Ever growing, however some general stats: - 300+ maps - 200+ items - 5 quests (more in the works)
Afar has quite an extensive story - in my head. This is going to form the basis of quests eventually (a major storyline piece is in the works at the moment) but it isn't in the game much yet.
The main story arc being followed is that of Tiben - the main town in the starter area - and it's aims of expansion every way possible. Every now and then soldiers march out to capture new lands for the good of the town. The player winds up in the middle of some of these - the Western lands, the Northern teritories, and eventually to Ivesar itself.
and that is that, plain and simply, we owe our existence purely to the boredom of the old Gods.
They have since left our lands although some would argue otherwise, or that they can never truly be gone because as ascended beings they do not exist in the same way you or I would. I however disagree, and can see that they have plainly left our mortal realms.
This now concludes the chapter and I shall finish with a timeline running from the day the world was created up until the present day.
I.L (Ivesus' Land)
999 Present Day 998 Tiben explorers begin to move North East 947 End of the Western Wars The Westerners resort to Vampirism 942 The Western Wars begin Great Western Wall is erected 935 Humans arrive in Tiben by boat 902 Humans pupulate the Damascan desert 891 Volcano at Ivesar; survivors exodus by boat and foot 760 Popn' of Ivesar: 100,000 657 Popn' of Ivesar: 10,000 274 Ivesar founded, a township in the old South
0 Ivesus first preaches in Sellesby village
B.E (Before Enlightenment)
20 The Gods get bored and decide to no longer exist 27 The Gods create magic but don't tell anybody 302 Fall of the Sedisian Empire; Dalks are free 349 Invasion of Dalkland by the Sedisians 437 The Sedisian Empire is formed 1647 The Gods decide they now exist and create the world
CHAPTER 7 - THE FUTURE
One can only speculate on the events of the future but it is clear Tiben is intent on expanding, with vanguards heading North-East and plans to head West retaking land lost in the Western Wars not completely out of the question.
Personally I believe Tiben will attempt to invade Straupuft and the desert cities once the time is right.
There is no doubt in my mind that there is a lot of land that can be recovered from the old city of Ivesar, which now lies in ruin. The chance of another volcano is unlikely, and I am sure that wizards will find a way to combat the effects and reclaim the land. ____________________________________
Ivan Jarin Son of Lord Jarin of Tiben, Ivan is a soldier in the castle army.
Main Graphics: REFMAP (full disclaimer in-game as required) Additional Graphics: myself, jbrist
Programming: myself
This is an MMORPG. The main features (although there is tons to do, just a little hard to find sometimes - working on making it more logical)-
- Sim Player Versus Player combat - Sideview battle system - Inventory - Item crafting - Merchant skills - Spells and spell roster - Quests, quest journal - Character customisation - Probably a lot more important stuff that I've forgotten about and will get back into play eventually.
Internet Explorer users will not have the fancy borders that Firefox users get due to IE not conforming to standards. This game is aimed at the Firefox browser, but should work in Google Chrome as well. When a standalone client is made it will be using the Firefox browser.
I realise I probably should be promoting this after making the new user guide/tutorial/walkthrough thingie. I'll work on that tonight, get it up, and then I won't have to keep showing people how to do certain things like I have to elsewhere
Some gimmicks if you play:
- Free daily soup - Gathering items such as herbs, wood, and armour if you know where to find them, can be done at various time intervals - Money rises as you explore, the exact algorithms keep changing and I won't be saying. Trick is to just play the game
I think I'm allowed to self bump with updates, sorry if I'm not.
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25 November 2010 (Thursday)
* Dynamic signatures now show face, name, gold and worth! * Graphics around the Dark Forest * Minor edits to hidden functions to make them work properly, nothing special * Signatures now automatically update once per 24 hours on login * Created homepage poll system which links to the forums
26th November 2010 (Friday)
* Minor graphical improvements
27th November 2010 (Saturday)
* Item use system * Added use functions to all usable items * Book system * Written out book pages for Vampire book * Added constitution exp * Unvisitable areas on the world map are now greyed out and unclickable (still need to add some switches but the system works) * Item equip/unequip
28th November 2010 (Sunday)
* Rearranged Tiben town * Removed "back to world map" links in lieu of new button at top
29th November 2010 (Monday)
* Several new maps, themed backgrounds * Base Camp is now linked fully to Port and Tiben
World Map & Exploration
The World Map as it was lain out previously was just a placeholder.
I am working on a series of updates which will occur over the course of today/tonight which will form it into something far bigger and more important.
The town locations will remain. You will only be able to access the Base Camp, however. From there you can move to different maps. New icons will be available on the world map as and when you visit them, be this through travelling by foot, or completing a quest.
You will also notice that the colour of action buttons and the main page background will change depending on what sort of area you are in on the map.
Principally these will be:
Stone grey: towns, cities, buildings Purple: the Dark Forest region Green: forests and woodlands Light green: plains and fields Sandy: desert regions
30th November (Tuesday)
* New merchant in "woods" between Tiben and Base Camp selling various goods * Six new items (toy horse, bread, lantern, old armour legs and helmet, rope) * Created cave system, not currently in use * Filled in area descriptions between Port -> Base Camp -> Tiben * Reversed colours on river background to look a bit better, not too happy. Thoughts?
1st December (Wednesday)
* Five new items * New merchant by the river * Moved some shop stock around a bit to make more sense * Added some placeholders for future things
2nd December (Thursday)
* Minor update; you can now nick a fishing rod from the river bank which might be useful later on.
3rd December (Friday)
* Added mechanics for vessels - containers for items. Imagine apples in a basket: you eat the apples and lose them, but the basket remains.
Trade logic
Trade logic
I've started work on the trading system. I find it hard to get my head around the logic of trading for some reason, but I am having a go. This will again be a system coded completely from scratch, using phpbb only as a base for user authentication, as with the rest of the game.
You will be able to trade a maximum of eight items, as well as gold.
To prevent unfair trades, scams, and real world trading, there will be a few restrictions, but nothing too harsh:
- You can only trade eight items at a time, as well as gold - You can only trade once you've earnt a total of 50 gold (on top of the 50 you get for joining) - You can only receive money up to the amount you've already earnt
An example:
Joe Newbie starts playing the game. He earns 123 gold. He's also got the 50 gold he starts off with. So in total he's made 173 gold from playing the game.
He trades with Jill Noobson, selling a steel sword. Jill offers Joe 2000 gold. Joe cannot accept, because this is more than Joe has earnt.
Jill starts the trade again and offers 160 - this is less than the 173 that Joe has ever earnt, and so the trade is legal.
Jane Newperson wants to trade. She started playing today and has 60 gold in her account! She started with 50, so she's only earnt an additional 10... which is less than the required 50, so she cannot trade and must wait until she earns a bit more should take a day or so
There is a test battle online to show off the new battle system I have made.
Head to the World Map, then the Port, and choose "test battle".
Some things to note:
- At the moment weapon choice does not affect anything - Damage dealt is currently (rand(0, melee) / 3) - You can die and can win, damage is sortof configured so that it's 50/50 for the test battle - You can't gain any gold from it other than in the usual ways - Animations and such aren't there yet
There is a long, long way to go, but it's a start!
What the battle system can do:
- turn on switches by winning battles - require switches to start a battle - give item, gold and exp rewards (or a combination of the three) - send you to an area on winning - send you to the graveyard on death - uses stats to work out damage (currently only melee) - uses enemy stats drawn from a database - displays accurate HP bars for both you and the enemy, and an MP bar for you
What is missing:
- skills! for both sides - animations - feedback would be nice, perhaps in the form of text lines, or numbers popping up on the screen, or just animations - graphics about the place - weapon and armour related damage multipliers - currently all both sides can do is attack! boring
are critical hits possible, or is it just more random than I thought? I was losing for a second, until I took down half the monster's HP (hustle points) in one chop.
Damage is (0 to melee)/3
By default you have 10 melee, depending on your class. So if you have 10 melee, you will do
(0 to 10)/3 damage
The enemy does a pure 0...3 at the moment and you both have 10 HP.
I haven't worked in items and other stats and such yet.
QUOTE
some kind of play-by-play would be interesting. just, telling the player who did what, and for how much damage.
Yeah, definately. I'm going to try and incorporate basic gif animations as a layer above the battle sprite, and possibly number popups. A feed might work too if I can find room for it.
Max damage: 10 + 2(.5) - 0 = 12 Min damage: 0 + 0 - 2(.5) = 0
Random Encounters
Leave the port heading East and you will be able to test out the random encounter system. This involves four new enemies, which do give gold as a reward.
Last location
Created a "last location" system which remembers the last "area" you visited and can take you back there. This is being implemented in the battle system for obvious reasons.
17th December (Friday)
Santa hats!
Gift system (for delivery of santa hats)
Random encounter button added to a few maps
A few graphical improvements added about the place
New route: Tiben to Straupuft (fair few scenes, under construction still tho)
Redesigned home page
Set up a twitter account for quick news feeds; integrated with homepage
18th December (Saturday)
New graphics plus coastal areas
New route from Tiben/Straupuft to the Sea Fortress
Opened the Sea Fortress, nothing to do there yet however
vengeancerpg New merchant selling baskets of apples
created mechanics for enemies blocking areas (a troll on a bridge, for example)
New "causeway" background graphic to neaten up the coastal areas
Rearranged the "discussion forums" section to look nicer
19th December (Sunday)
Friends lists View someone's profile and you can choose to add (or remove) them as a friend. Friends show on your profile (character sheet) at the bottom in a nice little list. Benefits of having friends will become clearer later on.
Leaderboard Created a basic leaderboard based on gold on hand. Better leaderboards will come soon, including the ability to create your own leaderboard for a group of friends, or perhaps a gaming clan.
User find You can now enter a user number to find their profile. In future I will update this to allow username searches.
Additions Created space for some new NPCs and added some new graphics about the place in preparation for future updates.
Backend Minor to you but a lot of rearend coding changes which will smoothline the production process for me.
20th December (Monday)
It is snowing.
You can now travel to a new world map - but there isn't anything to do there yet.
Preparations done for a possible Christmas event
Major battle system algorithm changes to put more emphasis on items equipped and stats rather than random as hell
You have to wait five minutes to battle on the same map... so explore the world! There are battle areas all over the place if you know where to look
Stat changes on most equippable items
Armour now affects how much damage you receive. The damage is an average of all your items' stats
Slight graphical and positioning changes about the place
Fixed battle system "last location" error
Fixed all errors noted in "Technical Support"
Fixed several errors which may have caused problems in the items inventory
Slight streamlining of some database tables for easier updating
Optimised a few SQL queries which should speed them up hopefully
21st December (Tuesday)
New temporarily barren route from Tiben to West Gate
Some new graphics
A few quick tweaks to battle functions
The world map is now switch controlled and you can only travel to areas that you have already visited. By default you can visit the base camp.
There are also now multiple world maps - though one doesn't have much there at the moment. You can travel between ports to switch world maps.
In the map above you can see I can only travel to Tiben, Base Camp, and the Myre.
The game actually has quite a fair amount of content now, including battle system and a global store and such, so I am going to ask for this to be moved to completed games.
I have completely remade the first post to be more up to date.
The most recent update though:
Finished some more scenes. This is the current world map:
Map
Our second dungeon, the Snow Caves, are now live. Set sail from Tiben Port to the Northern lands to find the new dungeon which features eight enemies of larger difficulty than the Fire Caverns, a new reward which will (when finished) allow you to create some new items, and eleven scenes with their own graphics.
This is a repeatable dungeon but you have to complete it before starting again. It also isn't linear - there are branches and such. It is still a small dungeon, but is much larger than the aforementioned fire caves.
Group: +Gold Member
Posts: 2,538
Type: Writer
RM Skill: Masterful
I'm intrigued. At first I thought this would be just another browser game in the style of Adventure Quest or the like, but it seems as if this has some depth to it. I'm going to try it out! Good work on getting a playable version up, as I imagine setting up an online game must be a lot of work.
__________________________
Things I've made/written/developed:
Find out more and get the latest news at my website or Facebook
I have decided to split the "very large expansion" up and release it in chunks, as that way you get more content right now. The first part I have titled Beasts of Afar, as it is an update to the enemies database.
It was planned for tonight but has been pushed back to tomorrow (Friday) due to the amount of work involved. It is "mostly done".
Update: I lied, the update is now live and finished.
What does the expansion involve?
At the moment there are five enemies to fight while traveling the world of Vengeance (which has been for a while called Afar, if you weren't aware!). There are a few others scattered around dungeons, but these are not available in random encounters.
The Beasts of Afar expansion adds 30 new enemies (that's right, brings us to seven times the current amount) to random encounter tables.
But that's not all! The expansion also involves the creation of random encounter groups. These are area-based groups of enemies, meaning you encounter a different set of enemies in each mini region. Farms will have different enemies to the desert, which will have different enemies to the fire caverns.
This update brings us to 49 total enemies, which includes 14 special instances from dungeons and quests (therefore 35 available in random encounters).
Three of the enemies added are only available to paid members (at current that service is unavailable, and only two people have these accounts as well as myself, for they have done work for the game or have generously donated to keep us online; however the service is coming in the near future) in the Damascan Sands region. This is a peninsula of 20 maps including a new city, that will be available during or shortly after the Beasts of Afar expansion.
Look out for the expansion tomorrow if all goes well. Until then have fun fighting the... five enemies in the game!
__________________
Straupuft Marsh Mellow Man
A quest has finally been finished and is now fully playable. It even boasts a boss battle!
I'm in two minds whether to explain how to do the quest because I want it to be left up to you explorers. To start it though, talk to a mellow man, that's all I'm saying. Oh, alright, he's in Straupuft Marsh.
There is another unfinished quest (starts at West Gate) which is next on the agenda to be finished.
Ok ive been looking at this really hard now, a part of me really hates it and a part reallly likes it, but aside from all that it is very clear that you have put ALOT of work into this and more importantly are still putting alot of work into it and thats whats important and most impressive, I think if you countine to improve it at this rate this game is going to be great, it seems like you actually care about the depth of the game which is so rare nowdays, ill be keeping my eye on this game and its updates goodwork.
Yeah there's definately a lot wrong with it, but I think with some work that can be turned around. It feels "unfinished" (but then I guess it largely is).
Please note that Afar will be inaccessible for between 1 and 24 hours from now, due to necessary moving of servers. I can't give you an estimate because it's due to the DNS configuration, which will take up to 24 hours depending on how many changes are in the queue. That's out of my hands unfortunately.
Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
After the migration vengeance-rpg.com will not work. The new permanent address is afar.ws. Please update your bookmarks if you haven't already!
Exciting things are happening with Afar. Unfortunately they're exciting for all the wrong reasons. Mainly, things are just breaking all over the place.
A few weeks ago you may know, we were wiped out as a result of a hack elsewhere on the web server. We are back fine, with no content lost at all! However, the hack had some unfortunate repurcussions:
1. We need to get off this web host. They own our domain unfortunately, so we are switching to http://www.afar.ws as our domain; this means we had to change everything and it hasn't gone as smoothly as we'd hoped.
2. A domain used to host our images was removed by the domain provider because the index was empty. They didn't realise there were thousands of images still on the host in a subdirectory.
What does this mean?
Basically over the past few weeks we have been fighting hard to fix all links across the game to the new afar.ws and afar.ws/img domains.
What this means to you
Things will be broken. They will. This is unfortunate, and needs to be fixed, but they will be broken.
Please, and I can't stress this enough, don't feel bad reporting any errors! We will work to fix them as soon as possible. But if we don't know about them, then you will have to wait until we find them!
We are being vigilant in fixing these errors but there are a lot of them. Currently page.php is fixed (the file that runs the majority of game processes such as exploration and other functions), all function files are fixed (so you won't lose any data or anything), but posting, and general template files, may be broken. This means there is potential for:
1. broken images 2. broken links
Broken images: if you find one, and want to report it, please right click -> view image and find the URL or name of the image file and report it to us. This is an easy, easy fix, but if we don't know the image is missing there is nothing we can do until we find it in our searching.
Broken links: you may find yourself plonked on the index randomly instead of where you should be! This is because the link is going to vengeance-rpg.com and not afar.ws. This is also an easy fix, but again if we don't know about it there is nothing we can do until we find it.
I am very, very sorry about all of this, and I will try and make it up to all of you who keep the game alive and thriving.
I am deeply sorry if any of you have tried to play in the past few weeks and not been able to.
This is in all an incredibly dire situation to be in - but the only way from here is up.
Welcome to Afar - the free browser game.
We now have an IRC channel for out-of-game support.
Please visit #afar on synirc.com if you need help of any kind, and don't threat to message AmyPond.
To make up for all this crap I will be working on a new update to the enemies table adding around 30 new unseen enemies to the game. They will range from rabbits to DRAGONS. Everyone loves dragons.
I don't know when that will be finished but I'll work on it.
In celebration of reaching the 400 players milestone, we have released the Barbarian Set. Like previous rare items, this is a one off release, and will be available between now and the time we reach 450 players.
The barbarian set is made up of five items, which will appear in your inventory when you do certain things (not telling!). One of each item is available to all players to obtain.
Their stats are equivalent to old armour and the silver sword.
Rare Items
Rare Items
Here's some interesting stats:
[pre]Merthyr Tydfil 0 Merthyr Legs 0 Iron 0 Merice 0 Gold 0 Coal 0 Worked Lead 0 Worked Iron 0 Worked Gold 0 Salmon 1 Red Wine 1 Burnt Trout 1 Merthyr Rapier 1 Treasure Map 1 Lead 1 Merthyr Body 1 Burnt Junk 2 Merthyr Sword 2 Trout 3 Dark Robe 3 Home Made Neckl 3 History Book 3 Book of Ivesus 3 Worked Merice 3 Silver Sword 4 Swordfish 5 Cup of Tea 5 Fire Sword 6 Red Cape 6 Broomstick 6 Blue Cape 7 Black Cape 8 Broken Pot 8 Bowl 8 Cauldron 9 Herb 10 Green Cape 10 Work Hammer 10 Quartz 11 Old Battleaxe 12 White Cape 13 Teddy Bear 13 Weeds 14 Yellow Cape 14 Old Small Shiel 14 Red Herring 15 Basket of Apple 16 Tattered Robe 17 Garlic 19 Bread 20 Amethyste Neckl 24 Old Dagger 28 Book 29 Quartz Necklace 29 Ruby 30 Emerald 30 Sapphire 31 Leather Slacks 32 Gold Chain 32 Sapphire Neckla 33 Emerald Necklac 33 Ice Orb 33 Old Armour (hel 47 Frayed Rope 48 Lantern 49 Archery Jacket 50 Straw 50 Santa Hat 52 Fishing Rod 54 Water 56 Bag of Junk 57 Old Armour (leg 57 Empty Basket 57 Pot 60 Old Boots 61 Blue Flower 62 Old Armour 66 Fire Orb 68 Rope 71 Soup 83 Toy Horse 85 Old Rapier 98 Wood 102 Basic Bow 110 Ruby Necklace 110 Steel Sword 120[/pre]
This takes into account equipped items but not items stocked by the second hand store (tat exchange) as the store fluctuates.
Plan: Tutorial
I am planning a tutorial quest. The quest will feature a seperate game, pretty much, completely isolated from the rest of the game. It will have limited features with the intention of showing how the game works and how to play, what you can do, etc. At the end of the tutorial the player chooses a class and gets some basic spells and can then access the full game.
The tutorial will not be compulsory and there will be a "magic button" to claim the benefits if you don't want to do it.
On registration the player will enter the tutorial automatically with the option of leaving to the real game at any time.
Current thoughts on the tutorial world:
- several maps exploring a new area - battles, culminating in an exciting boss battle with a legendary creature, most probably a dragon - basic spells and items which are generally easily obtainable in the game currently - interesting NPCs to talk to
During the tutorial the player will choose a face and a name, which otherwise can be done via the settings page.
The tutorial is in progress and I don't know how long it will take - just letting you know what's being worked on!
Forum Improvements
1. The forum now takes up the full game width. 2. Posting should now work in all boards properly provided you have allowed forum posting in settings. 3. Links! Added lots of links about the forums so they are easier to navigate now. 4. Added some background functions for a cool forum update coming soon... :]
If you can't access the forums for some reason, you can contact the developers via the IRC channel at #afar on synirc.com. You can access this via a convenient online client at:
aCode has just gone through a huge overhaul. What is aCode?
It works like bbcode, like a simplified and specific version of html that is unique to Afar. It is used for building scenes, and you'll see it in use any time you view a section of the game that uses page.php, which is essentially the aCode browser.
aCode started off very simple - as bbcode from phpBB in fact. One could make images, bold text, center text, and add hyperlinks, and that was about it.
In Build 2 it was updated to include our own key functions for navigation, random battles, and more.
In the new aCode build there are a variety of features which are going to make maps and scenes using page.php a lot more dynamic and interesting.
New dynamic code!
[sw 1] - echoes the value of a switch. Switches can be 1 (on) or 0 (off). [var xyz] - echoes the value of game variables xyz. Variables can hold any kind of data from the player's name, to their equipment. [func functionname] - runs an aCode function before loading the page. This is the most important part, as aCode functions use full PHP - we can do pretty much anything. [set xyz]value[/set] - sets the value of variable xyz to "value" before loading the page. [setsw 1]1/0[/set] - sets the value of a switch to on or off before loading the page, ignoring it if already true. [flipsw 1] - flips the value of a switch before loading the page. (1 becomes 0, 0 becomes 1)
--------------------------------------------------------------- //// set some initial variables and switches [setsw 18]1[/setsw] //// show we've visited this page (example)
//// the page [rbattle]1[/rbattle] //// creates a random battle from group 1
Woods
//// centres the content and creates an image and title
[desc]You hear running water up ahead. Behind you the woods go on for miles. It is said that this land was the first settled upon when humans reached the Tiben region. A small settlement nearby offers free food to the poor who often use this route having arrived at Tiben Port.[/desc] //// creates a properly formatted description
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Nov 25 2010, 03:28 PM
should take a day or so 
