I’d like to invite everyone to have a look at my Kickstarter campaign for Island Forge! See the person behind the pseudoNyhm (me). As always, I’m interested in community feedback, so please let me know what you think. If you can, help spread the word! Thanks for your support!
Hurray, today Island Forge @ Kickstarter reached its base goal! But it doesn’t stop there - this is where many projects really take off. I appreciate everyone who has contributed and commented so far. Thank you for your interest!
Find Island Forge on Facebook, Twitter, IndieDB, MMORPG.com, and Steam Greenlight!
Congrats on your success on Kickstarter! As this is becoming a quality game, I recommend you use a more … “professional” Look and Feel for your Swing UI. This website has many free ones and this SO question with lots of good ones in the comments.
Good luck!
Thanks a bunch, ra4king. I’ve appreciated your helpful comments and support throughout.
Really cool what you made here Nyhm, wish you luck with this 
Hope it’ll be booming, pursuing Minecraft ;D
And I see you’re interviewed by IGM too!
I have been following this a little and I just thought of an idea that is common that you could use to make it free-to-play some time in the future if you get big enough.
I don’t know the name of the model but basically people can play user created islands for free and can use the editor but with restricted content available to them. The can they use some points/token/gcash system to but additional content. You know different trees, buildings, characters, classes. Very similar to second life (if that is the name) unless they patented it or something. I love your editors look and it could be used for table top games rather easily.
Thanks, I’ve been listening to a lot of community input on the subject of free-pay and non-subscription options, and it’s a direction I want/need to go, so I’m glad to hear your suggestions. One thing I want to avoid is restricting player creativity. But, providing a base set of tiles, with an upgrade could be an option. I already have support for small vs. large size island upgrades. Regarding gameplay, many folks suggest a level cap, which is OK, but not really what Island Forge is all about. Limiting exploration is a suggestion, but which islands are restricted (the most popular)? Then players are kept from the best content.
It’s tricky because I want players to have the freedom to create and explore. That’s why I set up a simple subscription and you can do anything. People want more choices and flexibility, which means more complication and overhead to an indie developer (me).
My first step will most likely be to provide 3, 6, 12-month packages (instead of recurring subscription). Maybe a lifetime tier. As always, expert advice from JGO is most welcome.
I know you have a free trial, but I think your game would get more popular if you had free-to-play with restrictions and an option to buy membership. Up to you, though.
Thanks for your comment; I agree with you!
The focus of my Kickstarter project is to offer better free-play and non-subscription options. The devil is in the details. I need to find a good balance between how to restrict “premium” membership elements while not stifling the creative aspects of the game.
Good to hear. Good luck with your game, I’m really liking your creativity.
Thanks a lot! I’m in-world right now, and my Kickstarter project has less than 30 minutes left!
Quick note (big announcement): Island Forge is now Free-to-Play with one-time Membership and Upgrade options! Thanks for your interest, JGO community.
Oh god, this is awesome! It’s finally released! Is chat not working for anyone else, though? I’m running the jar on fedora linux. When I click the chat bar, no cursor appears, and I can’t type. 
This is the first chat bar issue I’ve heard. Thanks for the report. I have not tested in Fedora yet, so I’d be interested to hear how it goes.
Did you run with this command-line (see the Play page): java -Xmx1024m -jar IslandForge.jar
The Windows and Mac wrapper set the RAM cap, but the Jar cannot (I need a better Linux wrapper executable, like the other platforms). It’s a known issue that if the client hits an OutOfMemoryError it fails in various ways (I have a task to handle the situation a bit more gracefully).
Thanks for trying it out!
Do yourself a huge favor and pipe System.out and System.err to a server that logs it!
About 99% of users with crashes/issues won’t tell you, so better automate that process (and mention it in the EULA).
I had my cursor over free-to-play and thought it said fresto-play. One click later I’m slightly disappointed, and like all the times I’ve gotten to this topic, impressed by how much you’ve invested in this.
Thanks Riven, that’s excellent advice; it does and it is. The OOM error is a known problem. Next step (for this case) is to see whether the chat box failure is even related to that, or if it’s a new issue.
I’d be interested to hear what you find slightly disappointing, so I can try to make it better.