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Announcement

Version 0.2.2, plus other Developments

Hi folks,

I'm not saying it's a lot, but there has been progress on M.o.M., and there may yet be hope for the future of the project.

I wanted to bring the game into the current decade by upgrading it to XNA 4.0. That in and of itself wouldn't have opened too many doors, but from there I could have converted it into a MonoGame project: an XNA game that runs on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and more.

Once I'd seen to the extra toil that had inevitably been created by "Upgrade Wizard", all appeared to be well, and I thought publishing would be a breeze. But because of some super assy crap that I won't even get into, I couldn't get the new version working. The project has had to return to XNA 3.0, meaning it won't be playable on Windows 8 any time soon...

That said, Version 0.2.2 is now live. On the plus side, it's just as good as ever it was, and maybe even a teeeeensy bit better! =P

On Tuesday, I hope to attend a meetup with some local game developers/hobbyists. If I don't get cold feet, I'll show them what I have, and hopefully get some collaborators. If not, maybe I'll get involved in one of their games instead.

Announcement

v0.2.1.5 is Available.

This new version fixes several issues (all helpfully reported by Synbi) and leaves the game a virtual paragon of stability, at least compared to how it was before. Please see the Changelog on the download page, and check How To Play.rtf for the new commands.

The game may be a record-setting 85% stable, but there's lots of room for help! Please send me a PM or otherwise comment on the project if you would like to get involved.

Game Design

Oops!

UPDATE: The game will NO LONGER crash on start-up, guaranteed! For those who want the technical version: the project uses .DAT files for I/O, and these weren't being included with the files that are deployed on new machines, since they're not generated by Visual Studio itself. So when the game tried to read the Intro text on your machine, it would crash. After making sure the I/O files were treated like all the other content, the problem was resolved.

Being a playtester for your own game, you start to forget that real players will try the things you have learned to avoid. Those loose ends--features that are half-finished or just not working quite right--begin to seem less like game-ending bugs, and more like "things I'll just pretend I can't do yet." It's like a special kind of blindness.

That said, I know I failed to document a serious bug in the alpha, and that it might have been enough to make some players throw up their hands and quit. I'm sorry! The bug has now been added to the Known Bugs List on the Download page.

In better news, there is also an updated "How to Play" file (now available as a separate download) which documents a good working feature I nearly forgot about: digging with the pickaxe! You can now fell trees to your heart's content.

Announcement

Merry Christmas and Happy 2014, RMN!

With the end of the year upon us, I look back and see how unrealistic it was for me to forecast a 2013 release for Mortals of Midgard. It's been almost 2 years since this ship set sail, and, well... headwinds continue to be strong, and the captain keeps drunkenly turning in circles. It's good to set goals, though, as doing so can sometimes, in and of itself, be a goal... or so the self-help books tell me. ;)

In that spirit, I have uploaded an Alpha-ish demo of the game, suitable for the curious or the truly bored. Anything to help this captain attract a much-needed crew, as it is wishful thinking to think I can go it alone any longer!

Finally, I must tip my hat to Thomas Boyd and Rob Vawter, developers of the original Ragnarok, and their handful of other staff: not only did they produce a huge game all by themselves, but they kept the updates coming for 7 years, from 1992-1999. They also cast a long shadow, and it's getting lonely in the dark.


Progress Report

News from Development Paradise... oh who'm I kidding, it's Hell

So, what is it that is worth posting about after all this time, you might ask?

Well, thanks to the C# debugger/compiler becoming hopelessly corrupted for some reason, I had to migrate all development in Visual Studio from my laptop to my desktop computer.
Then, there were vestiges of an old installation that interfered with the fresh install, and I thought it could be irreperable, too. But 908 megabytes and some sweeping deletions later, it works, and development is proceeding at a the pace of a mollusk stuck to a snowball. =)

Kidding aside, though I've honestly been working more on my Visual Novel project, I haven't forsaken M.o.M. Getting the map and other subscreens up to par, writing new music, and adding enemy animations are all on the To-Do list.
For now, I'm at least relieved that I could rescue the project from oblivion...


Progress Report

Teaser-esque Trailer-like Video Added

There's a new video in the media section that should bring you up to speed on the past several months of my game development efforts. The only thing you can't tell from it, due to a rockin' chiptune BGM, is that there are a couple new sound effects for mouse actions.

With a 1m22s runtime, it's a quick watch (which I suppose is a commentary on the rate of progress), but it's .. um... great too!

Progress Report

Earth to Midgard. Come in Midgard

That's right, this project isn't dead in the water... it's just been floating on its stomach for a while.

I've actually gone and made up some concept art, which I hope will give the project some direction again. It was certainly fun to do.

http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/23467/locker/yggdrassil_v2_001.jpg

This is the famed Yggdrassil, the Tree of Life in Norse mythology where all the realms, mortal and immortal, reside. It might be obvious, but there are still some blanks to fill in.

My hope is to have a version of this appear on the Map screen, and that each area be clickable, so as to open a map of its sub-areas. I just might need some assistance to get it game-worthy.

Progress Report

A Little Love for the Ladies

I finally got down to drawing another female sprite, this time for the Survivalist class:



That second frame will have to change to, uh, y'know, animate. =P It's a big departure from her male counterpart, and I'd agree that she looks pretty weird, but I like it (read: I'm sick of fussing over it) :) I'd like to avoid having all the womenfolk be cheap edits of the men, anyway.

In other news, that smearing problem with the scrolling overlays is almost completely gone. Maybe if I get a tester/debugger on the scene one day, they'll figure out just where my logic is off...
Also, the inventory, log, and map subscreens will now scroll when their contents exceed the height of the screen. Lookin' more like a real game every day here, folks.

Miscellaneous

The Sound of MIDI

Since life is not an RPG and I can't seem to recruit a party of specially-trained characters just by walking around, I'm taking a crack at making my own music for my game. As long as I'm drawing the graphics, might as well keep the style consistent and do the music, too (although that style may have "amateur" all over it).

I've uploaded the first track to the Media section, so you can decide for yourself whether it's any good.

Progress Report

Nothing to Blog Home About

Hope you guys won't mind yet another of my bouts of self-deprecation. Regardless, I have some glacially-slow progress to report: I got around to recording the newest dev diary today, a messy, torrid little affair lasting no more than 3 minutes. It is now visible on the redundantly-named Video Dev Diary page.

In the video, you can see the under-ripe fruits of my latest graphical labours, and laugh as I struggle to think up things to say. But while I have you here (and so RMN won't deem my post too short), let me lament about modular arithmetic... and game logic... and the Update-Draw cycle...

Oh whatever, who gives a damn anyway =)
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