XXon

WOLFPACK !!! Six pets at once. Crazy, crazy action. Prepare to die. Play now: Spawn Engine Experiments Makes you think. Full party. Healer, shaman, wizard, rogue, berzerker and necro (possibly with their OWN pets). Or just a boy and his dog.

If you haven't noticed, I update this game all the time. NEW KILLER PET. it seeks out and attacks anything nearby, but won't run off (too far). It can be healed during combat (and needs to be). This means you must switch between weapon, pet heal and healing potion during a fight. The pet takes friendly fire, so you must avoid hitting it during the fight, making the fight much better because you cannot just stand there, you must move strategically to avoid the pet and either attack or evade. This game does not really want me to use an NPC to kill an NPC, so the script has lots of work arounds to make it seem like combat is happening even thought it's really not. It flows WAY smoother without any emotes, which destroy response time, (there aren't any attack emotes anyway) and I wonder if that's why the big crab is always so crappy. Oh, one more technical remark: When I change an entity in the editor, I usually don't need to resample using the entity template before I test the game. When I make any changes to game logic, it MUST be resampled from the logic Template before testing the game. If you forget to resample, the logic template uses the old logic prior to changes. I always forget to resample it and then I wonder why my fix did not work and then I remember. I was not sure if this was intentional, it seems clumsy. Endless resampling.

Today's thought: An NPC ally to fight alongside you (or even a group of NPC, each with different abilities). Imagine a socketed weapon with 2 sockets. There are 7 jewels that you might find to put in it, but only 2 jewels at a time. The jewels cause the weapon to proc, like a 5% chance of spawning a temporary ally. Wolf or wizard or warrior, etc. They fight a few minutes, then poof. Something like that. NPC can't "really" attack another NPC, but maybe it can be faked with just Move To, an emote, and some damage. Worth a shot.

I deleted that game and uploaded Spawn Engine Experiments , an updated version of the same thing with a new animator spellcast instead of throwing. As I get something new, I will update and work the bugs out before adding it to the game I am building. This isn't really a game, just a working environment that is less cluttered while I work out the finer points. Suggestions welcome, map is editable.

I was thinking, 3700 hours over five years, 14 hours a week average, about 1000 hours in Explore, maybe 1200 just terraforming islands and rivers. 1500 hours in scripting. Isn't that unhealthy addiction and a waste of time? I look at Ylands as therapeutic, the art style is quite soothing and happy. That was the initial draw for me, but terraforming offers creativity and freedom, it's very pleasing somehow, like an extrusion video. Ahh. But, I found it quite frustrating that monsters suck so much. Making a haunted forest is cool, but having nothing attack you is lame. That really bugged me. So much potential, wasted. I still feel that way. Explore is a wasteland filled with mindless idiots. Artificial Intelligence it is not. I understand why, but listen. It should be this way in the Editor, a blank slate without limits. Not Explore. It needs MUCH better enemies, ones who work together. Without that, the whole thing is pointless crafting up for no reason. I think maybe you did this just to drive me nuts. I just want to make a dungeon crawl game, but no. Aside from a book on BASIC I owned once, I know nothing at all of scripting. It is really difficult to figure it out. That's why I like it. I am completely out of my element. I am a stone mason. I don't know anything at all about game level design, scripting, quests, sculpting, landscape architecture, story plot lines, dialogue, etc. I am searching for something and sometimes it feels like I never left Explore mode. Ylands is a mental workout for me and I think about it all the time, like a background hum in my mind, trying to work out a puzzle. That is my favorite part. There is so little information and most of it is outdated. I have huge gaps in my understanding, but I do enjoy the mystery of it, I confess. If you put all the answers in front of me, I wouldn't look. Well. Maybe a little peek. A few remarks. Swords are broken, they swing too fast and stun lock enemies, even light damage swords dominate enemies and you never get hit.. Maces, club, hammers, those are awesome. Bows are broken, guns are not. Bows cause a hardwired flee effect that you can't override. Guns don't, if you are within range, you get one shot off before it is attacking you, with a bow, it always runs away and returns for you to shoot again. It is REALLY hard just to make a friggin' game with some enemies that fight. Why isn't this a standard choice on your AI? Should these enemies act as a group? Can they heal? Can they cast? Fire or Frost? Range? You need some basic presets to facilitate casual players who just want to make a basic adventure game without devoting their entire life to it. Also, please, a checkbox for "entities drop items" on each individual entity, not just a global checkbox. Enemies drop a lot of trash, so that is a no. I want logs from trees, so that's a yes. Global is too broad of a choice sometimes.

Play my game Spawn Engine Experiments. Now with pets !!!

I'm sorry, I was not very clear. I am wanting for you, the player of this game, to play the game as Pip, changing your avatar and name and making you into Pip the cabin boy, regardless of your true name and appearance. I want to transform anyone who plays, making them play as Pip, just for this game. I don't think I can do that, can I? Just putting a cabin boy outfit on you is not enough to make you into Pip, a young boy. Your avatar might be female, or have a beard, so changing the avatar and name are important. I could just put clothing on your avatar and call you cabin boy, but that is not nearly as good as actually BEING Pip. As always, thank you for your thoughts. Edit: The name doesn't even matter, just the appearance.

Can I alter the appearance of the player other than clothing? Can I make the player's avatar into little blonde haired Pip, the cabin boy? Can I change the player's name to Pip?

If you download car compositions which others have made, some headlights will just work. Some cars , you must connect the headlights yourself in game with an energy linker. What is the difference between the cars? I took them apart, I found no scripts at all. Why do the lights work on only some cars? How can I make a car with working lights? It's a blueprint?

New game, I downloaded every car I could find and made roads to drive on, so I have 60 cars, the game is called Hotrod City. How do I link headlight to engine in the editor so that when the game begins and I start the car, the lights come on. On Game Start: Link Energy: Entity A (front car mask) Entity B (steam engine) I just get errors, with or without using ports. The errors make no sense to me. I tried, but I don't get it. Thanks!

power connection tool hmm... thanks

On the other hand, I helped a stranger on a sinking yland. He was building a ship, so I had nothing to do and chopped trees, etc to feed the blueprint. The ship was finished, we both climbed aboard and sailed to his home yland. We did a victory lap around it as he showed it off to me and I admired it. I could tell he was very cautious and I did my best not to seem suspicious. Then he logged, I guess, because I got the boot. Which is cool. I think we both enjoyed the experience, I did, at least. That needs to be encouraged.

This is a tribute. This is not the best game in the world, it is only a tribute. The best game in the world died horribly, because I did not have multiple saves. It died young, it was only terrain, but it blow up into a fractal nightmare and was lost. I tried to recreate my dream, before it was forgotten, but I kept having the same problem... It's like this. You must have a water world. Without the "natural" ocean, you cannot place sharks or any sea life. The problem is that you cannot sculpt underwater terrain in the ocean. Make a cave, but the water won't flow in, the cave is dry. You need water logic, not the ocean. Water logic makes possible the underwater arches that you want to swim through. So, now you are up in the sky somewhere, placing water logic and terrain, over a water world. . Everything was fine until I dug a little deeper, exposing more of the water logic. That's when disaster struck without my knowing. Later, in test play, the whole map was destroyed. I suspect cubic foot limits on water logic? You can build a freestanding cube of water 50x45x50, which is to say, 45 units tall. This cube must have terrain underneath it. Maybe this is all just my graphics card.. anyone else have this problem? If I build that cube 50 tall instead of 45, it becomes broken crystal instead of water and terrain, it's all shards. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what you did wrong, sometimes the game just won't play at all, it stops loading and crashes. Water logic size isn't limited to cubes, I haven't figured that out yet, I suspect it has more to do with "cubic feet" limits, but the terrain underpinning the water is very important, no underlying terrain causes big trouble. Aside from whatever you call that, tearing, I dunno, there is also another mysterious effect, where water logic is still water, you can sail on it, but it is either invisible or it is all diamond droplets, generally divided in big blocks, water, diamonds, invisible. Perhaps it is linked to terrain logic, I'm unsure. Oh, and you can place endless water cubes side by side and have no problem, other than an irritating flash when you swim across the borders, so the limit seems to be on the size of each cube.

Once upon a time, items wore out and broke. I think you must do it yourself now. but you could count each time you are hit, subtract the hit points off of your armor each time. Go to blacksmith, bring hit points back to original.

New spell: Shield Wall, pretty much as described above. It is a grounded area effect spell and that is the future of RPG, that and directional melee. Let's say you cast a spell, it takes three seconds to cast. The spell casts on the ground, not on the enemy. If the enemy moves while you are casting, too bad for you, especially if you spent all your resources. Same with melee frontal attacks, it covers an area and hits what is in it. This is as opposed to locking on a target and auto attacking one target, which has fallen out of favor. Enemy attacks on you work the same way, you must run before the ball of lava hits in the circle or brace for impact depending on class. Ylands works really well for these types of attacks. Shiled Wall just runs on a cool down timer, I haven't figured out the resources thing yet, but I would like to build a rage bar with the warrior to power skills. It's just a cool down really, but choosing which spell to spend resources on, leaving you unable to do others, that's great, that moment of choice is what it's all about.

I built many spawn engines and they all failed to give satisfaction until now. This is just a small example of what could be done. My scripting is quite bad and it needs polishing up, but it works. There is much to say, but just play it. Neverquest I want to see how it does as multiplayer before going any farther. Please. tell me what you think. I would like to set this up as a community build, if there is any interest. I am trying to work on enemies first, but I want a class based group dungeon crawler with healers and wizards, etc. I think this engine could do that. I have been thinking about a beast master who chain spawns tigers at you...For now this is the bare bones version, so that you can see what I am chasing.

The castle NPC's have less aggro now, so they won't pull from upstairs as much. I actually managed to loot the chest at the top and win, so that's a first, but I died a lot. Added another spawn point to help with the dying. Mostly, I adjusted the size of various bubbles. The standard game already uses bubbles, like the aggro bubble in AI, you get close, you get attacked. I added another bubble to the warrior. If you edit the game and make the bubble visible, you will see it moving around with the NPC. Every time you hit the warrior, his bubble activates. If another NPC is in the bubble when it is activated, that NPC's AI detection and aggression both go from 11 to 17. If a wandering NPC comes within 17 units of you, it attacks. Normally, it would only attack at 11 units away, but the warrior "called for help" and nearby help came. If the warrior is badly hurt, he will run. If the warriors health is 11-20% he will delay 1.5-2.3 seconds and then trot (Move To Target) to his spawn point. If the warrior is 10% health or less, he will simply Flee On Sight (AI aggro setting). Flee on sight has strange pathing and often walks before beginning to run, so no delay, he just begins "the deathmarch" right away. Walking or trotting, the warriors AI is set to Flee on Sight until it resets, when it reaches the spawn point. Any NPC which enters the bubble when the warrior is set to Flee on Sight has a 33% chance of setting it AI to maximum detection and aggression, hunting down the nearest player. Meanwhile, the warrior, if he has been fully healed, returns to fight you again. If he remains hurt he stays at spawn where it it safe, but his friends may still go nuts. The healer has another very large bubble that fully heals any NPC that enters it and makes a nice particle effect. I tried to make it heal over time, but I couldn't make it work, so it's just one big heal. The Shaman has a huge buff bubble. The buff triples the chest armor for 15 seconds. It makes the purple spiral effect and it usually wears off halfway through a fight, if you pull away from the shaman. You will see your weapon damage increase once the buff drops. The Necro DoT spell has a similar bubble and a particle effect to so you can see it, that's the Necro bubble, but the Aggro bubble is smaller, so he will cast on you and not attack, unless you close the distance. The first area worked well with the bubble size, but the castle NPC bubbles were too big, causing problems and making huge fights and death. So. Have fun storming the castle! Yeah. the castle is still too hard (one side is easier). Plus, the player is boring with just a hammer and no skills. Player needs a root spell and a shield, like a circle of bamboo that appears around the player, like a trap and a shield in one, depending on which side the enemy is on, then it disappears bit by bit over 10 seconds. Magic whirling daggers encircling you would be pretty cool looking... and a choice of weapons instead of just a boring hammer. No point in making cool stuff to kill if it's boring.

Entirely new map with a nice castle. Injured enemies now run away to get healed and get help. Haven't done the multiplayer fix yet, but I'm thinking of jacking up resistance. That keeps it simple with less enemies and encourages players to group up on one enemy. I don't know anything about casting or resources, which will be needed for other party members. Need more than just a warrior with a hammer... Try the new version, it is much better. Neverquest. Try the multiplayer, it's too easy, but it's still fun. Thinking about enemies that root you or summon you. Enemies that drop a GRENADE at your feet. Ground effect spells like poison gas, lava... you have a limited time to run out of the circle on the ground or take damage, or cause tigers to spawn, etc. That's more World of Warcraft style than Everquest, but I'm no purist. I very much like the idea of being charmed and forced to attack your own party or just marched deep into the cave full of enemies and released. Charming NPC's as an enchanter, using them to fight. A bard that sings battle songs and healing songs... Thanks, Moimoi01. Good fun, nice chat.

Enemies now run when wounded. This leads to wishing for your enemy to die. Next comes the fear. If he lives, he may bring back help. This is how the legendary train of death begins. So far, all I have is the running part, but already it forces you to plan that big final death blow before it gets healed. Also, multiplayer is really broken because you just slay everything. I will fix that...

Spent all day on balancing. Each enemy feels a bit different. Next item is faster player movement out of combat. _________Weapon Damage __Armor____Hitpoints Player 35-45 36 100 Necro 30-40 24 140 DoTs and daggers Warrior 35-40 28 150 nasty air attack Healer 30-35 18 160 self heals, hard to kill Shaman 31-36 21 180 buff (purple spiral) adds armor for 15 seconds

Multiplayer works fine, thanks robbie. You play as a warrior class and you missing a few abilities, but your hammer has a nice proc to make up for it. Combat is half skill based, half dice roll. Difficulty is based on armor and weapon. Dodge actually dodges. Necro will dot you, Shaman and Healer interact with the other NPC, buffing armor and healing them when in range. When you attack them, they call for nearby help, so you must body pull them back to a safe distance. Respawns and wandering healers will ruin your day. I want wounded enemies to try to run for help or healing, but haven't worked that out yet. My son is a WoW tank, so he was my tester. As it is, you run way too fast, you can flee at will. You swing really fast and it stun locks the NPC until it dies. You stutter step into the shoulder of the NPC and it cannot target you. Dodge away, charge up the attack, stun the NPC and repeat. Jump attack spam. Lots of problems to overcome. Lots of ways to run the table and win without ever getting hit every single time. So, this is what I ended up with: Player: On Attack. Swing your weapon, you get a movement delay. You can parry or jump, but movement is blocked for a random time between 1.495 and 2.52 seconds. Dodge has the same time, but on a different timer. NPC: On Damage. Delay to player melee attack between 1.55 and 2.375 seconds. Those millisecond decimal places are real in the sense that they are consequential. A very slight change will affect your odds of victory greatly. The numbers are not real in the sense that they are not accurate to that degree, it is that the numbers affect the odds. We want to mostly win, but not always. A good roll can break through the fastest attack, the worst one allows the NPC to land a jump attack. I think there is still room for skill, as well. When you lose, you generally feel like there was something you might have done better. If the combat was less stilted feeling due to less movement freeze it would be nicer, the problem is that stutter step. Still, old Everquest was incredibly stilted, so it kinda fits and you can almost feel the dice roll deciding your fate while you try to squirm your way out of it, which is really great.

Nice, thank you. Working on PvP pirate game, mthis will help!

Lots of PvP games give kill info, like "XXon rode Igor's rocket", etc. and all the players see that I am dead and Igor did it. Killer, victim and damage type in a multiplayer game. I dunno. I know sometimes games get it wrong, seems like they are putting the name of the last guy to do damage in a buffer, using it as the killer's name. You quit, it says I killed you. Any thoughts? I got nothin. Damage type I don't really care about much. Is there a way to announce killer and victim?

Game wide chat.

I have a functioning spawn engine and loot engine, I am starting the quest engine and thinking about different types of quests. So far, I have: fetch, collect, travel, find, kill, craft, grow, access (key) Also, free an area under enemy control and then use it as a base, destroy the evil monolith generating bad guys, defend an area from attack. Can you think of some I am missing? Escort quests are usually terrible. Basic idea: starter island has five beginner quests, each one of five players gets a different quest. High replay factor, first guy gets a random one of five, last player to join has his assigned. First quest is easy, but maybe takes a while, allowing others to join. Second quest begins, randomly you are sent to one of five islands, each guy gets a different island. On the island is a three part quest. Once again, the parts are interchangeable, 5 part A 5 part B 5 part C. Randomized. Once the quest is complete, all players go to the last island. Perhaps there is a fortress there to be freed and inside is crafting stations for high end armor.Solo players can begin the attack, but it takes everyone to win against the final boss. The end.