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I tryed the game two days ago and it was really cool !

I meet ChickenX and we do some quest together, two instances (i got a nice armor on the last one =p), and i saw that this game have a great potential.

Cons in my opinion :

Combat system should be more dynamic. Maybe some visual effects or something. (I heard that skills are coming and i think it will be really great !)
(A small combat log would be cool too)

Pros :

Oh my god, there is too much ><.
The world map with party members, yourself, quests is awesome !
Showable stuff (don't know how to say that, juste the fact that you see what you're wearing)
Graphics are really cool.
Quest system.
Randomly generated instances !

Well, there is much more but i think you already know that.

Some suggestions :

- Hold backspace to unwrite your message on the chat =p. (you have to press it multiple times actually)
- When you type a long message, you can't see the end.

- Show your amount of cooper when you"re trading with a NPC.
- Drag & drop on the inventory is really cool, but when you drap an item over another it should switch them. (Sorry for my english, tell me if you don't understand)
- Stack items on the inventory. You should at least stack 5 appels on one case, or something like that.
- Maybe more stats on the items (weapons, armors, etc.) and for the player too.
- Shortcut for stats in S, but S is used for moving.


I had a great time testing this game and i think it will be awesome in the future =).

Thanks for all the feedback.

Me and Chicken agree with the things you said and we will address them as soon as possible. Keep the feedback coming guys.

Also we fixed the southern instance so it's possible to continue the quest lines.

Haha, awesome, i'm gonna kick that boss ass !

Just a small update. We've been working a lot on skills and making them look pretty nice. I've taken a few screenshots of some of the skills we have done so far. They're not all complete, but better then nothing.

Please excuse the assassin's name.

Thanks to Michael for helping with one of the screenshots.

Poison Gas skill.



Assassin using the spike trap skill.



Using Multi heal on Michael and Myself.



Assassin's stealth abilities. See if you can find my character just a skill I'm testing out.

Ive played now for 30minutes(?) and I like what I see so far. I suppose there are lots of features to come, but Ill just say what I rly want to see upcoming.
Before i give my suggestions, i should say that ive played lots of MMOs. There are some key things that are the same in every mmo, so i have a good idea of what players generally expect.

First things first, the key thing of almost every MMO (even though its my least liked..);
Quests
?, !
The quests should really be marked by ? and !. Not because every other game does it so, but because its something that everyone who has ever played even a single MMO will expect. This is like you intuitively made the healthbar red. You expect it to be red because thats what you generally see. So please change that, for the sake of casual gamers.

Also I generally see the questlog hotkey on L (was the first thing i hit). I had to look at the menu to find out that its q. Now why do I prefer L over Q? Because q is closer to WASD and should do something you need to do quickly. Even if you have nothing to put there, Id prefer the questLog to be on L, because Im used to it from like every MMO that features quests.
A changable hotkeyset would also be nice(but not rly necessary if you go with the standards).

Introducing Quests
I guess you have planned something like this, but I will still point it out.
When I entered the game and looked around I found relatively late the first quest npc (again, I search for "!"s, not for "Q"s). The quest marker was a bit hard to see, it should be moving up and down or blinking or something.
So when I found him and made the library quest I was pretty lost. Because there was no next thing I was supposed to do. An introducing questline should go like this: "Oh hi youre new here (blabla). Do this:" -some quest- "Well done (blabla), now go see that guy" -move to another npc and do his quest-...and so forth.

Interface
Login
Dunno if it is because I played Applet-version, but when you type in your username and password, you should be able to hit enter to login.
When choosing your character to play, you should be able to just doubleclick it to enter the game.
Just to shorten the time you need to finally play the game.

Chat
The chat should go to the bottom left corner. Thats just where it belongs and everyone expects it to be.
It should also be a real window. Means the lines should never ever disappear. You dont want the player to miss a message because hes fighting and then he has to open the chatlog to see what was written there.
It should hold like 5 lines per standard and should be expandable(to the top and to the right).

Something I noticed when typing a message thats too long for the bar to hold: It still takes the characters you put in and writes everything in the chat, but you dont see what you type there because the text doesnt move to the left. There are 2 options I see: limiting chat input to a certain number of characters, or moving the text so that you can always see what ur writing. Ive seen both, and both is valid imo.

Minimap
When the chat goes to the bottom left, where should the minimap go then? To the top right. I guess you know why.

Other little things
The teleporting between maps is a bit awkward...when i was on the the first map(outside the library) and walked up I got teleported, which is ok, but I was stuck behind a tree oO I had to relog to get out of there. I dont know if i like that you are teleported whenever you hit any side of the map, but it surely shouldnt teleport you where you cant get out anymore xD

I had a hard time figuring out the battlesystem. Maybe due to the lack of introduction and animation. But all in all its ok. Nothing more, nothing less.
My suggestion would be to make it like Secret of Mana, if thats not too hard to do.

The stats-hotkey is S. But S is also the key for walking down...i suggest planting that on C (like Character).

One thing I rly liked is that the trees get transparent when you walk behind them. Why not make the same for buildings?

Other Suggestions
Crafting? Always a nice little thing to do, and to earn some money.
Guilds, I expect you alrdy planned something like them.
Families? like player X marrys player Y and they adopt player Z or something. no key feature but always fun to have.


So thats it for my first impression. I woudlve played longer but my suggestions alrdy stockpiled up and I dont want to flood you with them.


Edit: Oh and one little question: Do you want to make just another ORPG or do you wanna try something new?

Thanks for all your valid points. Myself and Benoit will look through them and fix up some / if not all of the things you mentioned.

We've already got the mockup of the new chatbox which is scrollable and what not so you wont need to check any chatlogs anymore.

We're still working on the quest layout and directions for it. We have now implemented the quest locations being shown on the worldmap. So, that makes things a bit easier.

We definitely want to try making something new and we have big plans for FTO. It's just we're trying to get the base stuff down. We already have a crafting system, but it's yet to be fully implemented yet.

Thanks again for your post it's very helpful.

Thanks for all the feedback shiroto! It's well described and you make strong points. Our focus has been a little all over the place so that is why certain feature are not fully polished. We do in fact have over 3 hours of quests! I agree with just about 100% of what you said and hope to address these as we have time.

We do plan on FTO being different, as Chicken mentioned, we are working on getting the base setup first then hope to work more on our unique features.

Ideas revolve around guild operated towns, live events, competitive events, custom guild quests etc..

Now this is something that makes me excited! I rly wanna see what this will look like.

I have thought of another rather big thing you might want to consider(should still be possible since you are in the early stages of development).
Concerning the teleports; Why not get rid of them all? Just one big map where you just get teleported when you enter a building or instances. I understand that this is much harder to programe but the benefits are totally worth it, imo. Not only are the players less constricted in their movement, you will also have more freedom in what features you can possibly add in.
One feature I can think of right now would be wandering hordes of monsters. They'd never stick too long with on place, which would add a massive amount of dynamic to the game. Yes, this is also a big change to a ORPG, but its nothing Ive ever seen before (therefore, something new).

Since you are going to add a crafting system. How about player generated quests? These two things would go hand in hand; one player could say "OK I will focus only on smithing!" and then he hires another player to get him materials. Of course, to make this relevant the "smithing"-thing should be more than just select materials, click craft, wait, repeat. (this is also one thing I have yet to see in a single MMO)

I still have more things I'm gonna mention later on. The thing is, I always wanted to make an MMO but its quite impossible alone xD So a hell lot of ideas stockpiled up in my head and I try to throw them at you one by one ^^

Glad to hear you're so excited gives us more motivation to work.

Yeh we really want a nice guild system. Something different then I've seen. It's going to play such an integral roll in the game. We'll had guild stats, leader boards, warring clan stats etc. It'll be really great. A game in it's own right really. It's something for the future, but it's good to fantasize and think of ideas for it all.

The whole one big map thing is something we've discussed quite a lot and it's something we will add in the future. It really improves the flow of the game and people wont end up stuck behind trees.

The wandering hordes sounds interesting also. Perhaps you could elaborate on it a bit more. What we could do is have certain areas on the main island where hordes of monsters could spawn. Or even a random NPC that spawns, perhaps a character and he says "There's some enemy hordes coming through this way. Perhaps you could stop them so they wont enter the town." The NPC would spawn in random locations on the map and if you find it by chance you can do it and get some kind of special reward.

I see what you mean by the crafting/quest type system. It'd be quite cool for an economy. Perhaps it starts off players work for NPC in mines, other various jobs to earn money and then they could hire other players to find the materials needed and then they can craft. Perhaps it could lead to player owned shops where the players themselves produce the items that will be sold.

Thanks for more of your great ideas and suggestions.

Yes, thats exactly where I was going. The possibilities for such a system are quite large.

Currently its like this(in every orpg): There are certain areas where certain mobs spawn. There will always be the same mobs that spawn and always a limited amount of them.
Lets say for a moment we would throw this whole system away and create something new, something more dynamic. These 2 things are still given: we have areas, we have mobs. But instead of mobs just spawning, they are families of mobs "breeding". Means theyll increase in population if left alone. And theyll disappear if all of them are killed. Since they dont spawn, they arent bound to one area. So they could move around freely, while sticking together. Thus there would be no more "safe" areas, which would force partyplay even in early stages(which would encourage one to join a guild).
Since mobs are breeding, players would have to hunt down certain families of mobs to prevent them from spreading too far. Another consequence is that quests cant really be static anymore. They have to be adjusted from time to time. Like when one town has suddenly a family of strong mobs on its front door, quests should appear to kill a certain amount of them. For these dynamic quests I imagine something like a "questboard" or an organization which hands them out. Players could also go to this organization and offer quests. Those will most likely be "I need resource X from mob Y; go hunt them down!", since resources will be harder to find when mobs are always moving. Guilds could evolve around monster hunting, could be really fun.
BUT handling such a system is quite hard. And I wouldnt recommend to throw the old system away just yet. Id rather stick with the old system and integrate the new one to a certain degree. Like there is a static core in the world, where everything is as you expect it to be, but farther out things could get more "interesting".

Hey, first of all just let me say, "WOW!" You guys are really doing an amazing job! I played it for a few hours today pretty much non-stop!

There are just a few tweaks that I would suggest apart from what everyone else has been saying:

Day/Night Transition is really cool but is a bit too fast. However I talked to one of the admins today (Not sure who it was) and they said it was for debugging purposes. As a fellow developer I completely understand, just wanted to bring it to your attention just as a note.

Some background music would really add to the overall polish of the game. I know it is still early in development and I'm sure you guys are already thinking of it. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with.

The quests had a great flow to them. It was pretty straight forward and easy to know where to go next, but I would suggest actually having names for the areas instead of things like "the main town." Then you could flash the names of the towns/areas at the top of the screen whenever the player enters them. This will help commit areas to the player's memory, or you could have the name of the area be at the bottom of the mini map.

Also, for quests, it is sometimes hard to see the bronze exclamation points above some of the quest givers' heads (especially the ones that are indoors) because they sometimes blend in with the surroundings. Also, this same issue kind of arises in the world map; it is hard to see the player X location because it is green. Maybe you could make it red and flashing or something to help it stand out?

I'm glad to hear that you guys are working on animations for the characters for fighting! That was something else I noticed. Animations just add more polish which can really make it go a long way.

I absolutely LOVE the shadows for the people and environments! Really great stuff! It really adds depth to the game. NICE WORK! Also the art is fantastic! Who does it? Whoever it is keep it up! Love the snow areas! Can't wait to see them! I wish I could do pixel art like that! I've always loved that style!

Balancing for fighting seems to be off, but that is to be expected for a game this early in development. Once I had the Axe Lvl. 5 I was basically a god....cool but unbalanced However, I know that making yourself OP really helps you nail down certain mechanics without having to worry about dying. For the future though...I was able to get that axe pretty early so I would suggest putting level requirements on items. I'm sure you already know this and just have it this way so you can test things easier...that's what I'd do

I also love the idea of random hordes of enemies showing up. It'd be great if they were just random events that you could take part in and if they lasted a while. That way if you are there at the start and you stay till it is over you get big rewards, but if you come in at the end you still get something, but just nothing quite as nice. (Gives incentive to stay logged on and see if another random event will happen )

Anyway, overall I'm definitely impressed. I'll be following this game for a long time. I can't wait to see what you guys do! I'm especially looking forward to the abilities and new areas/quests!

Oh some other ideas just came to me:
- Instances: how about an option of difficulty before you enter? The harder the difficulty they better the loot/experience but you will also need the help of others. The easier the difficulty you can probably do it yourself, but you won't get all the nice loot

- It'd be nice to sell items you no longer need to the vendors. If there was a way to do that already implemented then sorry I just couldn't figure it out

- Do you guys have plans for mounts? It'd be cool later in the game for getting around especially if you make the world really huge.


Anyway, keep it up guys! Stay motivated, stay focused, stay coding, stay creating!

Also, if you are looking for any extra help still, I'd love to help if I can. I'm in my last year of college as a Computer Science major and I have quite a bit of Java experience under my belt. I'm still learning some of the graphical aspects of programming and I'm trying to get away from just doing school assignments, but I think I'd be up to the challenge. Anyway I'll be here if you could use some help

Oh and one more thing (I feel like I've said that a lot in this post haha), when the slick android port is done I think this could really be cool on Android devices...what do you think?

Take care,

Jack

Another thing. Do you guys have people working on the lore of the game so there is an over-arching story that kind of ties the world together? Just wondering if you did or if you guys are primarily focused on the base/core gameplay and plan to fill in all the story content later.


Can't wait...really liking where this game is going!

Jack

G'day everyone. Just doing an update post to let anyone who was following FTO know we're still alive and kicking. There's been a lot of updates, fixes and changes since last time we posted.

There's a ton of new skills and now new characters start off with a very basic skill (skill depends on their class) we're still working on ideas and implementing of how players will earn new skills.

Ben has added in PVP now so we'll need to update the skills, but yeah it's quite good. When you PVP your party can verse another party in instanced maps and what not. It's still in it's early stages, but cool none the less and also leads way to Battle Grounds (Which is basically a rip off of DOTA. It will be a mini event / game type thing)

We have updated our forums look so now it feels more FTO styled and have made it possible to link game accounts with forum accounts and somehow we will tie it in so it's possible to actually do some quest type things on the forums and it gives you something in game. e.g Get a post count of 50 and you will receive a bushel of apples.

Ben's added in Cinematic scripting commands so we can now have cinematic events and what not. Which is cool. Also some more quest support in scripting. So, we can now have puzzles in quests as apposed to just Find X object or Kill X enemies.

Anyways enough babbling. Here's a trailer I've put together for FTO. Not the best trailer in the world, but shows some of the new features and old.

FTO Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmciB-Q6cls

Progress thread (please not that this is not all of our progress) :

http://forum.fantasytalesonline.net/ind ... opic=120.0

Hi, I'm planning on making a game like your game
(Fantasy Tales Online) - MMORPG, I know how to create games using slick2d, but my problem is I don't now how to make online games, what things do
I need to make an online game?
(I know how to use a database - MySql)

can someone give me a link or a source code on how to make a simple online game?

I want to learn the part where players will be able to see each other in the game, chat, battle and trade,

I want to learn that, so if you know a website or a book about that please do tell me,

Thanks.

Ahh perhaps i can help you here. Soon i will be releasing a huge chunk of source code that I have been working on. It is a side scrolling pvp game with multiplayer support using kryonet. It covers all the code from making the client, server, and packets to send. Give me a few days to clean some things up. The game itself is not finished but it has some fancy effects (fireballs arrows, chat, client side physics). This is much more complicated than what you might be looking for, but kryonet is fantastic! Ill have it up in a few days.

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