The Chipped Dagger 2D MMO -- Alpha Testing

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#1

Update: players in general did not like that your character did not have any form of permanent advancement. I have added an interesting an unique system to the game to address that. Please see the latest post in this thread for details!

What if Swing and MMO made baby?

It might look something like this:

http://www.chippeddagger.com

It’s alpha, it’s rough around the edges, and it’s still a work in progress.

Here are some features:

•One seemless world (no sharding and no instancing).
•Random dungeons. Lots of them.
•You can find new items!
•You can invent new items!
•You can reverse engineer an existing item.
•Nearly everything in the world is craftable including the ability to mint coins.
•PvP (you can attack anyone anywhere, but in some areas there are penalties for attacking).
•Full loot PvP (if you can kill your opponent, you can loot his belongings).
•Player owned housing.
•No restrictive classes, no skill-by-use grinding. Actually play the game instead of watching your XP bar or a countdown timer all day!
•Monsters spawn in random locations at random times. Overtime they migrate. No more spawn camping.
•More than 200,000+ monsters roaming the overworld and in dungeons!
•Have an permanent impact on the world. Place your house where you want to. Setup markets where you want to. Modify the terrain near your buildings. Be remembered as the person who found (or invented) a legendary item!
•A sandbox game instead of a themepark one.
•Very low system requirements to play. Nearly any modern computer with Java installed should do.
•Runs on Windows | Mac OSX | Linux | Solaris and maybe a couple other places where Java is installed.
•Compared the multi-gigabyte downloads of many MMOs, this one is only a couple-megabytes.

and a screenie:

http://www.chippeddagger.com/screenshots/screen11.png

#2

Build 86 is now live. Thanks for those who have posted bugs and given their feedback ingame!

Is anyone having launch issues with the game? Any other feedback or advice?

thanks!

#3

My advice is to have the option to login as guest (no registration) .
I was intersted in testing the game, but the thought of registering just to give a quick look made me give up .

#4

Good idea. I will give it a try when it does not require a registration.

#5

It doesn’t require registration. Click the webstart, choose any username pass combo you want and you are in.

#6

I have tried it like 2 or 3 days ago and after I was closing “Character Equipment” and “Character Items” I was unable to open it again. One more problem I have detected was after going to long to the West, game client was becoming every time slower and slower…

Suggestions:

  • Implement path finding algorithm, so user doesn’t need to click every time to advance 1 cell
  • Make the bodies of killed creatures disappear passed some time, at some point zone becoming full of them

In my own opinion you shouldn’t make the game p2p until the moment you feel that you have audience that will pay it. People scary when they see that they need to pay for play…

#7 
java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(Unknown Source)
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(Unknown Source)
	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
	at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)
	at java.net.Socket.connect(Unknown Source)
	at java.net.Socket.connect(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.<init>(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getNewHttpClient(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.plainConnect(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.connect(Unknown Source)
	at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.AbstractAutoProxyHandler.getJSFileFromURL(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.AbstractAutoProxyHandler.init(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.DynamicProxyManager.reset(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.DeployProxySelector.reset(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.javaws.Main.initializeExecutionEnvironment(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.javaws.Main.continueInSecureThread(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.javaws.Main$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

I get this error in the console before the game starts. Then the login screen appears and login happens normally.

#8

@ william

i think you ran out of stamina. most players didn’t notice their stamina was gone and thought it was lag. I guess i needed to make the stamina bar about the same size as it is in diablo 2 for players to notice.

yet, i readjusted the stamina burn rates. thus, as low inventory weight you burn very little. this should make it much less frustrating for new players.

I also fixed the inability to reopen the closed UI windows. thanks for the input on that!

You don’t have to click on the map to move. You can just hold down the arrow keys, wasd keys, or even the num pad keys to move around. I don’t like clicking on the map at all myself.

Eventually I will remove the corpses. For now i’m leaving them in too see how much stuff players aren’t picking up. I’m trying to make sure the items have enough value that players want to collect them as opposed to just leaving them on the ground.

@adon

Did you get this error more than once? It appears it timed out. I haven’t had any other reports of this issue.

thanks for the feedback guys.

#9

I really like the look of it, but can’t play it right now. I’ll definitely let you know when I do!

#10

Yep, I get it each and every time I start the game.

#11

I’ll have to look into your issue adon. thanks for reporting it!

There is also a new build of the game up. Infact build #90 also includes a major content update with many new mobs and lootables. This also means that it’s been 90 days since I started writing The Chipped Dagger!

#12

I put up 2 new builds today (91a and 91b). This was mostly fixing UI issues players were having. I did manage to add hotkeys for spells though which should help with combat.

#13

woah ur productive!!

I cant try it right now, but it sounds really cool :smiley:

#14

builds 93, 93a, and 94 have been deployed now. I won’t bore everyone with the patch notes, but things continue to improve! I’ll try to get an updated screenshot or two later in the week.

#15

today marks two weeks since I opens the doors to testing. I’ve had just a touch over 250 people log in and play thus far! I’ve deployed builds 95, 95a, 96, and 96a now. I continue to fix bugs and add new features. Yesterday I deployed the combat update which added significantly more stragety to combat. I also revamped the event log feedback from combat to give much more granular information. The graphics continue to get a makeover as well.

don

#16

100 Days of development and 30,997 lines of code later I have a playable MMORPG!

I did some website redesign yesterday to celebrate the milestone.

I’ve also deployed numerous additional builds including build 100. I finally added in corpse decay as players didn’t like all the dead bodies around. :slight_smile:

#17

Builds 101, 102, and 103 are live now. I’ve fixed numerous bugs related to packet loss. There are many new small features that went live this week as well. There are also some new weapon types and armor added to the game!

#18

I have now played this for a couple of days… pretty nice so far.

Some thoughts:
I think I like that there are no skills, no classes and no experience in this game. You could just change your gear around and become something completely different. But, are you at all thinking about ranged combat and magic? It could make the battles more interesting.

I want more terrain. Now, everything is flat, well almost. I want trees and stones. I’m sure you could write a litte program that assigned it randomly. And I want lots of it. Right now, when facing a difficult foe, I have to gather other enemies first and build a barricade with their dead bodies. It would be nice if I could find narrow passages more easily.

Looting with keys! This is a must. I want a key that loots all items I already have at least one of. This way picking out all potions and ingredients. I also want one key that opens all 8 loot windows in a nice layout. So first I pick all potions and ingredients, then I open the loot windows to pick out the rest. I would like it if I could filter out nonmagic items from the loot windows open. Unless I am naked, no way I am touching nonmagic items :slight_smile:

The player market need a really good search and sorting functions. I never have the patience to browse it all (yes I know about the tabs, but they arent’t near enough). I’m never buying anything (well almost), just trying to sell.

Keep up the good work!

#19

thanks markus!

there is some new fauna with today’s build. I also agree more looting options would be nice. Players have been asking for a loot all feature since the beginning. :slight_smile: Agree that the market needs better functionality. You should have seen what it was like before I added the tabs!

Here’s todays build info.

Build 109 patch notes:

[feature] added lore for all monster types (a big thanks to Rance for working on this project!)
[change] decreased each security zone radius from 200 to 100. This means places more than 400 tiles of the start point is now an open pvp area (it was previously 800 tiles)
[change] criminals are no longer allowed in secure areas. criminals are now respawned near a new lava town in the no-security zone. Note: players are not allowed to create new accounts to avoid their criminal status.
[change] criminal status now occurs at -200 karma instead of -300 karma.
[change] some of the karma titles
[graphics] updated belt graphics, new club graphic, updated fur, updated hatchets, updated iron ore, 3 fixed terrain tiles, updated bridge tiles.
[added] extra security measures to prevent multiple account creation/logins from a single player.
[bugfix] resolved issue where higher level recipes would sometimes require stacks of the base type. Since the base type wasn’t stackable the they couldn’t be crafted.
[change] recipes now have a small chance or requiring an additional ingredient type to craft.
[bugfix] private messages sent between players were being logged in the databse as chat messages. Only public chat channel messages were supposed to be logged. The bug was fixed and all private messages players sent each other were delete from the server.
[change] recipes now have a maximum numbers of uses before they are no longer usable. Potion and coins recipes are very high. Weapons and armor are very. Note that recipes can be duped using reflecting ponds. The remaining number of uses is listed in the recipe tools and lore windows. all existing recipes had uses added to them.
[bugfix] items inside bags were not removing the ownership flag of the deceased causing the new owner to be unable to remove the items.
[change] players will now respawn with their chipped dagger after death!
[added] number of world events to stats page on the website.
[added] current world events are now displayed at login.
[change] world event monsters now give more karma than others.
[change] legendary creatures now have a low chance of dropping a token. World event creatures have a good chance of dropping a token.
[bugfix] player weights were not being updated after successful player to player trading
[feature] hotkeys can now be removed
[feature] hotkeys are now remembered between sessions
[change] player corpses now decay after 24 hours.
[bugfix] all old bugged player corpses were removed. If you find another player corpse with inmovable items, please report the corpse coordinates!
[added] static tree and rock textures from krumple as requested by the world builders.

#20

patch notes:

[update] many terrain tile graphical updates from krumple. Also some other item/monster graphics updates.
[added] your corpse locations are now displayed at login; corpses are displayed oldest to newest.
[change] removed destroy option for tokens
[added] essences (explained below)

There was a major addition in today’s build. There are now various kinds of “essence” that can be looted from dead monsters. Each essence has a given attribute (IE health, piercing attack, backstab defense, etc). If you consume one of these essences you will gain a permanent increase in that attribute! There is no limit to the number of essenses you can use. They are rare drops however. Also, the more of a given essense that you use, the greater the number of essences you will need to increase that attribute further. For example, it might only take 1 essence of piercing attack to increase permanently increase your piercing attack up for the first 10 times you use one. On the 11th time however, it will require 2 essenses of piercing attack in order to gain the +11 bonus. It works similarly for all essence types.

This is a new system. I added it because the game needed additional ways for players to customize their character. Also, many players did not like the fact that the loot was the only thing that would affect their attributes. Since all of your items drop on death, many were discouraged. I added this system to aleviate those issues.

This is substantial change to the gameplay. It might be too overpowered it could also be underpowered, or it might be just right. We need to test it then get player feedback to see how it feels. If everyone hates this new system, i’m not totally opposed to removing it. If you do not like the new essence addition, or if you think it’s out of balance please don’t hesistate go give me your feedback! Please keep the comments constructive however.

I also added another tab to the market for players who wish to buy or sell essences.