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Somehow, with the help of my parents and some others, I was able to get my passport situation straightened out, and I apologize to those who had to read my little outburst.

Actual design-related posts to come!  Meanwhile, I’m in Florida catching the waves for vacation.

What I mean is, it seems that all these “new” MMORPG’s coming out are just duplicates.  Where is the originality anymore?  I’m kinda tired of seeing so many games much-too-similar to other games like Ragnarok Online or Maple Story.  I’m sure we all know at least one that falls into this category.  (And by the way, I don’t consider myself an expert on this.  This is just my opinion on the subject. )

Wait, what’s an MMORPG?
Oh how out-of-the-loop you are my friend.  An MMORPG is an acronym for “Massively Multiplayer Online Game”.  It’s basically where you are able to interact with other people over the internet using the virtual environment built into game you are playing.  Some common examples are WoW (World of Warcraft), RO (Ragnarok Online), and MS (MapleStory).

It starts with one…
All it takes is one good, creative, original idea to come around.  And you can always tell when it’s really good, because within a short matter of time… poof.  Another game just like it magically appears under a different name! And another! And another….and another…and another…

They just want their share…
… in the market.  Of course if a new game happens to make $132,243,634 every day others are going to want to get a piece of that.  Who wouldn’t?  I’m not saying I’m against that.  That’s cool, and I’d probably do the same thing.  But what I just can’t stand is…

… poor planning, non-existant atmosphere, bad or weak storylines, etc etc.
I can understand if you’re a teeny tiny just-started-out-with-your-friends developer and can’t get access to corporate level resources or funding, and I salute that!  That’s great, go for the dream.  But generally, that’s not what I’m talking about.  If you are backed by a company and decide to launch a game, don’t just assume because it’s a game that other people can play online together that it’s automatically a winner.  It’s not.  No, I’m not joking.  The best parts of games (in my humble opinion) are the storyline, the atmosphere, and the players I’m interacting with.  The graphics don’t matter as much.  (Hey, look at all the people who still play text-based games! Yes, they’re still popular, and they don’t even have any graphics!)  If I’m playing a game, and I don’t get that “absorbed” feeling, (meaning I’m feeling detached from the atmosphere of the game) I have no reason to stay.  In the long run I’d like to believe that it’s feeling connected to the game that makes people stay and keeps them interested.

If the people who made it really care, the players will too.
I like to think that people enjoy feeling needed.  Truthfully, games would be nothing without players.  Also, GM’s or Admins should ALWAYS try to interact with others in the game.  It gives them a sense of being part of something.  It establishes that connection with the user.  It tells them “Hey, I care about you.  I don’t see you by your ID number or IP address, but I recognize you’re a human being who cares about this game, and I want to help you care more.”

Just remember: It’s quality over quantity.
People will flock to the games that are actaully well done.  The better the quality of the game overall, the more people are interested.  It doesn’t matter as much how many you make; one great one is enough.

Well, as I feared from the beginning from reading other reports from people who chose Grid-hosting from MediaTemple, my sites are intermittedly going up and down and giving an odd “Forbidden” error when I try to access them time to time.  This has gone on for about a day or so, and on their Service Status Weblog I am surprised to see that they don’t have a specific notice for my problems, or any that are of “High” status.

I really hope that MediaTemple clears this up soon.  To be honest, I like their service when it’s working.  But… it seems I might have to move again if this keeps up.  At least it’s happening before the end of the 30-days mark to get my money back if I need to…

So far, I’m very happy, it’s fast, I love the control panel, and the move was relatively easy. Looking forward to some great hosting.

Therefore, I think I am going to switch to MediaTemple Grid-Server hosting.  It seems like such a better solution instead of a shared server, and it’s pricing is pretty good in comparison. 

I’m really excited to see how it turns out. I should be ordering it sometime this week.

 

07-11-08 Korea 07, originally uploaded by goodalefampics.

Wow, ever since the start of their 2D Side-Scrolling MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) MapleStory, developed by Wizet, I’ve been interested in this company from South Korea. They seem to just continuously pump out great websites, great games, and the obviously top of the line setups for conventions!

They have a North American division, and it started as NX Games and changed later to Nexon America. Their flagship product was MapleStory, and to my knowledge it is still their biggest and most popular game, at least in America.

Wouldn’t it be cool to work for this company?

Lately I’ve gotten into making simple illustrations for sites (like this one!).  I know that to most, my art isn’t amazing, but it works and it can be used to make a creative, cleanly designed website.

This is kind of a mini-tutorial, and isn’t terribly detailed, but shows the basics of how I make my humble art.

     1. Draw it on paper!

Here’s a little sample I sketched before:

This is the easiest part for me.  I am not that great of an artist, but it’s definitely easier to draw something on paper compared to trying to draw with a tablet or mouse.  Whatever you’re drawing, whether it be a logo or a potato, paper lets you be messy.  Go ahead, scribble or sketch, it’ll be refined later!

     2. Scan it or take a picture of it with a digital camera.

(Below is a Canon PowerShot SD1000; Just an example of a nice Digital Camera.)

 Instead of a digital camera, I use the iSight camera on my Apple iMac.  It’s conveniant (built in) and simple.  Just hold up the paper and snap a pic.  However, a camera or scanner will do just fine.

     3. Open up Illustrator and drag your scanned/captured image onto the canvas in a new layer.

A new layer should be used so you can adjust opacity and see what you’re going to draw over it more clearly.

     4. Pen Tool!

Using the pen tool, trace over the outlines of the things you drew on paper (make sure to keep your pen tool created lines in a new layer over the original drawing!).  Also try to connect/close your pen tool shapes so you can fill them with colors or patterns after you’re done tracing.

     5. Color it!

If you’ve closed/connected the shapes you drew with the pen tool, just fill everything with color you think would look good.  Adjust the order of your shapes in the layer if needed.  Be free and creative!
     6. Look at your finished product.

Does it look good? Is it how you like it?  If not, go back and fix or add some things.  Be creative with it.  Have fun.

And that’s it.  Yes, I know, this tutorial isn’t much better than the quality of my art, but I hope to help others learning to do Illustration like me. Good luck!  (By the way, I can probably attach pictures of using the pen tool and Illustrator, so let me know if that would be helpful to do.)

What We’re Making Today:
We’re going to be making a small script comprised of a class, called Pet, with variables and functions inside of it to perform actions. Also keep in mind that this is extremely simple and most likely cannot be used for anything outside of practice without heavy modification.

Let’s Begin, Shall We?

1. Create a new file. Let’s call it pet.php.
2. Open up the file and prepare for editing! (I use Dreamweaver for most code editing, but you can use plenty of other programs like the built in TextEdit (Mac) and NotePad (Windows).
3. Always remember to save it as a PHP file! Saving it accidentally as .txt or .rtf will make it not work at all.

Now for some code.

We’ve now started the file and recognized it’s a PHP document. Then we initiated the class “Pet”.

We’ve now created the variables name, age, fullness, and health for the class to use, and a public variable ‘dead’.

Now we have a public function (A function that can be used outside of just inside the class code) called SetName. By calling the function with a string parameter, you assign that string to the class variable $name. It also echoes some text telling you about the pet.

Since the variables we set earlier in the class (like $name) are not public, we can only access them through the inside code. So, using this simple function called GetName(), we can retrieve the contents of the $name variable for that object.

Every pet needs to be fed, right? Well, since I said this is simple, we are just picking a number between 5 and 10 to add to it’s Fullness total.

Alrighty, this is a fun one. We’re pretty much giving a little illustion that there’s time with our little pet. We’re decreasing it’s fullness by 10% plus 5 (so it can die eventually), decreasing it’s hunger by a random percentage between 10% and 25% plus 2 (same reason as fullness), and using the php function ceil to round the numbers up so they are whole numbers. We’re then increasing age by one count (a day perhaps?), making the text color gray, and echo’ing out what happened to the screen.

This function checks to see if the pet has died due to hunger and health failure. Once it’s fullness or health reach 0 or lower, the pet “goes to a better place”. Notice that it’s variable $dead is set true. This will be used for exiting the loop later on.

Close up our class and we’re ready for the main part: The Loop!

We’re going to be using a loop to simulate a created pet’s life. This loop will keep going as long as the pet is alive, and stop when it dies.

We’ve created our pet and set his name to “Fluffy The Sheep”.

The final part is the loop. Like I said before, the loop keeps going as long as the pet is alive. Once it is dead (determined by the Killed() function), it’s state changes and the loop exits.

And there you have it! Try running the program and see your little pet in action. Feel free to also customize the experience (name it!). I hope you were able to learn something new out of this. Happy coding!

(By the way, using these settings my pet lived to be around 12-14 age.)

Sooo… Later that night, at 11pm, my creation was finished.

I admit, I went a *little* overboard on it.  But it was fun nonetheless. :)  (Also, to those who are saying to themselves “Oh, that’s not rock. That’s ___.”, this is just what I consider Rock to be I suppose.)

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