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ManualBack to normal
2010-05-23 10:07:25The game has been unavailable for a few days but is now back to normal.
There was a thunderstorm on Thursday (May 20) and hardware was damaged. The game should now be back to normal with your characters intact, and hopefully everything works as it should. If you encounter further issues, please use the Feedback function (near the logout button on the menubar) so that we can fix them.
Server Upgrade
2010-04-10 11:03:27A few days ago we upgraded the server.
We upgraded the server from 1.2Ghz, 1 core, small cache to a 3.0ghz, 4 cores, large cache and this had a significant impact on load time for the pages.
Downtime.
2009-12-04 07:21:00there'll be expected downtime during this weekend due to re-arranging of network cables.
Something lng overdue in may apartment, the installation of fixed network cables and plugs, is about to happen. At the same time I'll be moving the server out of the kitchen and into a storage space in my bedroom behind a door. While doing this I'll also be installing network plugs every here and there in my entire apartment and someday when things are tidy enough and there's less computerparts laying about, I might get a cat.
Well, that's all for now folks, sorry for the downtime, hopefully I'll be fixing some of the remaining issues and restore the abilities again soon.
Over and out.
Welcome back!
2009-10-01 09:05:57Welcome to the new and improved Rogue Online. The month offline has been spent improving performance and rewriting most of the code. Please use the Feedback button to report broken or missing features.
Welcome to the new and improved Rogue Online! The game has been offline for a month to allow for a complete rewrite of the underlying code. Rogue Online is now quicker than ever, prettier than ever, and hopefully it will be bigger than ever. Unfortunately the time offline was not enough to completely rewrite everything so we encourage you to report broken features through the Feedback button in the menu, as well as features you used to have but cannot find anymore.
Preparation
2009-09-29 12:35:34It's time to let go an open up again, so in a few days we'll reset the game and go back to non-beta.
The game is slowly getting back on it's feet again. There's still work to be done, particulary for different abilities and jobs, but most of it is there now so I'm going to open up and invite people in again in a few days.
Hopefully there's no nasty bugs and surprises waiting :D
Open Beta
2009-09-14 07:59:07Things are not done yet, it's still broken, but I welcome you in on the 2 weeks long Open Beta.
During the 2 week long Open Beta there will be a lot of changes and fixes. Focus is on getting the game back to feature-parity with the previous version while still implementing a few of the new changes, such as the new design, team system, town alignment, ability levels, character avatars and map layouts.
Preparation
2009-08-25 08:31:32In order to make a big update to the underlying structure of code the game will be unavailable for a few days at the end of this week.
For the next month we got a lot of changes to make that will optimize the codebase and make the game run faster allowing more players. Unfortunately, this cannot be done while the game is up and running so the game is going to be unavailable from thursday to monday while changes are being made.
Art and Javascript
2009-08-23 19:30:18One of our long-term players submitted some artwork which is now in use and the character summary on the game page is now automatically updating.
A big thanks goes out to Kheneria who submitted a couple of images to fill in some of the missing symbols. Up until today we've had a notification system that made the game link on the menu brighten up if there was any event log messages. Now we have an automatically updating character summary in the game page which animates nicely when you are hit as well as slowly show the increase in health, mana and actions over time. Great, I say, but more things are on their way and there'll be a complete character and map reset the 1st of September, so be ready.
Alignment
2009-08-18 13:01:45Be Good and Be Evil now have a bigger chance to raise or lower your alignment and a characters alignment can be seen in the target list.
In order to further add duality to the game world, I've reinforced the aspects of alignment. high alignment chacters will now recieve a "holy" status and evil "unholy" which can be seen in the target list. Further more I've made it easier to turn good or evil by adding 2 more ways to alter your alignment. You can either fight good or evil targets or loot good or evil targets. Also, remember that monsters and players who logs out with an AI set will have aggression based on aligment as well!
Introduction and Spirits
2009-08-12 21:59:47The game introduction has been updated and spirits have been added.
During character creation all new characters are assigned a spirit that gives them a small attribute bonus to make them more unique. This spirit will also be used in certain skills later (tame beast, for example). The introduction message has been shortened and is now more profiled to the created character. Here's my challenge, if you think you can write better texts, submit them through the feedback system and you might get an in-game reward.
Game speed and Bugs
2009-08-12 08:21:28I've been tuning a lot of stuff for speed and fixed some bugs.
I've made some good improvements in performance, the ai is not about 3 times as fast as it were before which allows us to handle more players and more monsters. Also, some work went into polishing details and hidden now protects you from random AI attacks, you can unhide yourself by using "show", monsters come and go more fluently now instead of disappearing because you looked at them. Furthermore we're gaining momentum in terms of players and I'm preparing for a very active month when I reset the game the 1st of September. By the way, if you like the game, tell your friends!
Avatars and Monsters
2009-08-09 20:10:55New characters can now build their own unique avatar and monster spawns have been rebalanced.
The face generator is up and working, images courtesy of gen8's anime face generator on deviantart. Monster levels, numbers and placement have been rebalanced, levels are now set based on the current player and not on all players. Also, fortifications reduce monster number and levels and provide a safer place to be. (Monsters now also fight ALOT more, don't be surprised if you walk around and find them fighting eachother, or you).
Bugs n Features
2009-08-08 21:53:50A couple of bugs and some neat features are on their way, read on for more details.
I started fixing some small bugs today and one thing led to another. I haven't been inspired much lately but today I fixed so that poison really works again, you can no longer pillage if you have no team, you cannot claim neutral territory unless you break all fortifications, the highscore list now links to the players and most importantly, the basis for a face generator is done and I'm working on the imagery for it. Hopefully new characters from tomorrow and on will be able to chose a hairstyle and color to go with them to make them more unique. These will also show in the highscore list and all chat messages.
Extension!
2009-08-01 11:38:06The current game period have been extended.
To spice things up and see how far people can get, the current game period have been extended by one month and will not be reset until the first of september.
Thunder
2009-07-08 18:49:53Yesterday night we had a big thunderstorm and the electricity was shut off and some data was lost.
Due to a thunderstorm and some characters was lost due to a database failure. I apologize for this loss of data, send me some feedback and I will compensate it somehow.
Reset the 1:st
2009-06-30 21:53:52As I'm supposed to keep the world clean and the competition fresh.
I will reset the game world and data tomorrow morning to keep things competitive, new clean start for all of us. What combination of job and faction will you play this time?
Player Profiles
2009-05-28 22:23:14Hi all players. I would like to alert you to the usefulness of the player profile.
To most players the player profile is merely a short description of the player and serves no direct purpose for the player itself, but it does help me better understand who the players are and, here is the important part, it allows me to reply to feedback sent by a player.
So, if you are interested in the game, have an opinion, bug report of feature request I would love to hear from you, just make sure you fill in your player profile so I can get back to as well.
Gamespeed
2009-05-18 20:57:02Last era was played at a blazing speed so it's time to test the opposite.
Normally we regain 1 ap each minute and have a default maximum of 60. Last era was played with 100 max ap and it turned out to skew the game too quickly. This era we will play with 50 max ap and slightly slower ap-gain. The downside of this would be that one plays slightly less frequent, the upside that the game should sustain balance much longer.
Reset
2009-05-18 07:29:17Time to start over, balance things up.
Heh, we had a character reaching level 1000, seemed like a good idea to start over and let new players have som same-level monsters to fight.
Reboot
2009-03-07 08:56:45Long time has passed and we're now rebooting.
We're rebooting, the new era starts in a few minutes. I'm gonna try something new this time, see if you can notice the difference :)
Dragon.
2009-02-02 09:23:47There's a fearsome dragon flying around in the game, whoever beats it wins this round.
If you can manage to track and bring down the dragon there's a reward that is usable in the next episode of our story. The dragon is sneaky though, moves around and heals a lot, so it might not be as easy as one first thinks. It may be only level 200, but it's equipment (dragon scales, claws and fire) is top of the notch.
End of a Season.
2009-01-30 22:20:01It's getting close to the end of the season and there will be an end-the-season event.
Before we end this season there will be a final event that flips the table a bit. See the in-game event message on saturday or sunday and you'll see where I'm going with things.
Christmas Conclusion
2008-12-25 22:41:37So christmas is over and the presents have fled the land.
The christmas hunt is over, I hope you all enjoyed it and opened lots of presents, I sure did! :)
Merry Christmas!
2008-12-24 00:14:26The christmas present-hunt is active, go kill some presents to get random fun stuff!
It's chistmas 2008 and the presents are running wild. Someday later during the day Santa Claws should appear and everyone that manages to knock him out once before midnight will get a non-beta ticket that allows you to bend the gamerules a bit for the next season. Happy hunting everyone!
Christmas Preparations
2008-12-15 00:02:39We've got some nice gifts coming for you, so be prepared or they'll eat you alive!
On the december 24, christmas eve, we will have a little christmas special. Santa Claws have kidnapped Santa Claus and replaced all christmas boxes with evil man-eating christmasboxes, but the presents are still inside!
All wandering monsters will be replaced for christmas eve and when killed will give unexpected stuff. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Beware though, Santa Claws will be out there and whoever knocks him unconscious and sets Santa Claus free will get a very rare gift.
Happy Gaming, folks, and be here on christmas eve!
Bug Fixing Spree!
2008-12-13 10:08:56This weekend, all feedback from 1st dec up until today will be dealt with.
Now we've come halfway across the month and I've gotten lots of feedback this month, much appreciated. I will be dealing with all of it today, and work on the game a lot.
Oh, and we are going to have a christmas special, so be sure to check the game on christmas eve, the 24th!
Experience and Balance
2008-12-09 09:03:36We no longer print how much experience you get for and action and you now get experience for fortifying and claiming map area as well as travelling.
Since it costs a lot of ap to travel, gather resources, claim and fortify territory I've decided to give out 1xp for each movement, 0.5xp/ap for fortifications and I've also limited the max exp you can get from fighting to 2/ap. This should balance things up and make the building pacifist game-style more feasable.
Random Art #1
2008-12-07 23:05:07A friend of mine drew some art for the game and although I cannot implement it right away I thought I'd show it off. See the full news entry for an image of some weapons.
A friend of mine came by today and brought some art with her that she drew for rogue-online. It's a set of weapons and I've manually chosen a few images to show off here:
Sad to say I cannot properly implement the weapons in-game yet, I still need to code the inventory code and that is a big piece of work, so I've postponed it for a later version.
A new Era begins..
2008-11-30 16:08:43During december 2008 Rogue Online har it's last official beta before release. This last era represents a year of work and is more or less the real thing. During this era we will be playing a small map with lots of players, I expect teams to be created, cities to be taken over and land to be conquered.
There are a few new features this era and lots of fixes. During the game period bugs will be found and fixed, but there will be no new major features, and the state of the game will be more and more balanced. I'm proud to say that what was once a just a dream to me has turned out in a way I couldn't possibly expect. We have a game here, in which the players strive for control and domination of a random world, upgrade their weapons and armors and fight it out with axes, swords, spells and daggers. A game that's simple, yet challenging and although it doesn't deliver the promise of a complete rogue-like, it's good foundation to stand on as I keep developing the game.
Instability
2008-11-26 17:27:58With only 4 days left before the reset, the game will now turn unstable while I speed up the pace of development.
Since there are still things left that I want to finish before the next era I'm going to stop tip-toeing around in my code and actually rewrite certain chunks of it.
This means that unfortunately for the players, these 3-4 days may show an exceptionally large amount of bugs and the site or may not work at any given time.
Before the reset I want to complete the new armors and weapons and for that to work I need to implement more detailed requirements, and a system for checking requirements.
So if things don't work as expected, it's probably because I'm running havoc on the code.
After all, this is still a game-in-development.
(And oh! The next month will be really exciting, small map (9x9 island) where most players will always have another player to talk with and/or bash on. Moreover, I'm aiming for 50 active players, beating the record of most players online at any given time (20) and getting 100 characters in the game world. Google adWords, here I come!)
Armors and Upgrades
2008-11-25 11:13:23Up until now, I've refrained form changing things with the armor and weapon system in the game waiting for the completion of the inventory. This is about to change and the armor system will soon be recreated to act more like the weapon system, each armor type will have it's good and bad sides, and upgrading it makes it better overall, but keeps it's strengths and weaknesses.
One of the long outstanding issues I've had to deal with regerding armors are coming to an end. No more will you need to upgrade 9 different armors to become better, but armors will be rewritten to work just like weapons work right now. All armors will have a base defense against all types of damage and different armor types will then vary what damage types they are better and worse at.
This means that you may want to upgrade a few armors, and switch what armor you use just like you may want to have a few weapons so you can switch depending on what you meet.
And the motivation for switching will become far more obvious once the armor is working as intended, since then people will not be equally though in all armor types, and magicians will be more balanced thanks to being able to switch spell while fighting.
Cheers, Roze.
Names and Taverns
2008-11-22 15:20:30The name generator got a few more names today, and taverns now have names.
A friend of mine, in-game character saahren, contributed with new names for trolls, lizards, dwarves, high elfs and.. lo and behold... Taverns!
This means that whoever founds a town generates a name for it, and if you're evil, you may get as neat tavern names as "The Bloody Lair", or, if you're good, "The Holy Angel". There's a whole set of neutral names as well, ranging from the common "The Red Dragon", to the "The Golden Bucket".
Since some towns have already been founded, they will generate names based on who sees them first, so if you're evil and want to spread your names, go on a fieldtrip!
Big thanks to saahren for the help.
Pillage & Plunder
2008-11-19 08:03:16Players can now pillage opposing teams towns!
Now that we can build towns and level them up, I figured that the game is too friendly, so I added the ability to pillage opposing teams towns. Just go to their town hall and select Pillage. If you have the stealth ability, they won't see you do it! :D
Balance Weapons
2008-11-18 07:41:57Weapons now cost 50g and has been weakened to be on-par with armor, you can also have up to your level in weapons just like in armor.
The Future of Highscore
2008-11-14 07:58:40We're planning on implementing Era-based highscores.
The latest and greatest in rogue online thinking is to make the highscore display top-10 for each game period (between 2 resets), as well as a summary that shows top10 for accounts rather than characters, to give some more credit to long-term players.
Basically this means that I will need to automatize the resets and storage of previous eras highscore lists.
Just think how cool it could be, you could name your characters in succession (James the 3:rd, or Eric, son of James) and with the upcoming plan of storytelling and keeping a summarize of the storyline for each time period..
Well, sounds great in my ears, so I hope you like it! :)
Teams & Membership
2008-11-13 07:34:19Teams are now invite-only, to prevent unwanted members.
Historically all teams have been open to be joined at any time, recently we made it so that you could only join teams which you actually could see in-game, and now we've restricted it further to invitations only. To send an invite, be in a team and select a target to invite, then select "invite to team_name" in the action list.
Movement Cost
2008-11-08 22:18:34Actions needed for movement has been lowered by 1.
Movement has been rebalanced, it now costs 2 ap to travel the map and only 1 ap if travelling in native terrain (dwarves in mountain, elves in forest etc) or if you have the Free Movement ability, all movement cost only 1.
Happy travelling!
Removal of Inactive Players
2008-11-08 09:27:32The procedure for removing inactive players has been rewritten, we now have several steps that occur before removal.
When a player logs out it can choose which AI to use while offline next to the logout button. If a player is logged out for more than 3 days their AI is set to survivalist to ensure that they don't interact more than necessary with other players as well as being harder to knock unconscious. After a player has been offline for 5 days, it is marked as "may remove", and after 7 days the character is removed from the game.
Even if the character gets removed you still keep your account though, so you can always make a new character if it gets removed, or wait 7 days to have it removed so you can start over.
Highscore
2008-11-07 16:52:46Team criteria for highscore is now unique.
I've updated the highscore list to use new criteria for teams. Now you can compete in number of towns, population, fortifications and conquered land!
Blacksmith & Highscore
2008-11-06 07:27:57The blacksmiths weapon and armor limits have been rebalanced, and we now go highscores.
The blacksmith earlier had linear growth of it's max levels, while everything else in the game was exponential. The blacksmith is now also exponential so we should be able to get good equipment matching our level this month.
Previously we've had inofficial awards for various competitions each month but since I it was a lot of work to keep up I instead added a highscore list where everyone can see their ranking. Please submit ideas for other categories to rank players after if you find something you really miss!
Cheers, Roze.
Balance.
2008-11-05 10:31:15I've changed numbers around town population and gathering of resources to see if I can balance things up better.
Gathering of wood, stone and ore now all cost 3ap, and you gain less than before. Town population also grows slower than before and hopefully I'll get around to balance up the blacksmith as well in the coming days.
Map is now working again.
2008-11-04 21:01:46now both IE and Opera works with the map again.
There was a bug in the code that handles travelling on the map in IE and Opera which made those unable to travel the map. That has now been taken care of.
Map & IE/Opera
2008-11-04 07:44:06It turns out IE and Opera can't move on the map, will be fixed pronto!
Gah! Map! Gone!
2008-11-02 16:28:08I made a misstake, the map had to be re-randomized. Sorry.
Towns & Buildings
2008-11-02 09:23:55We're currently reworking the towns and buildings concept to be less linear.
The basic idea for the towns and buildings comes from dependency trees, I want cities to be different from eachother and to achieve that I need to have buildlings that can be build only when other buildings are not built, or built only by characters with certain experiences. (Mages guild, only buildable by magicians and the like).
There's a template for buildings in
the XML file for town buildings. If anyone would like to suggest buildings or just want to see a little deeper on how the game is built, feel free to look at that file.
A new land..
2008-11-01 08:19:00A new era has begun in this empty land.
The map has been re-randomized, all towns erased and all characters removed. The world is yours for the taking!
Restart, Poison
2008-10-31 07:14:13Tonight all characters, towns, maps etc will be reset and we'll be back to a clean state. Poison has been balanced a bit infor the new game period as well.
Restart
2008-10-23 08:46:19On the first next month, all characters, towns and maps will be reset.
Once a month all game-data is reset so that everyone has a chance to be in from the very beginning, and next month is just such a time. The current order of things will be very different, I will try to narrate a story for all players as they play and at the end of the month there'll be a big bad boss that requires multiple players to beat, so you better get ready for it! :D
Downtime #2
2008-10-22 19:45:59The power supply has been replaced, hopefully things will move on smoothly from now on.
Downtime
2008-10-20 19:52:26We've had some unexprected downtime lately, probably due to a failling power supply..
Due to the recent unexpected downtimes we're going to make a planned downtime on tuesday or wednesday when I get home from work and I'll see if replacing the power supply does some magic.
Voting System
2008-10-16 08:41:31I've added more sites and changed the actions you get for voting.
The voting system has been looked over and we have added more sites to vote at. As a result we've also lowered the amount of actions you gain by voting, and made it possible to vote even if you don't have 0 ap.
Bugfree?
2008-10-15 22:04:09All but one known bugs have been squashed and the one left is unconfirmed, please help report more bugs!
The focus on bugfixing during this week has gone well, over 25 bugs was squashed in total and the game should behave quite good now. There may still be bugs left in there that has not been reported or that is very minor, please help out by finding and reporting bugs.
Speedups and Fixes
2008-10-14 07:39:39The focus for the game during the coming week will be to speed it up and fix bugs.
Now that we have territories, fortifications, a new map, teams, job trees, lots of abilities, in-game time and a decent AI, it's time to up the quality of what we have instead of adding new stuff. So for the coming week, perhaps even weeks, the game should get a lot of bugs fixed and hopefully we'll be able to go back to page generation times under 500ms.
Territories
2008-10-12 10:04:40I've added the ability to claim territories.
If you are part of a team, you can now claim areas of the map for your team. A claimed area can not be used to harvest resources by other teams and a border will be drawn around the area. Hopefully, it will soon be possible to fortify areas to protect them from the other teams, and on the upcoming front we have a new town-system to work with that includes food, population and where the cities will be ruined if left alone.
Phew!
2008-10-07 20:02:12I've been working for some hours now trying to fix underlying design problems without affecting gameplay and I'm about 50% done.
During the coming days I will likely get around to fix some long-term outstanding design issues and make the game faster, scale better and most of all, make the game easier to expand with new functionality and get the AI to work and be a bit more challanging! :)
Updates!
2008-10-07 05:31:15We're still working on getting some new and shiny stuff together, so while we work, take a look at the new map and enjoy!
So, we got a new map and visual town levels, but the really interesting part happens before the end of this week. Nations. Borders. Territories. Last Nation Standing.. good stuff, simply put. :D
Temporarily Closing Down.
2008-10-04 08:24:56We're going to rewrite and redesign some parts of the game.
In order to get the game moving on again there's a need to redesign certain core parts of the game code which cannot be done while the game is up and running and as a result we will be closing down for a while.
Scrolling Map
2008-07-17 09:10:51The map is now scrolling and the character is always centered.
Since the map was made bigger to have more area to explore, the sheer size of it needed some changes in the interface. The map now scrolls along it's edges and you can walk around without seeing the entire map at any given time.
Happy Getting Lost :)
Time to start moving..
2008-07-10 07:41:22I've been busy in reallife revolting against politics, but it is now time to return to working on this game.
On monday (14/7) I'll reset all characters and re-randomize the world, this time with 2-3 towns instead of just one. I will also take the last month or so that I have before returning to my studies to get the inventory and random items in place.
Thanks for everyone that's been patient, and happy playing :)
Important Announcement!
2008-06-19 11:49:42Due to current political situation I am unable to guarantee your integrity. You may be surveiled by our government every time you access this site. There is no consideration towards your privacy at all, and the law that has been passed goes against the civil rights that constitute a liberal democracy.
Basically, for all those that are not read up on swedish news, the government has issued a law that gives the militarys radio defense the job to spy on all traffic that pass this nations borders. This means that all traffic to this site, all sms, email and phonecalls will be under constant monitoring, without even a suspicion of crime. Our government goes against it's people and thousands of us demonstrated against it yesterday. I am on my way home, and will not work on this game until I can assure myself that I have done everything I can to stop this 1984, big-brother society.
New Terms of Service
2008-06-12 08:59:09The Terms of Service have been updated to include more detailed rules as to what is and is not allowed to do.
For a very long time, we have had very simple Terms of Service, we asked you all to be nice, and nice you have been.
After playing some other games and looking at their Terms of Service I've come to the conclusion that the terms should not only protect the developers and administrators from the users, but it should also protect the users from any abusive administrator and/or developer.
As a result, the Terms of Service contains limits on what administrators may and may not do as well as what users may and may not do.
Note however, that this is more like a draft than a final document, and there is no need to agree to these terms in order to play the game yet.
Please give me feedback on what you think of these terms, what I may have missed and if I went to far on any given point.
Thanks, Roze.
The Long Run
2008-05-28 13:41:38On 1st of June, sunday, all characters will be reset and we'll start a longer run than usual: the month out.
The past week has been a bit slower than usual, not many news things and just a few fixes here and there. We're planning on letting things run for a little longer this time, a whole month, and see how that turns out.
During the run there will not come any new and shiny features but mostly more bugfixes, better descriptions, documentation and the like that enhances the quality of what we already got instead of adding more stuff.
Among other things we'll be working on the forum, trying to integrate it with the site better (it's currently at http://forum.rogue-online.net/ ) and make it look and feel like the rest of the site.
I would very much appreciate feedback in forms of personal opinions and things that is not directly bugs or spelling errors, the various thoughts of the players is a force that keeps the project interesting. More feedback means more interest and if you're lucky the feedback might even result in new features.
We've gotten lots of more votes (about 50 votes a day) on afreegaming but we're still lacking in reviews and ratings. I cannot reward anything to those that review and/or rate the game but I'd be most grateful if anyone would take the time to go over to their site and rate this game, having only 3 ratings makes us look less serious than I think we should be.
Thanks in advance and happy playing, Roze.
Spelling Fixes
2008-05-28 08:33:58I've gone through and fixed all submitted reports about spelling fixes.
All submitted reports regarding spelling errors have been taken care of, if you find any more spelling errors, typos, grammatical errors or stuff that just sound plain wrong, be sure to submit it through the feedback form to get it fixed.
Misc. Info
2008-05-27 16:00:46Some more nonplayable classes have been added, minor bugs have been fixed, vote-for-actions is now possible and there are plans to upgrade the server.
In order to attract more players I've started giving out actions to those that vote for us over at http://afreegaming.com, so when you run out of actions, you should now get a link to a voting page in which you could vote for us and earn yourself 50 actions. A 'vote' is not a means to state "This is a great game", but a means to state "This is an active game". If you want to express how good or not good the game is, use afreegamings rating function.
The server that runs this page is getting old and some component have failed a couple of times now so we're currently planning an upgrade to replace all faulty parts, possibly replacing the entire server altogether. We'll announce when it happens later on.
This week was supposed to be a code week but I've not felt compelled to do any coding the last days so there will be no competition next week as I will code then instead.
More news as they come, Cheers!
The Work Work and More Work challange is over.
2008-05-23 15:59:58The winners of this weeks challange has been decided.
Awards go out to the following for their hard or not so hard work:
Tina Kefka the Generous (13125)
puggan the Miner (195)
puggan the Blacksmith (182)
Tenshi the Lumberjack (121)
Tenshi the Builder (117)
puggan the Worker (174)
puggan the Stonemason (172)
Roze the Veteran (2691)
koffkoff the Killer (29)
bobbzorz the Victim (14)
ida the Greedy (17378)
You can all get a BetaTicket that allows you to bend the game rules a bit, contact me if you want your reward.
Cheers, Roze.
Work Work and more Work
2008-05-19 08:21:28This weeks challange will be to gather and donate the most resources in order to grow the town.
Now that we've implemented wood, stone and ore as well as town levels and the town hall, it's time to get used to using it. Therefor, this weeks challenge is to gather and donate as much resources as possible to the city's town hall. This also means that this week is a solo mission, there is no extra reward for playing as a team and everyone will compete with eachother to get the most resources gathered and donated.
Website Status
2008-05-18 19:09:49There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. This news article is about the statistics.
During the last 3 weeks I've been monitoring the site's traffic with google analytics to see if I can derive any useful information to base design decisions around and to measure how well certain parts of the site performs in comparison to other parts or even other sites.
Here's some of the more interesting figures:
We've had 1014 unique Visits, 32620 Page Views an average of 32 pages and 22 minutes per visit.
Further, 13% of all new visitors only watched the first page and then left and all in all there has been a total of 236 Unique Visitors.
Of all visits, 37% used Internet Explorer, 35% used Firefox, 15% used konqueror and the rest used Mozilla (10%), and Opera (1%).
Of all visits, 66% use Microsoft Windows, 25% use Linux and the rest have been using Mac OS, symbian OS or iPod.
Among independent sites that has driven traffic to us, http://afreegaming.com ha given the most visits with 21 visits or 2% of the total traffic (You can go vote for us there if you want to :).
Wood, Stone and Ore
2008-05-15 21:35:27Three new resources has been implemented, wood, stone and ore.
The three new resources is currently used solely for upgrading towns. When founded, a town is level 1 and has limits on how good equipment may be sold/upgraded, and the plan is to also define what buildings exist based on town level so that a new town may have the inn and nothing else, while a level 2 town may have the blacksmith and a level 3 town the bank.
Currently, the town level only determines what level of equipment that can be bought and you increase the town level by donating resources until the town grows.
Maps and Movement.
2008-05-13 12:43:25The basic idea of a map has been implemented and we can move around on it.
Today we took the bold step from version 0.2.x to version 0.3.x and implemented the map. We have randomly generated an island of 9x9 size and then placed 3 towns on it. It takes actions to move across tiles and what you can do in the game is based upon where you are. You can only buy equipment if you are in a town, you can only gather wood if you're in a forest and so on.
Things are very rough, the visuals not very pleasing but the basic concept appears to be working.
Things will keep changing up until friday and then it's time to make things stable again, and prepare for the next weeks challenge: Gather Resources.
Next week, we will award the titles of "Woodcutter", "Stonemason", "Bankman" and "Worker". The first three will be awarded to those that have gathered the most resources in the given field, the fourth to those that have donated the most resources to the town hall to build a larger town.
Now, bear with me as I keep developing and prepare for the next week.
// Roze
Living Characters
2008-05-12 22:21:28To further separate the characters in the game world from the players, the characters may now be controlled by the Artificial Intelligence that controls the monsters while the player is logged out.
One of the few ideas we've had that really stood out from most other games was the clear separation between the character in the game and the player outside controlling it. In many games the characters of the world spontaneously pop in or out of the world as the players controlling them do, which we found rather unrealistic. Our take on how to deal with this is to allow the characters to keep acting even when the player is not directly controlling them.
Each player can now set a chosen AI style before they logout and that will control the character. Here's a short run-down on how they differ from eachother, and what they have in common:
First of all, all styles except the IDLE style fights, upgrades weapons and armors, works and puts money in the bank and heals themself. What differs is how often and under which circumstances they do this.
The Warrior style is the most aggressive AI style, it values hostility highly and will most often strike back if something attacks it and will more seldom work.
The Adventurer style is a bit more mixed, doing a little of mostly everything.
The Worker is a rather friendly style that barely responds to hostility and instead builds up riches.
The Survivalist is the most defensive of the styles and barely responds to hostility at all, but quickly responds to damage by healing and to broken armor by upgrading.
The default choice of AI is the IDLE style, which simply does nothing. The reason for this is that I will not force users to have automatically playing characters, it has to be an active choice to instruct the character to play on it's own behalf.
There is a few more styles that I wish to add and some tweaking required before this gets really useful, for example, we need an AI that goes to nearest safe place and then turns IDLE (the Inn style, most likely), and the Adventurer AI needs to be taught how to move around the map..
Database Issues
2008-05-12 08:12:15Size limits caused some corruption of the database data.
The size of characters exceeded the size they were allowed to have resulting in broken characters.
All characters was reset and the database was modified to from allowing characters of 2^16 bytes to 2^32 bytes. We shouldn't need this much space for a character, but the eventlog has a tendency to grow big.
Call for Artist, Update
2008-05-10 09:15:02Within just an hour from posting the call for artist we had our first reply!
Johan, a digital artist from
http://www.stahrscape.com/ was interested and we discussed it for a while and decided to try it out and see where it leads, so during the coming weeks we should be getting some new art that might not fit in style with our old art.
We're still looking for more artists and to get diversity in our options. It is not only interface graphics that is needed, we also need job profiles, terrain landscapes and other drawings but we need the interface graphics more urgently.
If you feel you want to participate and help further the cause of the game and earn a little cash by the side, feel free to contact us by using the feedback form.
On a sidenote, the character storage optimization has started and the loading time per character has gone down from 40ms to 1.4ms, a increase of more than 2500% ^___^
Call for Artists #1
2008-05-09 10:44:50I'm currently looking for some artist to hire. If you want to contribute to the game by making art and earn some cash by doing so, please contact me by the feedback form.
Not too long ago, I decided it was time to set up a budget and start saving up cash in order to pay a real artist do some real art.
I failed miserably, and the budget is therefor very low, but I'm still interested in the idea of having real high quality graphics on the site. If you are an artist, or know an artist that might be interested, please let me know and maybe we can work something out?
Currently, drawing all art myself takes up a piece of the time I could've used to code instead, and therefor slows the progression of the game.
The same things goes for the gamedata, but I'd like to keep that to myself for a while more.
The art I need is mostly small icons, symbols or interface-graphics like bars, buttons, shades and shadows, but it all needs to look coherent and fit well together.
This is a long grasp, but who knows, maybe we have an artist among us? =)
Keeping you Posted.
2008-05-08 08:38:40Once the issues at the beginning of the week got solved things have been moving on smoothly. The troll is still alive and kicking and the only bug that really troubles me can be bypassed by just refreshing the browser.
Once the issues at the beginning of the week got solved things have been moving on smoothly. The troll is still alive and kicking and the only bug that really troubles me can be bypassed by just refreshing the browser.
Since monday, the goal of the week has been to beat down Grumpy Wakka the Troll but we have yet to succeed. If it lives 2 more days its master will be announced this weeks winner. To further help me in solving some bugs regarding the database, all errors related to characters now include the query I need to see to find the error.
On the good side of things, it seems we've got a regular stream of 1-2 players every 4:th day or so and I would like to welcome these new fellas. The game is currently a beta version and is not feature complete. I am working on it every other week (and playing it every other as well), so it will keep getting better. Your feedback can help make it better from your point of view as well.
If there is any issues, wishes or thoughts, anyone is welcome to contact me through the feedback form, and if you have set an email in the player profile I will get back to you.
There is currently a lack in documentation for how to play the game that is not out of date or not-so-well written. If anyone feel up to the task of writing such documentation, I have a well structured XML file that can be used as a start, which is already parsed and displayed at
the manual.
Again, a big warm welcome to all the new players!
Hunt-a-Troll
2008-05-05 13:02:12The competition is on, first one to kill it wins!
There was some issues, some parts of the character system that had been rewritten but not tested carefully enough made the start a bit bumpy. Everything appears to be working, so do what you can and see if you can bring the troll to it's knees.
Issues
2008-05-05 12:28:46Some evil bugs sneaked up on me, I'm working as fast as I can to get it rectified.
Bascially, something went wrong in the creation and storage of characters and now it stores a lot fo variables all wrong, it needs fixing, asap.
Hunt-a-Troll
2008-05-04 10:26:32Next weeks competition will be to kill the very first boss.
As a step in evaluating ways to do artificial intelligence for the non-player-controlled characters, the next weeks competition will be to hunt down and kill the first boss creature ever made in rogue online. The boss is played by a very careful bot that will spend most of it's time ensuring it's own safety.
There will eventually be different level of bosses, but this particular boss has +300% health, +200% mana and +100% actions.
So, on monday, 12:00, all characters will be removed and the competition will be on until the troll is slain, in which case the killer and his/her team will be the winner, or 5 days passes and the troll is still alive, during which Puggan, the coder for the bot, will be elected the winner.
Some info that will help people kill the troll:
It only taunts or attacks if it has full health and actions, it tries to always have 1000 gold in the bank and if it ever goes down under 70% health it will drink a potion if possible. it may react as soon as 1 second after it has been hit, so be sure to team up and have your entire team, or teams, go all out on it!
Updated Starting Page
2008-05-02 10:20:23The front page of rogue online now features latest news.
Since most players come to the game by the starting page, then log in and play the game, they never really started reading the news. Now I've added the latest news and headlines for a few news so that people who come through the starting page will see the headlines, and if interested, may read further.
Name Generation
2008-05-02 08:26:54The old name generation has been reẃritten and replaced with a more capable new version.
The old name generation system allowed for 3 types of syllables, starting, middles and endings, from which it made all names. This resulted in many very similiar names and often the same name was generated. The new system is based upon different idea and consist, not of syllables, but of names, cut into their natural parts and then stored as syllables.
The new system has support different name-data for each faction or language and allows names to be stored, either as full names that are then split up, or as syllables or even parts.
Taking a name and only dividing it into syllables would give us syllables that won't fit well together. Diving a name up only in parts would give us parts that fit well together, but quickly run out of unique names.
Taking a name and noting which parts and which syllables exist at which positions in the name, allows to build names where given syllables fit only because their the 4:th syllable, or only because their the first or last syllable.
Unfortunately, I do not sit upon a big database of good names, syllables or parts of names. I would love to hear your suggestions for names, so use the feedback button and remember to include at least the following information:
1 - the name
2 - the faction or language
3 - the gender
With hopes for less repetitive names and more immersion due to dwarf being called Tokkrim rather than Elasuanderno. Cheers, Roze.
Player was Knocked Unconscious.
2008-04-30 09:29:39The system for unconsciousness have been rewritten to ensure that one cannot figure out when a player is going to get revived.
The old system for managing unconsciousness was flawed in many ways. The most prominent way was that if you could spy, you could find out when a given character was going to wake up and therefor also know when to beat it senseless again. This has been replaced with a new system for regaining consiousness that works in a different way. When you are knocked unconscious we now store the time and after 4 minutes, we give you a random chance of regaining consciousness that grows bigger the longer you are unconscious.
Corpse Camping is still a possibility, but less accurate. Furthermore there is no gain from attacking one that recently gained conscioussness compared to one that have been conscious for a while, both should have full health and, in fact, the recently woken up character has had less time to work up his gold stash, and is therefor less attractive as a target.
Effect Framework
2008-04-28 08:13:20A new framework for producing effects have been coded.
Up until now, every single ability and effect had to be coded from scratch and this meant that many errors happened over and over again.
Now, I have coded a framework for managing effects that allows me to do a whole lot of things with a whole lot of less code. The result is good, of course, less bugs and more re-use of existing code.
But most importantly, new features can be implemented faster and with less issues.
Map Generation
2008-04-22 10:30:17The initial code for map generation is in the works.
We've started working on map generation in order to be able to supply a map that will allow us to have more competitive play in the future.
The map will allow teams to claim area's, scout for resources and mine gold. In order to claim a tile that is not owned by another team, it has to be scouted for resources, and can then be claimed for 10 AP. If it's owned by another team, it can only be claimed if you are the only player from a team on the tile and it will then cost 30 AP.
You cannot mine gold in tiles that doesn't belong to your team, and only a few precious tile's will have gold veins to mine. Scout for resources will let you know what can be gathered, and how much there is.
More on this topic later.
Blesses & Curses
2008-04-21 08:50:56Blesses and curses have been implemented.
A few job's has the ability to bless or curse an opponent. When bless you deal your maximum damage +1, when cursed you deal your minimum damage -1. You can have up to 3 blesses and up to 3 curses at a time and they will be removed one by one after use. The mass curse/bless have not yet been implemented but will be, hopefully before 12:00.
Re: Inn
2008-04-18 09:48:04The Inn was too powerful and has been nerfed.
The cost of the inn was so low that I found myself getting a room, killing someone, then getting another room, thus being invincible. This Inn has therefor been changed drastically, and now costs your max gold to get the room, and has fewer bad effects, you get normal ap again, for example.
Poison
2008-04-17 16:23:57The game now features poison.
The ninjas has been given the ability to throw poisoned darts and the ghouls can now poison their enemies in melee battle. All in all, watch out for the poison, it will deal damage every minute for a set amount of time. You can get rid of it though, buy an antidote!
There be TIME.
2008-04-16 16:51:14In-Game time is now available.
At the bottom of the page we now display the current in-game time. Since anyone playing the game, regardless of where they live, should be able to experience all times of the day the in-game time moves 4 times as fast as our own allowing any player to experience an entire day in just 6 hours.
In-Game time also has lots of interesting tidbits to it. Although nothing special is occuring with it _right now_, plans are in the works to ensure that undead's won't regenerate life over time while it's day, heck, the undead might even cease to show up among the wandering monsters during daytime, and fairies during nighttime. Furthermore, if we ever implement werewolfs, we will have a use for In-Game time and it's strengthens the roleplay aspect of the game as well.
If anyone has any idéas or suggestions of neat things to do with time, be sure to give me some feedback on it. Chances are that I might get inspired! :)
Welcome to the Inn!
2008-04-16 12:39:31The game now features an INN.
For those who do not play very often, or those that wants to feel safe at night, we now provide the INN.
The INN is place where you character can go to that will provide numerous benefits but also has a few drawbacks. The most obvious of benefits is the safety the Inn provides.
* Inn:ed players may not be attacked, looted or stolen from.
* Inn:ed players will leave the in whenever they perform an "Action!"
* Inn:ed players will get +2hp/mp regeneration per minute.
* Inn:ed characters pay for the cost of the Inn with their income and will thus gain 0gold/minute while Inn:ed.
* Inn:ed characters also spend some time drinking beer and having fun, thus gaining AP more slowy and never gaining more than a third of their MaxAP.
These conditions may change later on, but for now they'll have to be what we now call our very own 'Inn'.
Cheers!
Rough and Tough!
2008-04-16 10:54:19The warrior have been granted a new ability.
The warriors Taunt were a bit too weak and he was a perfect fit for the ability Tough(ness) that adds a small amount of resistances to all damage types. Hopefully, this should make the warrior more attractive to master and not just something you're "passing through".
Developer Rambling.
2008-04-15 11:22:55The main developer of this game is about to get a real job.
In the last week I've been in touch with this decently large company to discuss a possible appointment for as a key role in their computer systems. The initial idea was to have me be an ordinary computer technician and just keep things floating. However, things had a turn for something much more interesting in store.
As things seems right now, I might become the lead developer of a very big project, responsible for the development of the initial platform after which I will turn into the project manager and will lead the other developers. These are all very high ambitions and I sure do hope that this goes through. It is a wonderful opportunity for me as a person and coder to grow and develop my skills, and reputation, further.
Until things have been settled I will not speak much of this job, and during the coming week I'm planning on keep working on this game and just relax.
A little bit of variation.
2008-04-14 19:31:48Some new non-playable factions have been added.
The wandering monsters may now be of several more factions, among these we find the quick 'n' dirty goblin, the fast and weak fairy, the slow and sturdy troll and the undead ghoul.
Aiy! They hit me!
2008-04-14 12:24:54Wandering monsters can now attack players.
So, now we have a little more active set of wandering monsters that will, every now and then, see if they can be mean and truly evil and attack our innocent players. hopefully someone will be killed by them ^-^
Spells and Mana
2008-04-14 08:39:22Spells now have a mana cost.
In order to balance the powerful spells and make more use of mana, the spells now have a mana cost equal to their level and you cannot attack or defend with a spell unless you have the mana needed. This sets the magician aside a bit more when it comes to battle as they will need to ensure they always have a steady supply of mana, and it also means that leveling up the spell drains your mana faster.
Exorcist
2008-04-13 12:13:28The Exorcist is now balanced and usable.
The latest job to get balanced, the Exorcist, is now very playable and quite strong for being a mage.
Cleric.
2008-04-12 18:16:42The job cleric has been balanced.
The cleric has been balanced as a first step in a rather long and tedious process to go over all magician jobs and make sure their values correspond to valid values as given by the system as well as statistics that are failry balanced in regards to the fighter and rogue jobs.
Feedback
2008-04-12 12:40:16I've coded a form for people to submit feedback through.
Since so many people have over time suggested new features, given bug reports and generally had opinions on things I've decided to have a form on the page in which you can submit information so that it will be stored in my mail folders to deal with when there is time. Thanks for all the input so for, and keep going strong!
Spell Damage
2008-04-12 09:48:23The battle values for spell damage have been changed.
It turned out that the spell battle values was not strong enough to compete with the normal attacks and was also too simple. It has now been changed so that the 4 elements have unique formulas for their battle values, earth dealing most modifier damage and wind dealing most multiplier damage.
Beta 2!
2008-04-11 14:10:59For a few chosen players, Beta 2 now begins.
It's been taking too long to get to the next version and I've been too distracted trying to get a job and stuff, so I re-open the old beta, with a bunch of changes and the plan is to keep working on the next version meanwhile.
Documentation
2008-04-10 12:51:26Nilli's Guide is being converted to DocBook.
A long overdue conversion from html to DocBook for Nilli's guide has been started. This work should ensure that we can display the content of the guide directly on our website as part of our own content and to give it a better look 'n feel. This also means the guide and the game content can cross-link to eachother and use the resources to it's best.
Testing.
2008-04-09 11:41:55Testing Multiple Categories.
This should be in both bugs, features and all news.
Categories for News
2008-04-09 11:40:17The news items may now have categories.
It took some work to get categories working using many-to-many relations in the database to allow each news item to have multiple categories. In the end, it should now work to add news into categories, and news feeds for each category has been added to the website.
Magicians
2008-04-08 21:14:51The magician jobs have been included.
The old data for the magicians have been imported into the game and now displays on the website. The magicians attributes, weapon skills and so on will be changed during the coming days to reflect the changes and modifications done since the magicians were first created.
Posting News.
2008-04-07 22:38:09A temporary form for posting news from the website have been coded.
While I work on pretty visual stuff and categories for news entries I've made a simple web form that allows me to post news entries from the website.
Order and Limits
2008-04-07 13:32:58The news system can now sort and limit the news.
The functionality to sort news by date and limit the number of entries to retrieve from the database is now in place, although not very grand they do represent progress.
News System
2008-04-07 13:12:39The beginnings of a news system have been coded.
Due to the complexity of managing news manually and the added work to keep different sources up to date with the news stream a new news system is in the works. The new system for news will allow to group news into categories, easily add and remove news, make rss feeds for all news, given categories and so on. The new news system will also have permanent links and help google with indexing the news articles.
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