Author: admin
Spooky Halloween Update!
It’s starting to get cold and the leaves are falling in Portal Walker! With Halloween right around the corner, folks have their Jack-o-Lanterns out and are ready for some trick or treating. This update will treat players, slimes, and goblins alike to updated mining graphics and a few seasonal decorations to set the mood when it gets dark.
In addition to this small update, the Player-to-Player Trading System has been completed and is now in game! Players can now trade Gold and Items with each other, to try it out just find another player to trade with and tap on them. The yellow Social Button options now contain a new “Start Trade Button” that will send a request to trade with the player selected. Trading is as easy as dropping items from your bag into the trade slot to offer them for trade, choosing the amount of gold you would like to offer, then completing the trade by confirming the trade with your partner. Now is the time to make your fortune by selling virtual fish and battle gear to all of your friends and family!
One last bit of news… the next feature currently being worked on is the Questing System! I haven’t written a single line of code for it yet, but the vast majority of the design for the system has been jotted down with pen and paper. I’m hoping to have a few quests in Portal Walker in the next couple of weeks, starting with a few simple quests that will have players doing small favors for local townspeople, with longer and more elaborate quests that start to dig into the world’s lore coming next month!
Hopefully I’ll be streaming on Twitch.tv soon, my current plan is to stream most of the development of the Questing System, so I guess all I have to do is get started. I’d probably get started right now and do a short late-night stream, but I’m a bit tired and taking care of a sick doggy. I’m gonna Netflix and chill with Gogi tonight, but please let me know on Twitter if you find any bugs in the new update, thanks! See you soon!
Gone Fishin’!
One of my best friends is arriving in town just a few hours from now, and he’s never visited my hometown, so I’ll be busy the next few days showing him around the places I grew up and everything there is to see here. Unfortunately, this means that I’ll be unable to work on the game or do any streaming on Twitch for the next week. The good news is that in anticipation of this, I tried my best to remedy most of the outstanding bugs and quirks in the game that could really mess things up, and I think I did a pretty good job taking care of things! Only the test of banging on it heavily will reveal what’s left to be fixed, and for that I rely on you!
Since my last post, four new core skills were added to the game. One of these is another gathering skill, Wood Cutting, which allows players to chop down trees to collect wood. This of course also means that trees were added to Portal Walker, which really went a long way in making the world feel more alive. There are trees on every over-world map, and every tree is capable of being chopped down, at which point all that remains is a stump that can no longer produce wood. After some time, a new tree will begin to grow, but if a player should cut it down before it completes growing into an adult tree… Only the smallest amount of wood will be able to be obtained, and the tree must be left to grow again from the start! So please, do leave the baby trees alone to prosper into their mature form (or cut them all down so other players have no trees for collecting wood, bwa ha ha!)
The other three skills are all part of the new crafting system, which allows players to turn materials they have collected into new, more useful objects. Cooking allows players to use uncooked food, such as raw fish caught using the Fishing gathering skill, and turn them into tasty treats that replenish health. The Wood Crafting skill provides methods for creating items out of wood, so you could make a better fishing pole, that will catch you more fish, so that you could cook more food! Finally, the Smithing skill gives a use to all of the precious ores players have been collecting since the very first skill, Mining, was added to Portal Walker. Wielding the strength of the mighty hammer, you can harness Smithing to forge new weapons, armor sets, and tools that will make you more powerful than ever possible before!
The bravest adventurers are already honing these skills, in preparation to do battle with a brand new boss monster that has recently been added to Portal Walker! This means it is sadly time for Fezzick to relinquish the crown worn only by the baddest baddie in the land, but fear not, he can still be found toiling away in the Goblin Caverns for your slaying pleasure. Now those seeking the glory of being a hero must head to the south-eastern spider forests to confront an epic new beast. Will you be the first to claim victory over her?
I’m really looking forward to getting back to work and continuing to expand the game, so I’ll see you all when I return in a couple of days from now. Good luck in your adventures!
New features, more on the way… Twitch stream is poppin’!
Howdy there Portal Walkers! I’ve been busy for the past few weeks adding new features at a furious pace! The first two Gathering Skills, Fishing and Mining, have been added and have been a really fun addition to the game so far. There’s not much you can do at the moment except gather a whole bunch of fish and ore, but the leader boards that I put up on my Twitch game development live stream have added a whole new dimension to this early testing phase of building the game! The other day I was hanging out by Seaside Village and four or five players were competing for the available fishing spots, to the point that some of them were getting in fights and killing each other! Working as intended.
I also managed to add an item storage vault to the banks in the game, all without giving up and deciding to sell my computer to live forever in a remote shack in the Australian outback! With all the fish and ore players were stocking up on, they needed more room to store their stuff, and do I not give the people what they want? So feel free to make some space in your bag, because a ton of new items will be coming soon!
I’m currently working on bringing Crafting Skills to Portal Walker, starting with the Cooking crafting skill, pretty much because it will have the least amount of recipes at the start (the only thing to cook right now are fish), which made it the ideal candidate for the first system to build the core crafting system around. I think it’s going to take me at least a few more days than I had originally anticipated to get Cooking ready and have players gathering around the fire for the biggest fish fry Portal Walker has ever seen, but I can guarantee it will be worth it! The new crafting system is going to be EPIC!
Other than that, being back on Twitch has been a blast! Old viewers returned at a surprising and heartwarming pace, and new viewers have been trickling in at record pace! Twitch viewers are starting to pitch in here and there, which is awesome! Portal Walker fishing fanatic HydralisQue has started to put together a Portal Walker Wiki page, so if you know your stuff you can head over there to help out and add to the wiki, and new players can pop over to the wiki if they need help finding something. Way to go! I’ve also been trying to be a little more active on the official Portal Walker Twitter and Facebook pages, and particularly plan on using Twitter as the primary place users can check for the latest updates regarding Portal Walker when I’m not streaming or available in game. One day I’ll display the latest news somewhere inside the game, but for now Twitter is the easiest thing for me to update at any time, from anywhere.
Speaking of which, I’m taking the next day or two off to go fishing. In real life. I’ll try and get some work done on the game during the downtime, specifically I plan on grabbing a new pen and notebook before I head up to the lake. I think it’ll be a good opportunity to get a bunch of my ideas down on paper, as well as come up with some new ones. Try not to break the server until I get back! And big time thanks to all the awesome people that have been playing Portal Walker and supporting my Twitch stream! You guys make it all worth it! <3
It’s alive!
Hello friends! For anyone wondering where I’ve been and what has been going on with Portal Walker, I took a break from working on the game for a bit to pursue some… personal interests (playing video games and drinking beer). Truthfully, I was wandering the desert of game development despair in search for the elusive inspirato oasis. I started to feel the tug during yet another started-but-not-finished effort at Final Fantasy VII, but it turned out that that particular ember wouldn’t catch. In an attempt to stop using a bunch of mixed-up metaphors, my heart immediately fluttered as soon as I laid eyes on my new mistress, Runescape 2007 (aka Oldschool Runescape), where I literally spent hours trying to light tinder to make virtual campfires. And it was awesome.
For the uninitiated, Runescape started as a web-browser Massively-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Over many years the game has evolved in both content and technology, as most social MMO-style games do. Unhappy with the direction development of the game was going in, fans of the “classic” version of Runescape were numerous enough to spur the developers to put up servers for an older build of the game. Today, Oldschool Runescape has a larger player base than it’s modern counterpart, and after putting in some time playing myself, I finally see what all the fuss is about. I’m not going to review the game here, but it’s a really interesting fantasy MMO game that has some awesome skilling systems, if you enjoy grindy gameplay that rewards playing as much as you can. Also, the game uses a 3D engine that was designed to work inside of a Java browser plug-in almost 15 YEARS AGO! By today’s standards, Oldschool Runescape looks like a hot pile of dog poop. However, it by no means looks terrible, and the graphics are very well designed and have a charm to them that nostalgic gamers can appreciate. I was too busy making the big bucks and being able to afford a World of Warcraft account to notice Runescape back in the day, and only really checked it out recently because they just released a patch that lets you play full screen. I feel like I missed out. In many ways, Runescape is the MMO I always wanted games like WoW and Guild Wars 2 to be.
But enough of that, the most important thing is that playing Runescape has reinvigorated my motivation to work on Portal Walker! While I haven’t been working much, there have been a few behind-the-scenes developments since I’ve been away. By far the most critical of these has been getting the mobile version of Portal Walker up and running. At this point, it would be a huge shenanigan to keep expanding the game without being sure that it is going to run on mobile phones, so I had to check. And it worked! After many battles and frustrations, the first version of the Android Portal Walker client is installed and working pretty much as intended on my Samsung Galaxy S5 Active! I spent all night playing around with it and am super excited to get back to development now that I know the mobile version works!
Okay, with that out of the way… I think I’m going to start streaming development on Twitch.tv again soon, just want to get a few things taken care of first that would have made for a very boring comeback stream (such as getting the Android client working, what an awful stream that would have been, unless you enjoy watching people read API documentation live on camera over the internet, you sick weirdo). Stay tuned, I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in Portal Walker in the coming weeks!
Full Speed Ahead!
Things have been getting pretty crazy lately, I’ve been working on Portal Walker pretty much non-stop for the past month! I’ve also restarted the development stream on Twitch, hello viewers! Many new features have been added since my last post… Items have been added to the game, as well as Item Shops to buy them from and loot drops to swindle them off of slain monsters. There is no longer perpetual sunlight in Portal Walker, as a day/night cycle has been added. Be careful, harder monsters lurk in the dark! Another new shop, the Bank, was also created as a place for you to store your gold. You wont lose any of the gold stored in the bank should your character fall in battle.
With these and a handful of other smaller features I can’t remember off the top of my head, Portal Walker almost has enough systems to completely make a multi-player game comparable to the first Dragon Warrior or Phantasy Star games. The only thing that is missing are spells, and those are coming soon! Now that there are a decent amount of things for players to have fun playing with, I’ll be rolling out some new items, monsters, and areas to explore. This will just be a mini-content patch though, as I want to get back to developing core game systems as soon as possible.
Okay, I’ll get back to work. Until next time, keep your eye on the front page to catch the Portal Walker LIVE development stream and chat with other players about Portal Walker! Oh, and THANK YOU for supporting my game!
Back from hiatus…
I haven’t worked on Portal Walker for the past few months. I feel bad about that, but I feel bad about a lot of things, so what is a boy to do? In an attempt to feel less bad, I’ve resumed work on the game! In the past 24 hours I’ve gotten back to work and added a few new features, most notably the first building and shop NPC have been added to the game. The Inn and the Inn Keeper! The Inn serves in two ways… for a small bit of gold, a rest at the inn restores your character’s Hit Points to the maximum, and also binds your character to the Inn so that you will respawn there should you succumb to a vicious red slime during your adventures.
In other news, I’ve decided to focus on adding features while using place-holder art for everything new. Making my own art was too time consuming and was a major factor in becoming burned out on working on the game. Programming and game design are overwhelmingly my cup of tea, so I’m going to stick to those for now and worry about getting an artist some time down the road. In that spirit, hopefully there will be much more to do and see in Portal Walker over the coming weeks!
Long time, no update…
Or at least, the blog hasn’t been getting updated. Portal Walker has been coming along just fine. Since my last post I’ve gotten the server online, created the initial version of the combat and leveling systems, added a bunch of other features, and put in the first monsters you can fight… SLIMES! Be careful though, PvP is enabled! Oh, and you lose half of your gold when you die. Sorry.
Right now Portal Walker is an unnecessarily difficult game. So far I’ve gotten my character to level 10 and that was over the course of tons of play testing and slime slaughtering. And many, many deaths. This is entirely due to there not yet being any mechanic to heal yourself, my bad. Don’t worry though, I wont leave you hanging! Soon you’ll be able to recover your hit points without sacrificing yourself, promise.
That said, I’m sad to say that there will not be any new major features rolling out over the next couple of weeks. I feel that Portal Walker has gotten to the point that I need to figure out what I’m going to do about the art before I can work on anything else, so that means I need to learn how to become an artist. I’m working pretty hard getting myself up to snuff as quickly as I can, and am actually really happy with my results so far, but it’s still a fairly slow-going process. I don’t want to get stuck having to put a lot of time into stripping out placeholder art assets down the road, and since I’m not hiring an artist I’d have to get around to learning how to do this stuff at some point anyway. Wish me luck, and kill those slimes! <3
Aaaaaand… It’s Gone.
So much for using ElectroServer to power the back-end for Portal Walker, or any game for that matter. Turns out that Electrotank, the company that created ElectroServer, was purchased by some lame casino game company that doesn’t appear to be interested in supporting ElectroServer or supplying new licenses for it. It’s a damn shame because it was by far my favorite server technology to work with.
With that behind me, I’m currently looking into using SmartFoxServer 2X, which has always been ElectroServer’s chief competitor. Pretty much the only reason I’ve never used SFS2X is because I was already familiar with ES5, fortunately it looks like SFS2X has some goodies and advantages that are making it a little less painful to make the switch. For one, the company that sells SFS2X is still in business, that’s a good start. They’ve also added some features specific to MMO-style games that look like they’ll be very helpful in creating the Portal Walker server. However, I’m still stuck where I was with ES5, as there is also no native Haxe client API for SFS2X, but the silver lining is that the AS3 client API for SFS2X is about half the size of the ElectroServer AS3 client API, which would hopefully translate into taking half the amount of work to port it to Haxe.
While I’ve been waiting to hear back from the internet about what I should do regarding the server situation, I started looking into procedural world generation for a 2D tilemap-based world and am getting ready to start working on the world generator for Portal Walker. Randomly generated worlds will be an important part of Portal Walker, but I want to note that the game world will not be entirely procedurally generated, so don’t expect something like Minecraft or Terraria. The only real news is that it looks like I’m going to have to write my own map generator from scratch. It looks like it will be fun, but I literally started to have a migraine while looking over info about Base64 encoding and zlib compression in preparation for how I plan on storing map data. Programming is very much so a headache sometimes.
Schoooooooool’s out… for… THE SUMMER!
I’ve had to put down working on games for the past few days to wrap up finals and the spring semester at school. After grinding through all of that, I think I’m going to spend the day relaxing and digging into a game I haven’t played before. You know, have a little fun.
On the Portal Walker front, the breaking news that no one is yet interested in is the fact that I am starting to have concerns about porting the ElectroServer 5 Client API to Haxe, the main concern being that I have no idea what I am doing. However, I still have made a lot of progress in drudging through the grunt work of porting the meat of the code from AS3 to Haxe syntax. I really could use some help from someone who understands the more complex functions of both languages and can look over the code and figure out solutions to port some of the trickier elements. I’ve begun dabbling with this myself (such as replacing AS3 Dictionaries with Haxe Maps, which I’m not even sure works or is a good idea), but the time I’m investing in it is starting to surpass the threshold of confidence I have in myself, so I’ve started the process of trying to get some help.
If it turns out that there is simply no feasible way for me to get a HaxeFlixel client interfacing with an ES5 server on all desired target platforms, my current backup plan is to use ES5 for the server and create the client in Starling and AS3. The huge downside would be losing access to the Flixel framework and having to code a lot of the client game engine from scratch, as well as a higher potential to run into performance issues down the road due to Starling apps running on top of Adobe AIR instead of compiling natively for each platform as they would if I were able to build the client in Haxe. First world problems, man.