Milestone 10 Build

So with 336 commits since milestone 9, here we go with MMORPG Tycoon 2’s milestone 10 build!  Click through for download links.

UPDATE:  Builds have been updated to Milestone 10.1, which fixes a DLL dependency issue in the 32-bit Windows build, and a crash-on-startup on computers without sufficient OpenGL support to run the game.

Both builds require support for OpenGL 3.3 (approximately equivalent to DirectX 10)

As always, if you test the build, please leave me feedback about what you think!  Please let me know about whether the tutorial system worked for you, if it needs more information, if you ran into crashes, if you had performance problems, etc.  You can leave comments attached to this post, or you can e-mail them to me directly, at ‘trevor’ at this website address.

Instructions:

  • In theory, we shouldn’t need instructions any more;  the in-game tutorial and early-game “requests” system should (hopefully!) provide enough guidance to get people started.  (In practice, I’m certain that there are things that I’ve missed or that aren’t intuitive enough.  But this is definitely a lot better than previous builds where I’ve had to write several paragraphs of instructions here on the website just to get people started!)

New stuff:

  • Monster areas are no longer implemented as buildings, and no longer have a single ‘entrance’.  Additionally, you may make them as large or small as you wish.  (The tool for making them is currently a “click-and-drag” tool.  In the end, I’ll probably provide several different ways to lay these out)
  • Player classes, Monsters, and NPCs can now be edited.  You can make attacks stronger or weaker, longer-range or shorter, adjust the damage types and amounts, etc.  Additionally, the start of a character editor is in place (although the only character pieces available right now are “soldier” and “crocodile”).
  • Speaking of which, Players and NPCs now appear as a generic fantasy soldier model, and all monsters appear as crocodiles.  This is just temporary;  I needed a pair of models to proof of concept the model editing interface.  If you want, you can give one of your classes a crocodile head so that you can tell it apart from the others, or whatever.  A much broader selection of model pieces will be available in the next set of builds.
  • There are now different types of MMORPG, which have different “stat” values.  These statistics affect various things in the game, such as how subscribers react to the different features of your MMORPG.  You’ll be asked to select an MMORPG type when you create the MMORPG.  (If you’re loading a saved game from the MS9 build, your game will automatically be converted to a F2P game during the load process.  But I recommend against doing that;  you’re better off starting a fresh MMORPG in this build)
  • Progression has been implemented.  Your game now has a “version number” which will increase as you work on the MMORPG.   Your version number is in the form “x.y.z”, where ‘x’ is your major version, ‘y’ is your minor version, and ‘z’ is your build number.  Most editing actions give build numbers, and when your build number reaches 100, you can gain a minor or a major version.  Minor version numbers let you increase your MMORPG’s stats.  Major version numbers give you new technologies to play with (almost none of these are actually implemented in this build).
  • At the start of the game, you no longer automatically have the ability to build starting points.  Instead, starting points are the new technology which gets unlocked when your MMORPG reaches version 1.0.0.
  • Implemented “Admin requests”.  Admin requests are requests from your company for things that you should do.  These can have various rewards attached to them.  In this build, there are requests which will guide you from the end of the tutorial to the point that your MMORPG reaches version 1.0.0 and opens to the public.  This is really just an early-game proof-of-concept for this requests system.  In future versions, this will be expanded to also include User requests, which will come from subscribers rather than from within your company.
  • The game now remembers what MMORPG you were most recently building, and the main “Connect” button in the main menu will automatically load the most recent saved game from that MMORPG.  Alternately, you can use “Load Backup” to load an older saved game, or “Switch” to switch to a different MMORPG (or create a new one, or delete an old one, etc)
  • The Windows build is now being built using MinGW, rather than using Visual Studio.  There should be no visible difference, but I thought I’d mention it.