Anyone that has login trouble after the change, post here, or contact me.

I will also be fixing a bug that kept the PayPal donations window from displaying. Thanks for telling me, guys.

Rebooting and or reinstalling have not worked to resolve the problem.

Thank you in advance!

    Anna

http://www.atomicmonks.com/animator/

You can even load and save animations...maybe even submit them to me if you do a bang-up job!

Feel free to ask questions and post here.

Lest you think this is a needless distraction from the Muties rewrite...it isn't.

I am JamRoll, an intermediate programmer in VB.  I am creating a game of my own (no name...yet).  I am currently using the clunky timer control provided by vb express 2008.  I have viewed your posts regarding timers...but I am confused.  I would have posted to yours posts, but it says I don't have permission to...

Currently I have

    Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)  _
      Handles Timer1.Tick
          Invalidate()
    End Sub

Um...how do I incorporate your method into my program???
Or am I just way off base here?  LOL

Sincerely,

JamRoll

Anyways... wanted to have a good look around, I see the maps are quite a bit more expansive now

Let us know how things are.

...ps, congrats on the baby man!

Fear not, I have not abandoned Muties, though I got a little delayed. I'm ramping back up a bit now.

Second, the changes have turned out to be bigger than I had originally planned or anticipated. Combined with a baby on the way, it has made this take a lot longer than I had planned. It also means that despite my original plan, when the new version launches, it will be another reset. You will keep your experience and level (you'll level up immediately when you migrate your character). You will lose all your items (but you'll be given a little more than their value in gems...more on that later).

This will be the last reset, no matter what. I'm not going through it again. Any changes from this version will be changes that will not require migrating data, period. Most of what comes will be new content, not new code.

Some of the biggest changes:

• The conversion to jQuery is done. It really leans up the client code.

• Item management is WAAAAY simpler now. You can carry any number of any item. Click on an item in your inventory to equip, click on equipment to remove it. No loot system, no container, no fence bag (stolen items just become inventory).

• Money is gone. That's right, no more bits...why would the post-apocalyptic wastes have currency? It's a barter system where the closest thing to currency is gems (a good, portable form of wealth). I can do some really neat stuff within the barter system, which I can talk about more later.

• The way objects (items, maps, actors, etc.) are stored is completely, utterly changed. It makes maintenance a lot easier on me and gives me more flexibility.

• I found and fixed some significant memory leaks in the old code. The game runs a lot better now.

• Chat is back to being a sidebar, but is handled much more cleanly. Tooltips also display in the sidebar instead of bouncing around the screen.

There's a lot more, and there are new maps, quests, and people to deal with too. And don't forget Skills.

It's much cleaner, significantly smaller, and requires a lot less code (both client and server). I had a minor epiphany the other day, and realized how much time I was spending trying to make the game look "non-web-browser". But you know what? It's a web browser. Links are OK. A text link can be much more easily understood than a culture-dependent graphic (which turns out to require a fancy, detailed tooltip anyway). And they certainly load faster!

Along the lines of "simpler, faster, better", a lot of things that were integrated completely into the main page have been ripped out. The character sheet and quests open in a popup window when you click them. More importantly, they pop up in a simple text display, suitable for printing or framing! (Ok, not completely...the character sheet will be a little stylish just to look better.)

The controls to equip, sell, etc. items show up right under a selected item. There is no "drop" command, since you'll now have unlimited inventory. There's no loot bag or container for the same reason. Equipped items get no buttons: hover for info, click to remove!

Character migration seems to be working for moving people to the skills system, but retaining quests, items, level, etc. I want to test that a little more though.

I'm finally getting up a good head of steam and making solid progress, after some slow times from work, baby, house repairs, and so on. I have an extended weekend coming up soon where I plan to lock myself in the programming dungeon to bang on this significantly!

Right now, I'm putting in the rest of the new power-ups and mutations, and I need to edit some items. Then all that should be left is to test the conversion process.

Remember as mentioned in other posts, if you want your initial SMACK distribution or species to be different than the new default, let me know before implementation.

My favorite new power-up is Kneecap Buster...an aimed attack that has a chance to completely immobilize the target.

Your attributes will be reset to five each, then five more points will be added based on your current attribute levels. That is, if you have a lot more strength than anything else, most of those five extra points will go into strength. When done, you'll have the same amount of attribute points as any new character...but then you'll be marked to level up back to your current level. You'll get the normal level-up screen, and will have to do that repeatedly until you're "back" to your original levels.

Your perks will be gone, so that you can pick new power-ups instead. Ubers will be refunded back to your account pool for you to spend as normal.

If you decide you don't like your automatic attribute setup, you can let me know and I'll manually change it for you, but I'll only do that once...so be sure.

By default, all existing characters will be Mutants instead of Human, meaning you will be effected by mutations as you level-up. If you don't want that, please let me know before you level-up your transformed character.

You will retain all items, quest status, etc.

They will work a little differently than in Muties 1.0. You won't buy them...in fact, you don't have to participate in mutations at all.

When you create a character (or upgrade to the new type, for existing characters), you'll also select your species:

• Homo sapiens: A normal human with stable DNA> This species does not mutate.

• Homo transitus: At the beginning, just like Homo sapiens, but with less stable DNA. As transitus is exposed to toxicity (gains levels, experiences some special events, gains large amounts of toxicity at one), he/she will pick up a random mutation.

Mutations have levels, and when a character gains a mutation it will be a random one at their level or below (no duplicates). Some will be good, some bad, and some will have no game effect at all (but be strange). Some mutations will be operable (they can be removed), but finding somebody able to do so will be difficult and expensive.

Mutations will not have "special" effects; this is, they will only affect skills and SMACK, if they actually do anything at all. A string of really bad luck could be very harmful to your character, but a string of really good luck could really pump you up. Overall, mutations so far are weighted slightly in favor of the beneficial.

I'm throwing this in because adding it will actually be very close to trivial, and I miss mutations.

I'm currently working on the skills system and getting it into the game.

I'm also looking at changing how the loot system works. You guys have no idea how complex tracking your various loot drops all over the place is. So I'm looking at changing it. Here's my ideas so far:

1. Remove the loot system completely. When you finish combat or "open" a container, a Loot window will pop up. You take or drop what you want. When you close the loot window, whatever was left in there is gone. This has the advantage of being simple and very straightforward, and leaves no room for misunderstanding.

2. Switch to a container system. Instead of Mind representing the number of items you remember, it would remember the number of containers. A container could be a dead enemy, a box lying around somewhere, etc. You could put quite a few items into a container, but would only remember the most recent containers you opened. Anything in a container that you "forget" would be gone forever. I know some of you guys might like this one, but a lot of players will get confused about what happened to their stuff.

3. Have technically unlimited inventory. No loot or temporary containers, instead everything just immediately goes into your inventory. You'd be allowed a certain number of "free" slots (say, 20 or so). If you exceed that number of slots you become encumbered, which doubles the number of actions any action requires. If you get REALLY encumbered (more than twice your normal max), it starts incurring triple charges. This gives you a lot of flexibility, but some players won't realize why their actions don't seem to last very long (no matter how I indicate it). Also, it could get a little complicated controlling the action cost everywhere.

The one I like best out of these so far is #1, just because it's so darn simple.

Discuss and argue!

I'll get back to it as fast as I can!