This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

1

Game Dev and Gaming / Re: Name of game ... need help

« on: Nov 28, 11, 01:56:49 PM »

(Marketing angle)

While you can call it whatever you want during development (Codename: Bacon!) be sure to pick a name that's at least reasonably unique for launch.   Forsaken Space might not be a good one because there's already a Forsaken World, for example.

The Verum Wars is a pretty good one because it's both reasonably unique.  Try googling The Verum Wars, with or without quotes; if a game popped up with this exact title, a little promotion would put it near the top of the results for a search for 'Verum Wars' in a few months.

2

Game Dev and Gaming / Looking for education on a budget?

« on: Nov 25, 11, 04:16:58 PM »

After we actually got the HE toolkit in-hand, our team realized how unprepared we are to tackle even the basic design components to create a truly spectacular game.

Recently, Stanford School of Engineering released the entirety of their Intro to Computer Science course in video format.  If you or your team are looking to get learned, or upgrade/refresh your skills, I highly recommend it.  While they do tackle a number of programming languages, they are teaching programming from an engineering perspective.  In the long run, it has made our usage of the HeroScript wiki documentation more productive

http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx

For the CS106A coursework and lectures, the only item not included in the course materials freely available on the site is a textbook, which we got several of second hand for $50 apiece, which is the total material cost per person to take a stanford-quality course.    You have to work much harder to use these than even a Stanford student might, because you won't have directed group work, but the course is designed to teach Intro to CS to anthro and biology majors, not just CS people.


For more educational materials, we've been using khan academy ( http://khanacademy.org )  to learn the finer points of basic to upper math, including trig and geom and all the good stuff, including probability and statistics.

Hope this is OK to post, and I hope you find it useful.


Anyone else got any awesome educational materials to share that's relevant to MMO development in any way (even free writing workshops for MMO writing development, for example)?

3

Game Dev and Gaming / LEGO Universe Shutting Down :(

« on: Nov 11, 11, 08:32:32 AM »

I enjoyed playing this game for the few days that I played it when it launched last year.  It was a treat for myself, a game I knew I'd blow through quickly so the upfront cost of buying the game at launch for full price and conquering all the content in three days didn't bother me:

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-us/showpost.aspx?PostID=4504061

There are a few things I note about the game from a business perspective, and I think any one of them might make an interesting topic of a HeroEngine blog post written by someone with more researchin' and analyzin' skillz than me:

• While the F2P model has been successfully implemented in a previously pay-to-play game to resurrect the revenue stream of a few games (LotRO, DDO, WAR to a certain extent) it needs to be coupled with effective marketing and refocused development: the game has to be better from every angle because the people playing it now don't have $20-50 invested in it already.  
  
• LEGO Universe is the first pay-to-play game I have ever played that didn't require you to enter some credit card details for an automatic rebill after the first free month that came with the game.  While I appreciate their billing practice as a customer, they would have probably gotten at least 75% more money from me over a few months before I forgot to cancel, which would have been good for them.  (Allowing your credit card to rebill month after month forgetfully is hilariously common among online game players.)
  

4

Game Dev and Gaming / Re: What do you want in an MMO?

« on: Aug 17, 11, 10:26:05 PM »

This is pretty abstract, but: I would like see an MMO where I am literally expected to spend half or more of my time socializing.  Not necessarily because the game rewards you for it, but because occasionally venturing out to beat something down and spending the rest of your time schmoozing seems more like what I would actually be doing if I were an adventurer, and because the game (somehow) plays out in such a way that you don't feel like you have to max out your level/stats in order to "win" or even "play."

(The "how do you manage that?!?!!!" is really the devil in the details, amirite?)

5

Game Dev and Gaming / Re: What do you want in an MMO?

« on: Aug 10, 11, 09:08:02 AM »

I would like to see someone pull off a game with as much consistent GM interaction as EQ Legends had at its height, and The Matrix Online had at the beginning.   I'd imagine that a small development team would need to launch that sort of thing in a very small region and provide in-game GM service during a window during the evening to begin with, so the game itself would need to be compelling enough to keep players busy during the off-hours.

I imagine this serving a niche market, but I would easily pay in excess of $50 a month (which is what Legends cost) just to play such a game, and so would a lot of other RP nerds.  

6

Off Topic / Re: Ok I had to share this!

« on: Aug 10, 11, 08:52:13 AM »

So ya, I am 34 years old... with 2 younger sisters who both have been to college and are both teachers and all I have had to show is certifications from technology schools. However, that just changed! Today I was accepted into Full Sail University for my Bachelors in Game Art Design. So while I am working on the game project, I am furthering my knowledge through school   ... Like I said, just wanted to share the acceptance news!

Grats.  Full Sail sounds like a lot of actual fun while you're getting your learn on.

7

Developer Hero Projects / Re: Join Us In Creating Our Game: Formations

« on: Aug 09, 11, 02:51:42 PM »

From the concept art, it looks like your game is going to be about a civilization of auto-mobile firearms.  You can be any race or class of gun you want to be, and if you level up you grow into a sniper rifle or chain gun.

(Actually, I'd play that....)

8

Scripting & Programming / Re: "Methods only valid in class scripts"

« on: Aug 07, 11, 08:15:46 PM »

Figured it out:

The compiler is smart enough to check and see if the class (based on ClassName + ClassMethod) exists.

My script was named BearTutorial1ClassMethods but my class was named BearScriptingTutorial1.

Take-away lesson:

If you get "Methods only valid in class scripts" during compile, check to make sure your script name for ClassName really is ClassName + ClassMethod because the compiler is super-smart.

9

Scripting & Programming / [Resolved] "Methods only valid in class scripts"

« on: Aug 07, 11, 07:48:52 PM »

Moderator:  Please move this to the Scripting forum, I got antsy.  >.>

Surely I am overlooking something fairly simple, but while completing the tutorial:

http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Your_First_HSL_Script

I get a message regarding "Methods only valid in class scripts" for every line that begins a method.

Here's what I've done/tried:

1.  I entered my program manually into a script called bearTutorial1ClassMethods, tried to compile it, didn't work.
2.  Copied the contents of each code section of the tutorial to a code block in my own script, still get an error for every line that begins a method
3.  Copy/pasted the contents of _scriptingTutorial1ClassMethods (which compiles on its own without error) to my own bearTutorial1ClassMethods script, and it aborts compile with the same "Methods only valid in class scripts" error, with no other errors.

(By the way, as a sanity check, I added the _scriptingTutorial1 class to a node and it behaves as expected.)

Any ideas? :<

10

General Discussion / Re: Documentation question

« on: Aug 06, 11, 12:39:33 AM »

One feedback about the wiki in general unrelated to anything I've mentioned above is that whoever is making the diagrams, I love you.   PLEASE TO BE MAKING MORE.   

11

General Discussion / Re: Documentation question

« on: Aug 05, 11, 04:13:10 PM »

Hi Bear,

I think hands down we've got the best documented engine out there.

Having licensed a number of engines and read through the public documentation for a number of others, I am inclined to agree.  At the very least, the public face of your support staff is incredibly responsive to questions.

If you run into other sections that you feel are outdated please post about them or feel more than free to edit them yourself.

http://wiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Character_Data_Tutorial  Here's what made me decide to check and see if you already have an effort behind the scenes to update stuff like this; I like the documentation on Replication but I really wanted to see your implementation ideas in this tutorial.

12

General Discussion / Re: Documentation question

« on: Aug 04, 11, 06:20:59 AM »

My post/question isn't really about the social game development documentation in specific, it's about the wider documentation effort as a whole (and that one bit of doc was used as an example.)

Thanks for the link though.

13

General Discussion / [Resolved] Documentation question

« on: Aug 03, 11, 11:52:45 PM »

Before I bother posting a lengthy request for a documentation reorganization, to what extent is HE/IF aware that the wiki needs work?

e.g. the http://wiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Introduction_to_HeroCloud_for_Social_and_Web_Game_Developers page is suspiciously similar to a copy of the "for MMOs" page, and doesn't include any information or wiki links to stuff about the social game APIs etc (presumably because this isn't public yet). 

Anyways, this and many other pieces of front-and-center documentation on the wiki are outdated or misleading/confusing at the moment and I'm just getting a vibe for 1. whether you have a project already in the works to do something about this and 2. how receptive you are to customers grabbing this bull by those horns w/r/t just going into the wiki and trying to put right what has gone wrong?