State of the Game

Greetings, folks. I figure you all deserve an update as to the future of MonBre.

Let me start by saying that there's some serious issues with the game that I dislike. One: our exploring is too slow. Not only that, but it's boring shit. Most people just dance around the town and when they're done, they'll go back in. The world is ridiculously huge, I have no idea why I thought it needed to be that big. A zone is currently 100 x 100 tiles. New MonBre will have 25 x 25 zones. That's still a lot of tiles, but at least you aren't moving literally 300 squares to get to the next town by foot. By bringing exploring to 25 x 25, I'll cut my "if statements" down by about 60% (real number) and the exploring will be a lot easier on the client, and the server. It'll also be super easy to build roads, which was another complaint because no one knew how to get anywhere.

Another issue is that the game does not make it clear as to what exactly you should be doing. Now, realistically, most people understand eventually that they have to explore. However, the exploring flaws noted above hinder them, as well as just being bombarded with information. Some players have gone three cities without realizing the goal of the game is to defeat gods, not just complete quests.

The third issue is that the game was coded by me two years ago. This means the code is really hard to go through and change. Battle itself, which I'd like to throw AJAX technology on, is just incredibly messy and completely discouraging. Half the bugs you see are just from improper coding techniques. So for example, through five files I have the coordinates of the towns, but they're all independent of each other... basically, if I changed one town to be 10 tiles over, I'd have to go and change all the files, and the system itself is slow to begin with.

The final issue is the lack of style the game has. It's kinda bland. I'm going to work on this first because it will be the most fun and less-stressful, but I'm going to get 16-bit style for the game. When you do quests, the quests will show the NPCs talking to you and it'll just be really fun and stylistic.

As for when this is all going to happen... I have absolutely no idea. Why? First off, I'm not coding the game until MurCity is a success. No matter what, the game takes priority over monbre. Then, if murcity is a success, and for the most part it's done, I'll consider coding MonBre. My reluctance to code monbre is because I have to continuously add content like quests and mobs, and on top of that, changing the exploring system is going to be an immense, incredibly-stressful job. On TOP OF THOSE THINGS, I'm not convinced the game can even become popular, because most people do not want to constantly play in their browser, which is why I had to add things like valor effects... people were either incredibly discouraged, or kept playing until they burnt out.

I hate to say it, but another factor may be that I'll have to reset everyone's account. It'll be a soft reset: kill all the guilds, all the raids, everyone's level, and give rewards depending on the gods they made it up to. I REALLY hate to do this, but people are WAY too powerful, have exploited tons, and the game needs an honest rebalance.

Well, that's all.

Sad.

Sad? This right out stinks! ****!

Not sad. This is the way it has to be.

Yeah, I know it has to be like that but what ****** sucks to infinity is this:

Vael Victus said: As for when this is all going to happen... I have absolutely no idea. Why? First off, I'm not coding the game until MurCity is a success. No matter what, the game takes priority over monbre. Then, if murcity is a success, and for the most part it's done, I'll consider coding MonBre. My reluctance to code monbre is because I have to continuously add content like quests and mobs, and on top of that, changing the exploring system is going to be an immense, incredibly-stressful job. On TOP OF THOSE THINGS, I'm not convinced the game can even become popular, because most people do not want to constantly play in their browser, which is why I had to add things like valor effects... people were either incredibly discouraged, or kept playing until they burnt out.

Continuously add content? not really true, the game seemed to have an end in sight.
The rest of what was said is perfectly fine.
Might as well just say this is as far as the game is ever going to go and if you don't like it go suck lemons.

And what if murCity's a flop? THen we're gonna be left abandoned here and, Knowing Vael, I dunno what's he's going to do. Swear his way into a foster home?

Mina Ryu said: Continuously add content? not really true, the game seemed to have an end in sight. The rest of what was said is perfectly fine. Might as well just say this is as far as the game is ever going to go and if you don't like it go suck lemons.

The game's problem is that it DOES have an end. I want to provide a wholesome experience, as well as keep people coming back and buying VIP, so I need to have a lot of content to plow through. It's like a singleplayer RPG, just kinda more online. And as for sucking lemons, no. When you get into the real world and try to make real money for yourself, you're the one that sucks lemons.

@killer - firstly, murcity is expertly coded and designed and the game won't flop. It will always have a bigger potential audience than MonBre because it's designed to have be a browser-based game, MonBre was designed by a stupid 18-year-old thinking people wanted to spend all that time in a browser. There's a reason the blind love my game: because for anyone else, it's boring shit. But for the blind, it allows progress and movement in a world you don't really have to see to enjoy.

As for swearing into a foster home? Really? I'm not like that at all. I don't even curse that much.

And further, if murcity were to fail so hard that its core design simply cannot be rectified, which is like impossible, the last thing I'd do is come back to MonBre.

Ok, you've got you do what you feel it's best. I sure hope MurCity does kicks off

Maybe someday you'll look back and see that MonBre was the thing that prepared you for dealing with other users and calming their bug anxieties, as well as making coding almost a daily habit.

And also perhaps one day you'll come and give us MonBre 3.0: RELOADED with awesome graphics

Good luck, Vael.

PD: Nevertheless, I'm going to try and help test MurCity.

I couldn't get it to work because on the choose your first skill screen I couldn't choose a skill.

I still miss MonBre beta. D:

I can't believe monsters I put hours and affection into, legendary monsters who were once at number one, not long mind, are going to be turned into nothingness. >:

At one point I loved the grinding, the buggyness, all them things, but a lot of people fear change and a lot of the new things seem promising.

I'm not sure about this, but I'm looking forward to it.

Edit:
What I do ask is more bonuses than just beating the bosses.
Like bonuses for our old levels, and maybe our monsters, and maybe for us back from the beta if there's that many of us left..

Honestly, folks, if the game ever did get finished, it'd be in like two years and no one would give a real shit about anything other than gods defeated. Even if you care now. ;P I have no idea what will happen with MonBre. For all I know, MurCity will become a huge success and I can thus justify spending tons of time on a game that may only become a small cult hit. (MonBre)

Killer, you have to become pro. I have a blind user who not only passed that image portion, but even managed to figure out how to arrange skills. You should get pro with your client. He uses JAWS 11.

I use jaws 11 as well but couldn't get it to work. True I don't use it often; instead I use NVDA, which is free unlike jaws 11 which, at its base price, is about 900 dollars for the standard adition.

When I came to play on New Year's Eve there was something buggy going on.
I'm so gullible that I believed the face value and some time later felt like a fool on April first.
Is something in the works?
Was someone really having fun at the expense of others?
I've been giving it time but, I'm surprised there hasn't even been a notice.

Don't be surprised, the game is outright dead. Sorry. You can follow my Tumblr if you're interested in what's going on with my life and the games I create.

http://Vael.tumblr.com

Anyway
, we were quote-un-quote hacked by some script kiddies and that was that. Affected all sites on my server, quickly fixed and took care of all the holes that allowed them to do so.

I think what players wants is a wide array of evolutions and monsters. Unlike Pokemon, these monsters( that I envisioned ) will have many evolutions that branch out like a family tree and splicing will result in a hybrid monster, like for example, XX monster and YY monster are spliced, which results in XY or YX.

Compared to how things were before this game has evolved nicely.
And, the skill list is more then thrice as good with 101 to the prior 30.
There are still only 6 types of monsters but it's good enough.
The Monsters can pick from a list of skills to keep and the more you splice the more skills the monster can keep.
Believe it or not the monsters use to get stail and useless but that got changed for the benefit of less freaquent players.

If development should some day be revived, it should be to first finish the game.
I'm not opposed to changes. the new skill system is awesome!

Glad to see the site is getting some attention

I want to apologize for how much of an insufferable teenager I once was. That I would actually cite a blind user's own skill with their screen reader as an excuse to not fix something.

MurCity was a huge flop because it never released. I just kept increasing the scope, pirating art, and it most certainly was not "expertly coded". I was recently in the codebase and it's not nearly as bad as MonBre, but it's a real mess.

Funny that nine years later, I'm back on MonBre and dreaming of a way to make something like MurCity work.

There is just something about this game!
It feels like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy and Pokemon merged