Wograld, a 2D 45 degree isometric MORPG!

[Jastiv]

Not quite ready for users, but more than ready for more developers. It compiles and runs (if you can follow the long list of instructions)

Subject: Genre, Game name
Genre: Multi-player online RPG (hardly massive at this point, but aiming for that eventually)
Name: Wograld

Content:

* What is the project?
The project is my whole life, basically. The history starts back in 1997 when I first played Ultima Online. Well actually, It doesn't start then, but after playing Ultima Online for a number of years, I realized all the things UO could have done better including.
1) Do more stuff server side, client side was all very well in the early 90's but trusting the clients too much later on lead to cheats.
2) bad user interface design decisions. You don't need me to to tell you about UOASSIT, UOAUTOMAP, etc etc, and the fact the client had way too many missing features.
3) Not open source (self-explanatory)
4) Non-free artwork (self-explanatory)
5) proprietary lore (self-explanatory)

Also, I did not like the game play directions UO took at times, but I really wanted a Linux native game I could just run and not worry about breakage under wine or worrying about getting the UI extension programs to run under it. After playing UO, I played other games in the genre including WOW (for a year, quit that at the same time as UO about) Runescape (I'm embarrassed to admit I still play, it, but really although runescape got some things better (craft skills, dungeoneering skill) It seriously lacks in other areas that UO really aced. The game I forked from, crossfire, is a hard core unix nerd's rpg, it has things like stat loss (yes, it has even less players than the number of murderers during UO murderer stat loss days, because surprise surprise, most players hate stat loss) lack of gathering skills, expensive craft skills, and quests with negative rewards.
More about the project itself and project roadmap and features are on the site itself, at www.wograld.org.

Our next release should feature bank boxes and secure trading between players. This will obviously require changes to the client and server. After that we will look at changing the races and starting areas. (more of an artwork issue, but probably needs some code as well)


* Contributors need to have all of the following
1) a few hours a week minimum to spend on the project.
2) A broadband internet connection.
3) an installed Linux box
4) familiarity with the linux command line.
5) ability to follow directions in the readme (I can help with this but you must be willing to follow a long multi-step process)
6) an interest in MORPGS and Wograld in particular (should go without saying, but you might be surprised)

And one or more of the following skills
1) Java programming
2) C programming
3) 2d pixel art
4) Gnu autotools
5) perl scripts.

* Link to the project page.
www.wograld.org
* Mention the code's and assets' license(s)
Everything right now is pretty much GPLv2 Or later. I don't intend to change that right now, although the site mentions gpl v 3 or later. I might change it if we end up using AGPLed code on the server. (an advantage that no one can "steal the server then)
* Link to a gameplay video if you have one.
(no game play video yet, game play will change significantly from what will be shown, I'll add this later)

[Jastiv]

Video added, its not full screen though. We couldn't manage to get a full screen one to show at an acceptable speed.


youtu.be/td-qZvM-QpU

[charlie]

Sounds really interesting Jastiv. I think some screenshots would help if you want to include a few. Also I embedded the youtube video for you in your 2nd post.

[Knitter]

I'm interested in keeping up developing in Java but haven't had the chance to do so given the software I develop currently, what do you have that uses Java?

[Jastiv]

The new and better client and the new map editor are both written in java and ready for java contributors. They both compile and run. The client works with the wograld server, while the map editor is a branch of gridarta . They both currently have some obvious bugs in them, but its hard to work on everything at the same time with such a tiny development team.

[Jastiv]

Here are some screen shots



There are a couple more on the websitehttp://www.wograld.org and you will probably get a better view of them there.

[charlie]

I'm curious about the artwork style. Is it just something rough and ready (nothing wrong with this; Wesnoth looked a lot worse when it was released into the wild) whilst you focus on the core gameplay, or is it a particular style you are going for?

Have you tried using assets from Flare / opengameart?

[Knitter]

The new and better client and the new map editor are both written in java and ready for java contributors. They both compile and run. The client works with the wograld server, while the map editor is a branch of gridarta . They both currently have some obvious bugs in them, but its hard to work on everything at the same time with such a tiny development team.

I'll try to take a look but CSV? Seriously?

I have no idea how to properly work with CSV, only used it once and really the worse thing I could have used for the job, but I'll see if I can checkout the code and compile it.

[Jastiv]

It has been cvs since the project started and I've been to lazy to change it. Plus all the current developers would have to get up to speed on new version control. We plan to move to a different version control eventually, probably sometime this year.

As for the art style, some of the tiles were converted from the old crossfire, while others were drawn from scratch to fit the new 45 degree iso perspective. I've been going for a style close to that, so the regular trees are part of the style, but not the river for example. The character will probably be redone somewhat as well, although its closer to the style I'm aiming for than the mini palm-trees. It has been a more simplistic cartooney and brightly colored style than what you would find in flare, since I'm not really going for the gloomy look of flare, but more of a style that resembles a cross between final fantasy and ultima 7 (from a 45 degree isometric perspective.

Because many of the maps were borrowed from crossfire, I haven't added new transition tiles that would make them look good either. I haven't seen much in the way of 45 degree isometric art on opengameart.org, then again I haven't looked extensively. I've tried to replace the really bad tiles with something that looks better, but I have not gotten to all of them.

I believe artwork can be made better, but only up to a certain point, after that you are just changing the style and not really making it better. ( I think wesnoth is a good example of just changing the style on a lot of the artwork) I think things like the grass, chairs and the fountain look just about right, and more tweaking on that isn't necessary.

[Leejjon]

Not easy to find a list of servers for runescape classic but here is a relevant one for now http://www.gaminghorror.net/runescape-classic-still-playable/

[Jastiv]

The game is more developer friendly now, because we recently moved to git (not the 10 year old stuff but all of the recent stuff and the latest release.) It was an easy choice to move to git in spite of some of the drawbacks of git for game development (binary assets.yeah, even with two very active developers I ran into the issue with the repository being locked with all the commits) Since the game is on Sourceforge and they stopped supporting CVS, we really had no choice but to move it, and since git is so widely used it seemed like the obvious option.

Also, it has had two releases, the pre-alpha (0.0.1) (from the very last cvs commit) and then another release that began our git journey (the alpha 0.1.0) We plan to make another release either the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
Also we have bank boxes(might have some serious bugs needs more testing) music has been added (still has some bugs and things that need to be worked on, but yes it plays different tracks when you go to some of the different maps.)
Game play has been drastically improved. You no longer lose stats when you die or get stat depletion, making the game more newbie and causal gamer friendly. You only need to run the server and the java client. The maps will have to be put in a certain directory of the server folder to run the server, but we got rid of the separate arch folder as we felt it was confusing and unnecessary for new server admins and game tester to deal with.
It still mostly has the old crossfire game play, but I am working on coming up with ideas to improve the current starting classes/skills and make them fit the wograld skills ideas. (necromancer, bard, mage, tinkerer, barbarian, knight, assassin, thief, ranger)

As far as the art style goes, some of it still needs to be replaced, since its just re-scaling or not even replaced versions etc of old crossfire art. Some could use some tweaking, and some is more or less fine how it is. I don't think we need to work the art until it looks like a really realistic style rpg, (aka like flare, battle for wesnoth or allacrost) since I'm going for a more pix-elated look with some blending/shading. The saturated colors and cartoon look have a certain appeal to me, yet at the same time I want it to have a distinct style from something like The Mana World or Stendhal. (eyes are smaller, characters are somewhat more proportional, it is a different view, being 45 degree isometric, because that is how Ultima Online laid out its grid, yet it doesn't really aim to be an exact Ultima Online clone either since I want to avoid the bad game play mistakes and design decisions Ultima Online made. (such as making mages over powered with teleport spells etc)

[Jastiv]

I decided to boost this up again. Artwork has been moving along, code, not so much. Beyond compiling and little tweaks here and there, I'm not much of an expert on code. I really want to make another release soon, a release where the editor works with Java 11 (right now you still need Java 8 to compile it.)

After that release, the plan is to make a new release where we strip out the awful level system. I am sick of being stuck at level 12, the too slow mana regen rate, among other things. The trouble is, I'm not quite sure what to replace it with now. Most games have pretty lack-luster combat systems. Right now you level up your skills right along with your character, but I'd rather just have some kind of skill level up, while hit points and other basic things only go up so much (kind of like the journey up to level 10 now.

[fluffrabbit]

You're just being modest. I'm sure you're a great programmer. You have to be to put up with Java. Java is hard, and your efficiency would probably double if you switched to C.

It all looks rather good in terms of functionality, but my main complaint is the art style. The characters look extremely tall for the map tiles, which have a rather harsh 45 degree perspective. The people look distorted or deformed as a result. It looks sorta like Ultima, but I was never a fan of that series.