Fun With the Metaplace Developers!
A couple weeks ago we held a miniature alpha feedback session here at the office and asked a few of our active testers to come out here and spend the day with us. The day was very productive, with sessions about our roadmap, tool layout and usability, overall opinions about where we’re headed, and technical demonstrations. All in all it was a great day! Here are some pictures of the event:
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Posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 1:45 PM PDT
Metaplace July Update
Hi everyone! It's now into July and it has been quite some time since we have provided everyone an update on Metaplace and how things are going. We apologize for the silence as of late; we're working hard on getting to the light at the end of the tunnel. The last time we gave you an overview of our development status, we were just starting our Alpha program. Now we are at the point where we are just about ready to move onto our first phase of closed beta, and we are thrilled to let in more of you. Plenty has happened since we started our first round of alpha testing, let's take a peek!
Developer Chat and Stress Tests
This year we had our first ever public developer Q&A session that was a huge success. Many of you showed up to see our team answer questions from the public and we loved the interaction with everyone. We also stress tested our space game, Uberspace, and a social chat world that allowed you to walk around as an avatar and talk with each other. These gave us an insight on our server stability and client performance and was quite useful. We hope everyone enjoyed it.
Standalone Tools
Even though we haven't released our full platform, we have been committed to developing standalone tools that you all can use to start creating art assets for your world. The first of these was the Isometric Wall Maker tool, which allows you to create your own custom walls for your world. People have made some great stuff with this tool! We've also just released the second tool, which is a Transition Tile Maker. This will create blending between two different terrain tiles. Download them and give them a try!
Reading Material
Even though we haven't been talking too much, there has been some great coverage and interviews with us this year including several interviews with Raph. Check these out:
Content Creation
We've seen some absolutely amazing work being created within Metaplace. We've had educational learning software, the start of basic RPG's, an RTS, a beginning shooter game, arcade games, word games. We've seen people make procedurally generated maps, the start of standalone clients, and then all the games we've shown in our Community Spotlight posts. We're consistently entertained by the creativity that is shown, and we are excited to see what you all can make.
There have also been tons of fabulous game ideas in our forums. If you're interested in reading about possible games that will be made in Metaplace, or to plan out YOUR game, come chat with us in our official forums.
Metachat
Earlier this year we debuted Metachat, a social chat space build in Metaplace. This was the first time a piece of our platform was launched publicly to the world, and it was a huge learning experience. Having a presence on MySpace and Facebook and being able to watch people from the different networks chat WITH each other was completely awesome. That was exactly the kind of vision we have - to bring social spaces together. We did end up removing Metachat (and you can read more details on that here) but the knowledge we gained from the experience was incredibly useful. We appreciate all the feedback and testing that you have all shared with us.
Now that we're getting closer to being able to open up Metaplace for everyone to experience, we figured we would show you our current roadmap so you all can see where we're headed. Our next plan is to head into a closed beta before broadening to an open beta. We've created a checklist of items that we feel need to be completed before opening up to the masses. Here are some of what we're currently working on to prepare for our launch:
New toolset and usability
If you follow the forums, we've mentioned a change in toolsets over the past few months. Our initial tools were done using Javascript, and we found that the browser cross-compatibility and the performance was not up to the level we desired. We have since designed and built a new set of world building tools using Flex, and they're much closer to where we want them to be. Our goal is to make a toolset that is easy to use and simple to learn, but doesn't limit the power that builders have over their creations. We're almost there, we're just hammering out usability and will appreciate lots of testing when we move on to Beta.
Security pass
We're putting last minute touches on our security to make sure we are buttoned up for launch.
Portal Cleanup
We're adding in the last few features on our Metaplace web portal and polishing everything up so that it looks fancy and is easy to use.
Marketplace
One of the more exciting pieces of our website is our Marketplace that allows you to buy and sell modules and assets to/from each other. This is a crucial part in our vision of encouraging user generated content and collaborative work. The marketplace is going to facilitate these transactions and be a searchable index of all the stylesheets and modules available to help you get started or add on to your world.
Badge System
Something we have planned for months is starting to shape up nicely, and that is our badge and achievement system. In the next few months there will be a an increase in badges you can earn while engaging yourself in the Metaplace service. Everything from visiting worlds, embedding the world on your blog, inviting friends, placing your first object in your world, etc. Collect them all! You will be able to decide which badges to display on your profile for bragging rights to your friends.
Client Optimization
We are continuously working on improving the performance of our Flash client, including latency and smoothing.
As we get closer to launch, we'll be opening up more as well. The internal Builder's Wiki will be available for everyone to view. Our current forums will be moving onto our actual Metaplace portal and Metaplace.com will be changing to reflect our service going live. We have plans to show you all an overview of the tools so that you have an idea of what is possible. We're also going to be jumpstarting an initiative to provide more consistent development news to you all, including a biweekly update that will keep everyone informed and on top of the latest Metaplace releases and changes. We know everyone is excited to hear more and to get your hands on Metaplace. We are close!
As a company, we've grown immensely over the last year since we have started this blog and website. It was only 10 months ago that we unveiled what we are making to the public, and in that time our team has grown from a size of 10 to 25. Although our number has changed, it hasn't changed what we feel is a core value behind our company - and that is that we stay 100% committed to our vision. We have always wanted to bring virtual spaces to the masses, to make it just as easy to embed a social place or game into your website as it is to embed a video or music clip. We've wanted to provide tools and resources for a wide range of skill levels to MAKE those worlds and games as well. We want to see a community of users who collaborate, share, and communicate to make what they see in their minds a reality. We want a brand new user to be able to create a virtual world and customize it how they'd like, and advanced users to be able to script their own games from scratch and even develop their own add-on tools and clients. And most importantly, we want everything to be open and client-agnostic. We want to set virtual worlds free and make them as common to see on the web as a JPG or MP3. Our goals are lofty, but they haven't changed. Every employee in our company (from our office manager who keeps us stocked with coffee to our programmers who make everything work behind the scenes) is passionate about and devoted to this vision and just as excited about Metaplace as you are. That's what makes us so eager to provide something tangible for you all.
The vision hasn't changed and neither have the goals for you, the end-user. We know that you will want to be able to create whatever you desire, and having the choice to use and iterate upon building blocks provided for you or start from scratch. Right now we're building base art assets that everyone can use - starting with social worlds and moving to fantasy. We're also creating base level systems like grouping and mission systems that you can plug right into your world. You'll want to interact with others, which is why we're focused on a central chat system that allows you to communicate with people cross-world. For those who want to explore we'll have an index of potential worlds to check out, sorted by ratings and tags so you'll be able to find worlds that interest you. There will be plenty to do - everything from a stream of events to stay on top of what your friends and others are doing on Metaplace, to a badge system allowing you to earn and collect, to a marketplace giving you a space to buy and sell. We're still committed to making Metaplace a fun experience for creators and players alike and bringing the two together, even welding them together into one!
So there you have it! We're getting closer and closer to the finish line andwe're glad that some of you have followed us so closely over the last year. Wehave plans to open up another sign up for beta for those of you who missed thechance last Fall and we'll be having more frequent posts here that keep you informed and updated on our progress. We'll talk to you soon (and moreoften)!
Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau
Community Manager
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Posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 10:27 AM PDT
Transition Tile Maker
This week, we're glad to release another standalone tool to help you build assets for your future Metaplace worlds! Here is the Tile Transition Maker.
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The Tile Transition Tool helps you make transition tiles between two different terrain textures. While a client engine might support procedural blending between two different terrain textures, there are effects you can only achieve by providing a set of transition tiles. This tool makes it a snap to generate the full set of transitions you might want.
How To Use It
Adding textures
You select which slot to drag a texture into by clicking on it. The selected slot will be highlighted red.
You can import a texture into a slot by either dragging one in from the desktop or by choosing Open... from the File menu. The new texture will be put in the selected slot, replacing whichever texture is there.
You'll get a preview of what that texture looks like across a 5x5 grid in the preview window, so you can use this to check that it tiles well.
Note that tile transitions will not support transparency in textures, so if you drag in a texture with transparency, it's going to get a black background in the generated transition tiles.
Deleting textures
You can delete a texture from a slot by choosing Delete Texture from the Edit menu, or hitting the Delete key.
Masks
A pulldown in between the two texture slots provides a set of default "masks." These are premade patterns that set up the ways in which the two tiles will blend. You can see a preview of the way the mask looks right under the pulldown.
You can also cycle through the available masks by just clicking on the previews.
Generating Transitions
Click the Generate Transitions button, or hit the space bar, or choose Generate Transitions from the menu. The twelve transition tiles will appear in the transition slots, and a composite preview will appear next to them displaying what the transitions and tiles would look like in actual use.
Once you have generated transition tiles, the Save Transitions button will be grayed out.
Saving
Hit CTRL-S, press the Save Transitions button, or select Save As... from the menu. Type in a filename and select a directory. Twelve textures will be saved in PNG format at 64x64 pixel files.
There is a pulldown next to the save button that lets you change the size of the saved tiles to other values instead.
The resultant filenames will automatically have numbers appended to the filename you chose.
Using Your Own Masks
This is an advanced feature.
You can add masks to the tool by clicking the Add Mask button. You will br prompted to select first a corner texture and second a straight edge texture.
Once you add a texture pair, they will be added to the pulldown menu.
We suggest you keep these textures in the folder where you keep the tool.
If you select a mask that you added, the Delete Mask button will become available.
Custom mask entries are saved in a file called transitions.ini in the folder where you keep the tool. You can edit this file by hand, if you want. The entries consist of a name for the mask pair, and the two filenames.
Masks will be automatically resized internally to be 256x256, so for pixel-perfect purposes, you probably want to start with them at that size.
A mask image should be a PNG with transparency; we suggest that you make the opaque color something easily visible against both a black background and against a transparency checkerboard grid in your preferred graphics package (we picked red, but it could easily be any color you wish).
I
n your graphics program, create a new file, 256x256. Make sure you create it with transparency as the background. Then You can create the opaque portion in a new layer. Your corner mask should have 3/4 of the image covered, but it doesn't really matter which 3/4. Same goes for the straight edge.
The inverse corner texture will be generated procedurally by inverting the corner texture, so make sure your corner textures are symmetrical!
Make sure the masks tile to each other as well. The preview image when you generate will be helpful in this regard.
Download Links
Tile Transition Tool for Windows
Tile Transition Tool for Intel Mac
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Posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 4:38 PM PDT
Assets for Owen
One of the main focuses of Metaplace is to encourage collaboration between users, enabling just about anyone to make a game without requiring gigantic teams and long development times. One of our alpha testers, Owen, is looking for some artist helpers for his game that he’s working on, a game like Advance Wars. These assets could potentially be used by other world builders when making similar games as well, so you could see your art appear in many games on Metaplace.
This is the art that Owen is looking for:
Land:
- Foot
Infantry
Mech Infantry
- Tires
Recon
Rocket Launcher
Missile Launcher
- Threads
Tank
Medium Tank
Large Tank
Personnel Carrier
Artillery cannon
Anti-air cannon
Air
- Fighter
- Bomber
- Battle Copter
- Transport Copter
- Stealth fighter
- Bomb
Sea
- Battleship
- Cruiser
- Lander
- Sub
- Repair boat
- Aircraft Carrier
The art specifications are as follows:
- Each with sprite sheets for idle animation and movement animations in the 4 cardinal directions, with each frame being 64x64 with transparent background.
- Each sprite would have to have at least a sizeable portion of the unit to be tintable on the red channel to show team colors (red, green, yellow etc.), and be set up so that the tinting is mostly bright (closer to the 255,254,254 end of the scale on the red channel).
If your art is used by Owen, you would get recognition in his credits screen. If you have any questions please post in this thread. Thank you!
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Posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 6:02 PM PDT
What are your favorite games?
To begin this week's blog post, I'd like to direct everyone to a mini-contest that is being held in our forums. One forum poster, The Aether Knight, has put together a competition to see who can make the best web page banner advertisement for Metaplace. There are no specific size restrictions, but it should be designed to fit either on a sidebar or the top or bottom of a web page. Any of the art in our media kit or elsewhere on the web is available for your use in creating banner ads. Show off your art skills and post your submission in this thread!
Here at Metaplace, the majority of us are gamers. We are passionate about games - everything from console games to PC, to board and card games, to tabletop roleplaying and strategy games. I asked our team members last week what their favorite game genre is and if they can give a couple examples of titles they love to play. Here are some responses:
"My favorite game of all time is Final Fantasy VI. Intriguing characters and believable character development are my favorite element of storytelling, and FF6 had my favorite cast of 14 characters." -- Adam "sunetos" Smith, Software Engineer
"I’m a longtime hardcore shooter style game player, playing mostly the Rainbow 6 series. Being that I was playing them before the dual analog sticks became the “cool” thing, I’m a solid believer in using a mouse to play FPS’s. BOOM HEADSHOT!" - Tristan "Actionsketch" Michael, Intern/"Art Ninja"
"I’m a dedicated tabletop RPG’er, but I’ve never been able to get into RPG-style video games. I think I played WoW for about forty-five minutes before shrugging and going back to working on my Exalted character. I do love all of the music-and-rhythm based video games, though. I’m finally mature enough to proudly play DDR in public, and I will rock out on Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Karaoke Revolution any day of the week!" - Claire Vannette, Office Manager/'Nerd Wrangler'
"I like a lot of sorts of games. Puzzle games, FPSes, platformers, and of course MMOs." - Raph Koster, President
"My favorite genre is RTS. I got hooked on Red Alert and the whole C&C series, though my favorite game of all time is Age of Empires II. There’s nothing quite like watching a friends reaction as their city burns after a perfectly matched 3 hour game." - Andy Whelan, Web Developer
"Diablo 2. as weird as it is, these days i’m a huge fan of the incrementally-time-digestible grind. reward systems broken down into the smallest parts possible and immediately accessible. xp, xp, drop, xp, drop, sell for cash, item upgrade, xp, xp, ding! woot!" - Christopher "m3mnoch" Chapman, Senior Software Engineer
"Grand Prix Legends. It is a PC game that most accurately simulates the physics and dynamics of a real 1967 Formula One season." - Andy Ault, Web Developer
"I’ve traditionally been a PC gamer, although lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in front of an Xbox 360. I typically enjoy RPGs, shooters and racers." - Rob Hauch, Senior Artist
"I’ve spent countless hours slinking in the shadows in Thief II, knocking out hapless guards with my trusty blackjack. Outwitting the enemy is so much more satisfying than outgunning the enemy. Best game ever." - Mike Caloud, Software Engineer
"For me it’s definitely any dungeon crawler or adventure with a quest. I started back with the original Adventure, Scott Adams and Infocom games. And over the past 30 years, I’ve played almost everything with a storyline that’s been released, from ‘King’s Quest’ to ‘Eye of the Beholder’ to ‘Oblivion’. I absolutely devour anything with a puzzle." - Johnny Waitt, Content Developer
"I enjoy all kinds of games, from simple side scrollers to advanced multi-month MMORPGs. Whatever the game, multiplayer is really a necessity these days. I love games that make you think and strategize to beat the enemy, either alone or with a team. I am very opinionated against games that are purely ‘item based’. It is so much more respectable when a players cunning, timing, coordination, and creativity determine the outcome of the game." - Ben Taller, Software Developer
"I'm a huge JRPG fan, preferably turn-based. I also enjoy action RPG's, board/card games (like Munchkin!), tabletop roleplaying, and games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Singstar. Hopelessly addicted to playing and reading about MMOs, and quite infatuated with the 360 in all its glory." - Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau, Community Manager
"I think of all game genres, I enjoy Board Games the most. Some people have an aversion to video games, but are willing to play board games. It's always nice to sit down with a group of friends or family members and play." - Jeff "The Intern" McNab, Content Developer
"My favorite genre of game is JRPG. Turn-based combat is my preferred style, but I enjoy other combat systems as well. I’m currently playing Brave Story: New Traveler for PSP. Before that, I played Lost Odyssey for Xbox 360. Most of these games follow very similar design, but I still love to play them all. :)" - Kia Jessen, Associate Producer
"My favorite genre of game is the “building” type – Alpha Centauri, Master of Magic, Civilization, Master of Orion, and similar. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch a powerful empire build up from nothing, learn advanced secrets, explore the (world / galaxy / etc), and smash enemy armies! My favorite in this genre is probably Alpha Centauri (+ expansion), as it allowed so many variations in playstyle and gave a ton of options for customizing your empire." - Patrick "Tachevert" Ferland, Content Developer
"I started to answer this question many different ways (AC Darktide, TradeWars 2k2, AOE2, DragonRealms..) and I can’t pick a favorite game, or even a favorite genre. But I think looking at my top few the theme is mystery and depth, In AC you didn’t always know the level of who you were fighting, trade wars was huge and you had to keep notes, AOE2 took years to master and in Dragonrealms every aspect of the game had a trick to it." - James Gauthier, Senior Software Engineer.
What are your favorite kinds of games? Come post in our forums and let us know!
Tami "Cuppycake" BaribeauCommunity Manager
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Posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 3:47 PM PDT
Congratulations Raph!
It is always great to see one of your own being granted an achievement for their hard work. This is why we were thrilled to see our President, Raph Koster, featured as #9 in Beckett Massive Online Gamer’s Top 20 Influential People in MMO Video Games of 2007. The article talks about Raph and others such as Min Kim (Nexon), Sanya Weathers (GuildCafe and formerly Mythic Entertainment) and Richard Garriot (NCSoft) and how their contributions and influence have helped shape the industry.
In additional news, Raph’s entertaining game design book titled A Theory of Fun has been chosen for spot #9 in GameInformer’s Top 10 Video Game Books of All Time. The article states the following:
“Through an often hilarious mix of academic discussion, first-person anecdotes, and hand-drawn cartoons, Koster brings the reader closer to understanding what role games of all sorts play in human life and what we mean when we say something is “fun.””
Unfortunately the book is sold out worldwide, but Raph has been working on making more copies available to the public. If you’re interested in reading A Theory of Fun, there are often used copies for sale on Amazon.
Congratulations Raph!
In broader Metaplace news, we were selected as one of the winners of the OnHollywood100. This is a list of companies that "have emerged in an exciting year in the world of entertainment--a year in which the old business models came crumbling down as writers took to the picket lines, musicians ditched their record labels, and breakout creative artists turned to venture capital for funding". We are honored to be granted a place on that list.
Check back soon for a fun blog post about our developers and their favorite types of games!
Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau
Community Manager
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Posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 12:41 PM PDT
Metaplace Badge Survey
Using a badge system with Metaplace is slightly more complicated than the standard gaming website. We plan to have badges not only for players of games, but also for world creators and builders. We also plan to allow world builders to place badges right within their game for all players to earn! We want to encourage people to play, build, and browse the website – therefore our badges are going to be all-encompassing and cover the many areas of the Metaplace service. We want our builders and players to be excited to earn badges and proud to display them. We’d like them to have meaning, keep people interested in collecting them, and make people want to build games so that they can put badges in them for others.
We have some tentative plans in place to prevent world builders from creating meaningless badges that everyone can earn. We also have plans to have a point value associated with the badges. We’re currently in the process of designing our badge system and I’m interested in hearing some of your ideas for a badge system for Metaplace. Please fill out this optional survey (only answer the questions you want to) if you’d like to have your feedback heard by our development team. Thank you for your participation!
Click here to fill out the survey!
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Posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 PM PDT
Community Spotlight - Tile Tactics by Owen
This week's Community Spotlight is Tile Tactics, a strategy game made by Owen, an active forum member and alpha tester.
Can you tell us a bit about Tile Tactics?
Tile Tactics was originally a PHP browser-based territorial strategy game I had been creating, which I decided would be a good first project to try and port over to Metaplace. The original game involved claiming and holding ownership of valuable land, which was defined by the value/rarity of the resources held in those tiles.
I've been taking what was essentially a turn/action-point based asynchronous multi-player game and trying to turn it into a Real-Time Strategy game, which was now possible thanks to the Metaplace servers. So at first I had been working on including some essentials for RTS play that were not currently available, such as double-click support for better mouse controls, window unit selection etc. I've also begun working on the basics of unit creation, ordering units & territorial control.
How long did it take you to make this world?
Well the metrics for my world tell me I've been in there almost 70 hours, but I'm convinced it must be much more!
Although the vast majority of that time is probably spent just staring at the screen wondering how I'm going to approach a particular problem, or going back and trying something a different way.
What has been your favorite part about working with Metaplace so far?
It's been said before but the community is great. Just the other day in the alpha chat room we were discussing with the Devs an aspect of the server what was holding me back and I was unsure how I was going to work around it. A few minutes later Dorian came back and said they had made a change to that system so I could continue on as I was going! Needless to say I was very pleased with such rapid feedback.
Where did you obtain the art for Tile Tactics?
The art all came from the assets I created for the original game, which were intended to be a simple as possible.
I could say it was all created on a "pixelated theme" to reflect the blocky nature of the original grid based map... but really, the easier to draw the better.
Did you work alone or collaborate with others?
I've worked alone, but have had the help of other testers when needed. It's great to be able to just go into the chat room and herd the guinea pigs into my world to try and break stuff!
I've also tended to script everything from scratch, in order to try and get to grips with MetaScript/Lua, but I'm sure I'll be making use of the module market to add features to my projects in the future.
If not finished, what else do you have planned your game?
I've had requests from some other testers to export some of the elements I've made as modules, such my mouse-click manager and unit selection scripts, so that they can use them in their own worlds. So I'll be getting rid of some bugs and cleaning them up to be exported at some stage.
As for the game itself, it is currently very much a prototyping world at this point, but I'd like to be able to get it to the stage where it can be a persistent-world territorial game with a close resemblance to the original 'design'.
Do you have any other worlds or games in mind to build on Metaplace, or are you working on anything else right now?
I'm focusing everything on Tile Tactics at the moment, but before I even got into Alpha I said I had wanted to take Uberspace and turn it into a Team Fortress type game. So I think that might be what I'll have a go at next, unless someone beats me to it and makes Uber-Team Space-Fortress before me!
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Owen Canavan from Ireland. Originally an engineer, moved over to IT, and I'm now pondering the possibilities of getting into game design, so Metaplace is a great way to explore that and actually make some games.
I've been following MMO development since the pre-release SWG days and began to teach myself programming with PHP running a SWG guild site.
Thank you Owen!
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Posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 11:20 AM PDT
Cuppycake's Metaplace Journey - Part 2
At this point in time, Ponyplace was nothing more than a flamboyantly colored background of grass and rivers (made completely of tiles that were available for free on the web) with a gaudy orange and pink pony plopped down in the middle. Not much of a game yet, but I could clearly see the vision of where I wanted Ponyplace to be. The question was, how do I get there?
The first thing that I knew I needed was movement, crucial in making Ponyplace a game rather than a slide show. This was where I was about to start my intimate romance with scripts. *cue dramatic music* At this point I wasn’t familiar at all with templates, but knowing about them now makes this a lot easier to explain – so I’ll attempt to do so.
A template is really a pretty simple concept that took me a little bit of time to comprehend, so I’ll try to define one in terms that will make everyone understand. Basically, every object in your world has a template. It isn’t necessarily its own unique template (for example, every gnoll in your RPG can be from a gnoll template) but every object needs one. What this means is that if I make a gnoll template, and make it so that gnoll has 40 hitpoints, and give it pink hair – every gnoll that I place down in my game using that template will have 40 hitpoints and pink hair. If I want an ogre instead of gnoll, then I make a new template called “Ogre.” Templates are the cookie cutter for all the different cookies I’ll want to put in my game.
Now that I’ve given a little primer, I’ll explain how I made my pony move. Right off the bat I thought to myself, “How the heck will I come up with the code to make my pony move!!??one11” but it proved to be quite simple. We have this awesome resource called the Metaplace Wiki that has an entire section dedicated to code snippets. These are little pieces of rad functionality that I can completely rip off (read: steal) by coping and pasting it into my world. There happened to be one named “Simple click-to-move” and since I like simplicity – I stole it.
-- Inputs and commands
Define Commands()
(1) MakeInput('Click on terrain to move to destination.',
'mouse-terrain', 'click', 'none', 'slide_terrain')
(2) MakeCommand('slide_terrain', 'Slide to destination on terrain.',
'x:float', 'y:float', 'z:float')
end
-- Commands
Command slide_terrain(x,y,z)
(a) distance = math.abs(x - self.x) + math.abs(y-self.y)
(b) slideTime = 350 + distance * 75
(c) SlideObject(self, x, y, z, slideTime, 1)
end
There’s the code. Daunting, isn’t it? It’s really not that scary – but I remember being TERRIFIED by this. Let’s break it down a bit.
Let’s start with the second section which is the Commands section. This is the real meat of the script; the part that actually makes the avatar walk around. The first line (labeled with an “a”) just calculates the distance between where you’re currently standing and where you click to move. The “b” line calculates the time you should take to move in, or the speed. The third line, “c”, actually moves the object. SlideObject is a built in function that my world will already understand as long as I give it the right parameters. You’ll notice there are 6 parameters (self, x, y, z, slideTime, 1) and I could explain each one – but this is already a lot more technical then I wanted it to be.
The first section is the Inputs and Commands section. Line 2 just makes a command named “slide_terrain” and line 1 makes it so that command is executed whenever you click the mouse. Easy! Less than 15 lines of code and now every single person who plays Ponyplace will be able to move.
So I opened up my player script and plunked this chunk of code right down inside it. I saved the script (which checks for any script errors – luckily I didn’t have any errors or I’d blame someone else for them). My player script comes automatically attached to the player template, but I double checked it just to be sure. I tried to click around in my world and nothing happened.
Oh! Silly me, I forgot to change my world to “play” mode. Worlds have two different modes when you’re in the tools – “Build Mode” and “Play Mode”. A simple button click toggles the two modes, but while you’re in build mode it makes it so that your scripts don’t function so that things aren’t moving around while you’re working on your world. I changed to “Play Mode” and clicked around. Nothing happened. I swore.
After swearing a lot, I decided to just restart my world to see if that would fix it. It did! (Turns out I could have just reloaded my user instead of restarting the whole world, but I hadn’t learned that yet). My pony could now glide gently around the pasture by clicking the mouse. It was incredible! I have never felt so triumphant in my life. After prancing around the office and proudly proclaiming that I am the best programmer who has ever worked on Metaplace – I came down to earth and realized that I hadn’t REALLY done anything other than copy/paste a script. It still felt amazing and made me want to do more and more. After learning how to make my pony walk, it was only minutes of work to learn how to make the pony rear up on its hind legs when you hit space bar. Hitting “E” for eat, made my pony put its head down to the ground. I imported a galloping sound for when the pony ran, and a munching sound for when the pony eats. It was simple and awesome.
I quickly announced to everyone in the office that I have created a masterpiece and that they should come check it out by pasting them a URL right to my game. I had 5 or 6 people in Ponyplace at once, everyone an exact orange and pink clone of my pony (those thiefs!). Everyone could click around and move because they were all “players” and the player template had a player script that contained my movement code. All little objects running around my world, instantly multiplayer with all the same abilities. Watching everyone run around galloping, eating, and rearing up on their hind legs was an exhilarating feeling. It wasn’t much, but I had made my first epic game within Metaplace.
Tami "Cuppycake" Baribeau
Community Manager
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Posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 4:22 PM PDT
Community Spotlight - The Peon by Jeff McNab
This week's community spotlight is on "The Peon", a type of Real Time Strategy game created by Jeff McNab.
Can you tell us a bit about The Peon?
In The Peon, players take on the role of lowly peasants in a medieval city who travel between various zones collecting ore, wood and grain. These resources are then deposited in the city. The resources are used to increase the size of the city, granting bonuses to all players, along with being used for the local city's defenses. Player's increase their capacity to harvest and carry resources each time they deposit resources in the city , similar to experience gained in more traditional RPGs. The players all have to work together, harvesting the various resources, in order to make the city flourish and grow, along with keeping an invading army at bay.
How long did it take you to make this world?
While I haven't kept good notes on exact figures, I would guess that it's somewhere between 35 and 50 hours. The majority of it was spent on art assets, since I've been hand painting most of them. For instance, I spent about 12 hours of time creating the player sprite because of the various angles he needs to face. I would say I've spent about 60% of the time on art assets, with 30% on scripting and learning various Metaplace functionalities and the last 10% on pre-production, a.k.a. thinking and writing.
What has been your favorite part about working with Metaplace so far?
The community. Hands down. Both employees and non-employees alike have such a strong passion for the product, and it shows. Getting help is extremely easy and people are more than willing to help out with anything you may be having questions about.
I also like the ease with which you can create virtual worlds. It really is as simple as "point-click-virtual world". The manner in which Metaplace allows game creators to get a working game up quickly with lots of functionality is just great!
Where did you obtain the art for The Peon?
I created all of it from scratch, so I guess the answer would be "my head". When I first started working on the art, I was playing around with a more painterly style using my pen tablet. Of course, this was only created after using "filler" sprites (circles and squares of various colors) while I played around with the game design.
Did you work alone or collaborate with others?
I worked alone on this project. I wanted to see how much I could do by myself. Metaplace is such an easy tool to use that this was not only possible, but actually easy to do.
If not finished, what else do you have planned your game?
It's definitely not finished right now. There's a couple of bugs in the player script, along with various other non-implemented aspects (like the invading army). Of course, lots of art assets to do. I've actually been toying around with the idea of changing the visuals completely for a more comical style of graphics.
Do you have any other worlds or games in mind to build on Metaplace, or are you working on
anything else right now?
There isn't enough space for me to tell you about all of the game ideas I want to play around with on Metaplace. The issue isn't ideas more than time right now.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I'm a senior studying game design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I've been interested in game design ever since I started playing desktop role-playing games, such as D&D, at the age of 8. I spent lots of time playing games and interacting with people through games. It's one of the reasons I have such a large interest in virtual world design.