testing.

Donations are up!

Donations... Pfft, probably the easiest and most useless thing to setup right now. I have zero followers and no product to release, haha. Guess I am falling into that typical game maker stereotype who thinks he can live off donations :(

Aside from the fancy donation button I did add a few more sub forums and rearranged a few things. The forums actually look pretty good now. Eternallight.niceboard.com if you wanna come check it out. While I was working on the forum I came up with a few more ideas to promote community interaction.

Eternal Light will have monthly contests to reward players for their participation. Most, if not all, contests will be based outside the game. Examples would be promoting on Facebook or submitting gameplay videos, etc. Rewards would obviously be in game content. Most likely Cash Shop items or similar.

I was reading some creative writing books today when I came across one title that caught my eye. "How to write an RPG world". Short book but a lot of good information. It's really helped ms push the story along as well as make a decision on waiter or not the story will be character driven. I really want character driven story lines but for now, due to engine limitations, I am stuck in the middle. I will allow players to act out as much story as possible while filling in all the holes with NPC interaction or just a CGI and skip over that time period. This could be done when expansions are released.

Day 22

The forums are up and running smoothly.  It took me nearly an hour to set them up.  Even on a free host with all the templates and installations finished for me, I was still stuck on several areas.  Overall, it is looking pretty good now.  The first post I made was a sticky for this blog.  Kind of fitting don't ya think?  In fact I am so mad at my self right now.  I spent way to long on the game tonight that I completely forgot The Walking Dead was on!  Now I have to download it and watch it on my PC.  Probably for the best, the girlfriend hates end of the world shows.  If you haven't seen the show I highly recommend it.  It's a zombie apocalypse but its also a drama at the same time but without all that lovey mushy stuff.  The acting is amazing, and the atmosphere is completely believable.  Oh and the zombies are actually scary!

Not much else to report about today.  For the rest of the day I did some shopping for my mom's birthday and cooked a good dinner.  Tried making York-Shire-Pudding tonight.  Turned out to be amazing!  I downloaded the Blogger app for my iPhone last night.  This app is going to be so helpful.  I can write down any ideas I have or just keep a record of the days events.  Then post it all at once straight to this blog.  I love my iPhone! :D

Anyways, my download is done.  Time to get scared before I sleep!

Week two or was it week three?

Ugh, this week and next week were really deal breakers for me. Like millions of other aspiring game makers before me; I have a dream. I soon realized that dream was no where close to becoming a reality without some serious effort put in on my part..

I started making simple maps and playing with triggers. I think I spent close to three hours trying to make my forest look good, only to realize later on that the tiles I had set were on the wrong layer. So all the trees had the illusion of being painted on the floor. Not to mention my cave was looking like a teepee or the fact that every graphic I used was some rehash of RPGIV or whatever that 50$ program is called. I was not impressed to say the least.

I decided if I wanted this to work I needed to be original and not just in storyline. I am talking music, art, characters, names, monsters everything had to be done by me. And it had to be done well. I started looking at ways to scale down 3D models and high resolution tiles. I got into Photoshop and Blender. Luckily Blender was free and my sister is a Photoshop freak so I had easy access to her collection of art programs.

Photoshop was fun for a while. I learned a lot but I just wasn't getting the results I wanted for tiling a floor. I eventually figured out a way to manipulate the map editor in G2D to give me the results I wanted and at a tenth of the time it would take me to put the tiles in one by one. With a mix of free-to-use textures, and creativity, I was able to create some original tilesets. Blender on the other hand wasn't going so well.

Believe it or not adding a third dimension was a nightmare. Even the beginner tutorials had me stumped. Another reason to quit while I was ahead. Over the next few days I struggled to push through the things these people called tutorials. I eventually made something worth while, a barrel, and posted it on my Facebook. I was so proud of myself but no one else seemed to care, haha. It was this same time I seriously considered using a 3D engine because I was now a "pro" with Blender!

The First Week

To sum up the first week of research in one word... a learning experience.  I must of downloaded and tried out at least twenty different 2D engines.  I actually found one to be truly amazing with a host of features I was interested, including dynamic shadows, but the guy discontinued the project 4 years ago!  Damn you man, damn you!

I eventually came across the Eclipse Origins engine.  Now let me tell you a little something about this community.  Normally when you post a question on a forum without using the Search function you will get flamed.  It's just common sense.  But these guys, especially Robin, are soul suckers.  They wouldn't only flame your topic but they would put you down as a person and as a designer.  It was actually pretty brutal some of the things that were said but, for the moment, their engine was the leader in 2D MMO creation.  Thankfully I didn't put up with them for more than a week.  This lead me to a new project.

I found Genesis2D and immediately fell in love.  This engine was not open-source like Eclipse was but the features, features, features!  OMG there were so many features including full 8 direction movement!  Did I mention I love features?  EO was bare bones compared to this exciting new engine I found.  I could tell the community was already far more helpful and laid back after reading just a few posts.  I quickly downloaded the G2D engine and created a forum account.  A few hours later I sat back in my chair with the feeling of a huge burden lifted off my chest.  I smiled to myself as I realized I was one step closer to making my first MMO.

Introduction

Hey, how are ya?  Having a good day?  Yea?  Me too.  Guess what I did today.  I decided to make an MMORPG.  Wanna hear my story?  Okay, let's go!

Okay, on second glance that first bit looks a little creepy, haha.  And actually I made the decision to start making an MMO over three weeks ago.  October 16, 2011 was the date, to be precise.  It wasn't until yesturday, November 4th, that I came across a book about Blogging in the library and had a moment of clarity.  If someone can make money off a blog, writing about his journey to be an astronaut, then I can definitely start my own blog and collect ad revenue to support my first server.  Now lets be honest this probably won't happen, haha.  So, I will just use this as a journal/reference that I can share with future gamers and aspiring game designers.