READ ME: Introduction to Shattered Earth

[MasterSwordUltima]

Shattered Earth started out approximately ten years ago by War Lord as an almost online version of Final Fantasy 4, not unlike comparing Zelda Classic to the original Legend of Zelda game. It didn't take long for the project to take on a life of its own and further distinguish itself, yet keeping the familiarity of the early Final Fantasy titles. Eventually the server was shutdown due to other things taking precedence. The game would continue to bounce on and offline in various incarnations, but never with the same direct ties back here at AGN. That is about to change with the latest incarnation of the game having full support here at its birthplace. Shattered Earth is coming back.
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-What is Shattered Earth exactly?
Simply put; an online role-playing game. The game plays like most early Final Fantasy titles, with a top-down perspective. Combat is all real time, and is handled in a way that is similar to Zelda Classic.


-What Operating System do I need?
Any Windows version from ME on up should be fine. Playing the game on a Unix based system with a Windows emulator may be possible, but considering the vast array of Unix flavors, testing everything is nearly impossible for me.


-Where can I download Shattered Earth?
The server has been up for quite some time, and the game client (although rapidly changing) is also working. At this time, only game staff are allowed access. An announcement will be made in the following weeks during the game's official release with information on how to download your client and set up your account.


-How can I become a staff member?
Get in contact with me through the forums (via PM). We are currently looking for additional staff so if you are interested in being a part of this project let me know.


~MSU

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/64440954/ShatteredEarth144Screen.png


-Fancy Features List:
-An ever growing world based on the styles and mythos of the early generation Final Fantasy games, as well as AGN's own quip.
-Real time combat not unlike the style of Zelda Classic.
-Four schools of magic spells - black (offensive), white (curative), blue (learned from enemies), and summons (eye candy)
-A bitchin' soundtrack, featuring custom music by Dechipher.
-You will be able to use synthesis to combine items into more potent forms - including adding elemental properties to weapons and armor
-"Breathtaking" animations. The original Shattered Earth had limited animations - I've gone ahead and doubled that.
-The new hot-bar. Casting cure or swapping equipment in a pinch. A staple for any MMO.
-A vast amount of different weapons, armors, gear, etc from across video games. Item collection has always been a favorite of mine, so I plan on making sure there is plenty of treasure.
-Dungeons, Caves, Castles that weave together. Meaning that you may need items from one dungeon in order to access parts of another.
-Bits of user generated content. (things like graffiti on walls, or posters advertising ZQuests hanging inside the Allum Inn, for example).
-Most importantly, the fantastic AGN community.

[Ventus]

Looks like it'll be pretty fun. So I have a question. How much longer until this is released to the public?

[MasterSwordUltima]

At the current rate we're going, I would say near the beginning of the year. It all depends on how much mapping gets done.

[Ventus]

Well that's good to hear that it is being worked on. I'm looking forward to this! Because I'm quite interested in how it plays.

[Tim]

Am I grandfathered into the mapping team?

[ctrl-alt-delete]

For those that don't get it, if you want to beta test, post now.

MSU, what's a brother got to do to get in on this for a couple weeks?

[Ventus]

I wouldn't mind trying the beta. I might not be able to play it at home (Dial up excuse) But I can play it when I go to my friends house and bum his Wifi.
Which I will be doing this weekend :P

[Glenn the Great]

I'd like to beta test.

I'm also interested in helping to produce content for the game, whether it be maps, items, enemies, etc.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I'd like to beta test.

I'm also interested in helping to produce content for the game, whether it be maps, items, enemies, etc.

You will not be able to defeat me while wearing my 4 strength 4 stam leather belt.

[Glenn the Great]

You will not be able to defeat me while wearing my 4 strength 4 stam leather belt.

Forest Leather Belt?
HEEEEE HURRRRRRRRR!

[Nicholas Steel]

I'll beta participate, it looks like the game finally runs in a large window so I can actually see stuff! I found the original pretty cool as a pure time waster/basic interaction with other people.

[Ventus]

So... Stupid question Could this run half ass on a dial up connection?

[Dashie]

This look fun. :D

[Nicholas Steel]

I'll beta participate, it looks like the game finally runs in a large window so I can actually see stuff! I found the original pretty cool as a pure time waster/basic interaction with other people.

I don't have any experience with it but I'd also be willing to try out mapping. I have no skills at all in making brand new art though.

[Sam Atoms]

At the current rate we're going, I would say near the beginning of the year. It all depends on how much mapping gets done.

Well, that could be a problem. Because there's that whole thing about December 21 and..... well...... how...... the earth will shatter. :eek:

[Ventus]

Well, that could be a problem. Because there's that whole thing about December 21 and..... well...... how...... the earth will shatter. :eek:
Man come on, If the world was going to end, Wouldn't you think we would have already had something happen already before hand :P
Well if it does and we live. At least we will be playing Shattered Earth (Pun intended).

[Tim]

The older incarnations of SE ran alright on slower connections, I think.

[Glenn the Great]

My favorite memory of this game was how when players died they turned into ghosts, and until they were resurrected, anything they typed out in chat would come out as some form of OOOOOooooOoOoooOOoooOOOOooooh. One of my friends at the time, I think maybe it was bigjoe, had to IM me outside of game because he was "oooh-ing"

[MasterSwordUltima]

I'm really happy to see that there is still interest in this game. I'm equally as excited to release the game for everyone to play, but I am only one person. If you are interested in helping (mapping definitely), please send me a PM - or better yet message me on facebook (I'm listed on the AGN member directory doc).

If you are savvy with Visual Basic 6 and want to help debug, I could use the man power as well. :smoke:



So... Stupid question Could this run half ass on a dial up connection?
Like Tim said, you should be fine. I used to play the original on a 28.8k modem.

[Moosh]

This is relevant to my interests. I'd be willing to help test or anything else I can do to help.


You will not be able to defeat me while wearing my 4 strength 4 stam leather belt.
Dude you're already level 18?

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Well, that could be a problem. Because there's that whole thing about December 21 and..... well...... how...... the earth will shatter. :eek:

I see what you did there and I like it. Where have you been?


My favorite memory of this game was how when players died they turned into ghosts, and until they were resurrected, anything they typed out in chat would come out as some form of OOOOOooooOoOoooOOoooOOOOooooh. One of my friends at the time, I think maybe it was @bigjoe (http://armageddongames.net/member.php?u=39056) , had to IM me outside of game because he was "oooh-ing"

This has to return.


This is relevant to my interests. I'd be willing to help test or anything else I can do to help.

Dude you're already level 18?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Let's get back to the regular program, he may be able to hear us, but we can't hear his bitchin'. lulz

[Ventus]

Like Tim said, you should be fine. I used to play the original on a 28.8k modem.
Sweet I might be able to do some sort of online gaming at home finally.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Sweet I might be able to do some sort of online gaming at home finally.

You won't enjoy it as much when I'm using the jump command to thrust my lance deep into you druids skull.

[Ventus]

You won't enjoy it as much when I'm using the jump command to thrust my lance deep into you druids skull.
From all the talk you are giving, you must be at a pretty high level. :P, Let me ask. Are we supposed to kill each other?
Either way this shall be interesting.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Ahw, please don't request jumping just yet. ;) Although I could make a quasi-Jump...but it would come off as poorly emulated.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

qcxO3awKHaE

plzkthx

[MasterSwordUltima]

I'm well aware of what !Jump is! I have an idea of how this could work.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I didn't post it to show you what it was, haha. I posted it to remind you how necessary it is to the core of this game. Without Jump, this game will fail.

[Glenn the Great]

Something that's always bothered me about the previous incarnations of SE is how easy it is to stand in 1 tile thin choke-points and block access to areas for other players. Are you planning to do anything about this?

[Tim]

I've already thought my mapping over... I'm avoiding narrow passages.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Something that's always bothered me about the previous incarnations of SE is how easy it is to stand in 1 tile thin choke-points and block access to areas for other players. Are you planning to do anything about this?

If this becomes an issue I will change the collision detection to allow players to walk through other players. I'm hoping it doesn't come down to that.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

If this becomes an issue I will change the collision detection to allow players to walk through other players. I'm hoping it doesn't come down to that.

Or, even better, you could allow a jump command...

[Ventus]

Or, even better, you could allow a jump command...

Man you have a weird obsession with that jump command.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Just call me _L_...

[Gleeok]

The UPS guy kept trying to jump over my mom but he just couldn't make it over. I don't think he was very good at sports.


For the player blocking you could have a counter that increments for every logic update the player doesn't move when standing between solid tiles, then when checking collisions between players you could check and see how long someone has been "doing nothing" for...? [end]/trying to think up easy fixes.

[Nicholas Steel]

Just let players push each other around. That way griefers have to actively be sitting there walking against you in order to grief. Or use a paper weight on the appropriate keyboard key.

[CJC]

Combine Gleeok's and Franpa's suggestions. If two players push against each other for five solid seconds, they switch positions.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Ya'll are aware of the Suggestions forum, right?

[Nicholas Steel]

Ya'll are aware of the Suggestions forum, right?

Maybe, but it's all cold and desolate over there D:

[Ventus]

Maybe, but it's all cold and desolate over there D:
Well that might be, but you and some others just posted over in the cold and desolate area and warmed it up.
So take any suggestions over there please :P

[Gleeok]

Just curious how you are doing the mapping. Is it the standard method of creating tile maps and placing events and objects down, or something else?

[MasterSwordUltima]

Pretty much. You paint the tiles onto the grid, apply attributes for each tile. There are quite a few layers for tiles too; ground, multiple mask and fringe layers, and animating layers for mask and fringe as well.

I don't dabble in the autotile stuff from RPG Maker in this because I prefer to have complete control over tile placement.

[Nicholas Steel]

So you can't have pre-configured attributes applied to tiles before placing them down? (Like ZQUEST)

[Gleeok]

Oh, I didn't know you were using rpgm for mapping. I was going to ask if you wanted some FF1 maps in xml format at some point to dick with.

...What is a fringe layer?

[MasterSwordUltima]

Wait wait, I'm not using RPG Maker for mapping. It's all Visual Basic .dat files baby. ;)

Fringe layers are the layers of tiles that are fringe. A fringe tile is drawn to the screen on top of the player - stuff that the player walks under.

And having the tile attributes separate from the actual drawn tile opens up a lot more options.

[Nicholas Steel]

And having the tile attributes separate from the actual drawn tile opens up a lot more options.

True, but you can have pre-defined attributes and let tiles that have already been placed be customized (Without influencing the pre-defined behavior of the tile). So you can have a tile pre-defined to be Fringe and everytime you place it it will have that property, you can then go and set some of those tiles to not be Fringe if you so desire and it won't affect all the tiles or the behavior of newly placed tiles.

Regardless, mapping sounds pretty easy.

[Gleeok]

True, but you can have pre-defined attributes and let tiles that have already been placed be customized (Without influencing the pre-defined behavior of the tile). So you can have a tile pre-defined to be Fringe and everytime you place it it will have that property, you can then go and set some of those tiles to not be Fringe if you so desire and it won't affect all the tiles or the behavior of newly placed tiles.

Regardless, mapping sounds pretty easy.

This. I like this idea. :)

[Glenn the Great]

I've made a couple maps for SE over the past couple of days and I must say that the editor is pretty damn good.

It would, however, be very convenient if the tiles had pre-defined attributes that could be altered after the tile is placed.
It would make doing blocking (defining which areas are unwalkable) a lot more convenient and less error-prone.

[Nicholas Steel]

Nit yeah I'm still somewhat keen on having a go at mapping stuff.

Edit: I can't remember what I meant to say instead of Nit D: (Which is obviously a typo)

[Imzogelmo]

What if each tile had a property index, which was a lookup value to a table of scripts? Then, if you changed a certain tile's property (or the script for that ID), it would change all of them simultaneously?

[MasterSwordUltima]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/64440954/28DEC2012.png

[Prrkitty]

Wow! Looking most excellent y'all :)

[MasterSwordUltima]

That latest screenshot was a test at using different "graphics packs", or whatever you would like to call them. The amount of work that went into that far outclassed the result. So that's being saved for after launch. (Especially considering players can make that stuff too).

[Lightwulf]

I say, ol' chap, crackin' job, there! [/English accent]
Seriously though, it looks sweet!

I'd like to try my own hand at mapping for this, if you don't mind. I've loved FF4 (a.k.a. FF2 at the time, when released in America) for the longest time now, and I've been wanting to make my own stuff for just as long.

[Din]

The wheel on the left of the tower doesn't seem to have too much of an outline as opposed to the other things in the shot. Looks a bit odd.

Otherwise, looks good!

[Fortis Nova]

Holy crap, this game came back? I thought it dead for good years ago. I remember I made a couple of tile sheets for it way back when. Do you want me to dig those up again?

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Holy crap, this game came back? I thought it dead for good years ago. I remember I made a couple of tile sheets for it way back when. Do you want me to dig those up again?

Umm, yes please.

[Fortis Nova]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v237/Tucsondoug/PyramidTilesetcomplete-1-1.png (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Tucsondoug/media/PyramidTilesetcomplete-1-1.png.html)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v237/Tucsondoug/WaterPalaceTileset-2.png (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Tucsondoug/media/WaterPalaceTileset-2.png.html)

[MasterSwordUltima]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64440954/SE9_19_13.png

Had some spare time today, so I arranged the GUI a little nicer. Too much empty space near the HP and MP bars now, not sure what to put in there. :) Last I checked, two beta testers are up to level 7, so that's cool.

[Glenn the Great]

Nice job, MSU. Did you ever fix the issues with magic spells? I never could get multiple spells to behave properly, some spells refused to cast, rearranging them on my hotkeys didn't work as you would expect.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the hotkeys were messing with that. When I use spells manually (select a target, then double click the spell from the spell inventory) they work fine. I'm not sure what was going on there, but it would somehow reference spell indexes incorrectly. So I did away with it, because I ran out of GUI room also.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64440954/SE9_19_13_p2.png

Also, not sure if I mentioned this. Added a nicer setup for mouse-over of items. Showing a bit more detail, such as efficacy of all stats, price, and type of item. The mouse over works both in your inventory and with your currently equipped items.

[Tim]

I need more time in a day for all my gaming. D: