Skill and Talent System Proposal

Nothing particularly revolutionary here, but I wanted to set out a bare outline for the kind of skill system I’d like to see in a multiplayer virtual world RPG. World of Warcraft’s talent trees Skills Skills would be mostly non-magical and reflect a single verb. Once learned skills could be improved over time or through … Continue reading Skill and Talent System Proposal →

Configuring Static IP for Ubuntu Guest in VirtualBox

I’ve just started playing with the UnityPark Suite which is a replacement networking system for Unity from a company called MuchDifferent. One of the tools is a custom Riak client called uGameDb. For development they recommend using a virtual machine to run a single Riak node and they have a handy guide on how to … Continue reading Configuring Static IP for Ubuntu Guest in VirtualBox →

Maiden Desmodus Update

This is an update to my previous post and I hope the final word on what’s been going on. It turns out that my suspicions were correct and the new owner of Maiden Desmodus is in fact the old owner who had supposedly died. I don’t condone it, but after having talked to him I … Continue reading Maiden Desmodus Update →

Tools for Building a Multiplayer Web Game

I’ve been thinking some more about doing a 2D battlemap style MUD and have been looking around at possible tools that I could use. Although I used Flex/Flash for FMud I’d rather go with HTML5 for the client on this project, mainly because it’ll be fun to learn something new. There are lots of 2D … Continue reading Tools for Building a Multiplayer Web Game →

Bigpoint, Oh Dear…

Bigpoint publish over 70 online games including quite a few MMO titles, most notably Dark Orbit, Battlestar Galactica Online and the upcoming Game of Thrones MMO. Bigpoint are currently developing a free-to-play MMO based on the HBO series A Game of Thrones Bigpoint are currently developing a free-to-play MMO based on the HBO series A … Continue reading Bigpoint, Oh Dear… →

Flash Policy File Problems

When it comes to setting up FMud the thing which seems to cause people the most problems is the requirement to serve a policy file. There are two issues which come up again and again. The first is mixing up the domains for the game server and the website. The policy file has to be served on the … Continue reading Flash Policy File Problems →

Any interest in a tactical battlemap style game?

Following on from my post looking at D&D style game systems I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a MUD that uses a 2D graphical battlemap instead of text to represent the world. Maps would be covered with a square grid and characters would be represented by tokens which would move around the map … Continue reading Any interest in a tactical battlemap style game? →

The Trouble with 38 Studios

It doesn't look like Kingdoms of Amalur was successful enough to save 38 Studios A quick recap; in 2010 38 Studios relocated to Rhode Island in order to take advantage of a $75 million loan backed by the State economic development fund and this month defaulted on the repayments amid reports that staff hadn’t been … Continue reading The Trouble with 38 Studios →

Taking Inspiration from the Tabletop

I’ve been considering doing a quick MUD/web game (I’m thinking no more than a few months to get at least something online) and to save time I’ve been looking around at some existing systems/settings that I could adapt. Pathfinder has a generous community use policy for non-commercial works The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a fork … Continue reading Taking Inspiration from the Tabletop →

Blog Changes

So I was bored today and decided to tinker with the blog… I’ve added a recent tweets section to the sidebar now that I’m back on Twitter and you probably also noticed that I’ve slimmed the header down a bit. Hopefully it looks a little slicker and gives more room to the actual content. I’ve … Continue reading Blog Changes →