Mirage Source

Hello everyone, I am Satyricon.

For some time now I've been working on a game called Avisaria. It has been in development for about a year and uses the engine called Xtremeworlds, which to me, at that time, was the perfect engine, since it had many nice features such as, burn spells, poison spells, stun spells, mutation spells, weapon min - max damage, visual inventory, books, visual stats etc etc .There is a also possibility to script the game. And because of that, I could make a game as I wanted it to be (almost...)

We managed to build a world consisting of about 500 maps, but that's where the progress started slowing down. (We didn't get close to our goal, which was around 10000 maps.)
Here are some screenshots of maps:









Our staff consisted of about 5 people (Mappers, scripters, graphic artists and more) but after some time people had to take different ways in life. And, I had to work on my own.

After some time I began to see limitations with using the Xtremeworlds game eninge... I couldn't change Everything... I couldn't for example create new windows, but came up with a temporary solutions for this: To use commands that called information I needed to be shown and was displayed in the chat box:

Here is how I managed to show the skills that the spesific class had
(This is a mage)

(With scripting I made so that the different classes in Avisaria had different skills, such as Swordmanship, Archery, Magery, Defending, alchemy and more.)

But this way of showing skills didn't fulfill my need. It only gave me a fraction of what I needed... I needed new GUI buttons, window with a list of all the skills, a window with current crafting possibilities, a window for a bounty system, larger gamescreen, scrolling maps and as well a huge change of some source code that Xtremeworlds had.

I put alot of work into Avisaria... But for each day I feel as if it was a waste of time.. (even though I enjoyed the development ALOT)


So one day DFA visited the Xtremeworlds forums....
He seemed to know more about VB then anyone else on those forums, so I started to get interested, and I decided to MSN him.

A couple of days ago I started talking with DFA... and through his wise words I concluded that I had to move on from a closed source engine to an open source.

Mirage was the obvious choise for me. It is a stable stable engine that has clean code and will be easy to improve with the right people.

But... The problem here is... I am not a programmer. I have a very limited knowledge of VB. I can change some basics of of the code, but nothing that creates an optimized and fast game with stable features.
What I am, is a game designer, a lead developer, mapper and somewhat of a pixel artist. I know how I want the game and I know how it shall look and how the story and gameplay will go together.

So... as a conclusion of this very long message I will say:
I have started working on a Mirage based game.. And I will use same name as I had for the xtremeworlds game: Avisaria.

Some of the old features will stay such as a Skill system "A way to improve your character both in strength, but also financially"
For the start we will have only 4 Classes and each class have a few unique skills that only their class has:

- Knight
Swordfighting
Axefighting
Defending

- Wizard
Magery
Alchemy
Defending

- Ranger
Archery
Daggers
Defending

- Druid
Magery
Summoning/taming
Defending

Other skills that all the classes can use are:
Lumberjacking
Mining
Fishing

Avisaria will not use the train system that exists in the current mirage source verision. The stats will be increased automaticlly on level up and all classes will always have different values of stats.

Instead of a SP system there will be a hunger system. Consisting of 100 Points.
100 points means that the player is "Very Full"
75 points means that the player is "A bit hungry"
at 50 points the player will become "Very hungry"
and at 25 points and down "Starving"
If the hunger goes down to "Very Hungry" your HP and MP regen rate will slow down alot. If you ever hit the hunger status "Starving" you will gain experience in skills slower and your HP and MP regen rate will either stop or become extremely slow.
By eating food your "hungerpoints"(which actually isn't shown) will go up and you will feel less hungry and your character will not be affected by any negative effects.

The Stamina/Speed stat will increase your movement speed somewhat,

For now I will use the tiles that old Avisaria had, but will change this in the future. I will be looking after a pixle artist.

The story of Avisaria will be quite deep, and you will be able to either follow a story, by reading some books that a few NPCs sell and by accepting quests that are given to you by NPCs throughout the game.

But there will be nothing that forces you to complete the main storyline, you may just play and explore on your own.

I am looking for a programmer, which has enough knowledge about VB that he/she can build good features that are optimized and stable.
I am also looking for people that can benefit with: Pixle art, graphics, ideas.

You can either post here if you are interested, or send a message to my mail/MSN at: kungbore666@hotmail.com

If you feel you want you just want to have a chat with me about how Avisaria will be then you may contact me as well.

You're not really offering anything different. You're using default sprites and tiles from Xtremeworlds and a few hundred maps.

We've had plenty of these types of games come in over the years.

Anything unique about the game?

No, I'm not interested, just trying to get you to give some more information about the game itself.

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The mapping looks pretty good to say the least.

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The mapping is alright. I don't like the roads in the first one.

One HUGE thing I really did learn from Mith, and no, not his tutorial, he got on my game and showed me personally, lol, is that roads are not normally like that, unless man made. And, those are dirt roads, not man made stone. Lol.

I agree.. Those roads really looks terrible. I took away the screenshot. That's some of the first maps I made in the game.

I added two screenshots of how I might consider making the perspective.(Remember those are just tests.. something I made to see how it looked when it was in game. and don't mind any of the sprites or that ugly sword..)

Eh...that's some really bad perspective. It doesn't square up at all.

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Ew. Don't go that route.

And yeah it'll look bad even if you get it right. (agrees with Perfekt)

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Alright alright. I might not go that road But it doesn't harm to test around. right?

I updated the first post some:

Some of the old features from Avisaria will stay, such as a Skill system "A way to improve your character both in strength, but also financially"

For the start we will have only 4 Classes and each class have a few unique skills that only their class has:
- Knight
Swordfighting
Axefighting
Defending

- Wizard
Magery
Alchemy
Defending

- Ranger
Archery
Daggers
Defending

- Druid
Magery
Summoning/taming
Defending

Other skills that all the classes can use are:
Lumberjacking
Mining
Fishing

Avisaria will not use the train system that exists in the current mirage source verision. The stats will be increased automaticlly on level up and all classes will always have different values of stats.

Instead of a SP system there will be a hunger system. Consisting of 100 Points.
100 points means that the player is "Very Full"
75 points means that the player is "A bit hungry"
at 50 points the player will become "Very hungry"
and at 25 points and down "Starving"
If the hunger goes down to "Very Hungry" your HP and MP regen rate will slow down alot. If you ever hit the hunger status "Starving" you will gain experience in skills slower and your HP and MP regen rate will either stop or become extremely slow.
By eating food your "hungerpoints"(which actually isn't shown) will go up and you will feel less hungry and your character will not be affected by any negative effects.

The Stamina/Speed stat will increase your movement speed somewhat,

For now I will use the tiles that old Avisaria had, but will change this in the future. I will be looking after a pixle artist.

The story of Avisaria will be quite deep, and you will be able to either follow a story, by reading some books that a few NPCs sell and by accepting quests that are given to you by NPCs throughout the game.

But there will be nothing that forces you to complete the main storyline, you may just play and explore on your own.

Learn to program yourself.

It's not hard, and you already have a good grasp on the VBScript, so taking that "step up" should be easy.

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Why not try my app, ColorEye, on your Android devlce?
Do you like social gaming? Fight it out in Battle Juice!

I am a professional software developer in Salt Lake City, UT.

I am learning. But having someone to help me with some code if I get stuck would be very nice. For the moment I am stuck trying to understand directdraw and bltting.

DirectDraw is just like copy&pasting.

You set the left, right, width and height of the piece of the picture you want to 'copy', then the left, right, width and height of where you want to 'paste' it on your game screen.

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Makes sense. Thanks
Would it be too much to ask for an example?

Open Mirage's source and look at the blt subs? Lol.

Out of random curiosity, in what ways do you think your hunger system enhance the gameplay experience? All I see is a means of pissing people off lol.

I am giving the game something that adds to roleplaying, and something that adds more challange. By actually having to do something else then just killing monsters, like for example going fishing for a while, and eat the catch or even sell it to obtain money. Different kinds of food will keep your hunger down for longer and some less, other food such as herbs, mushrooms will even temporary increase stats and movement speed and alikes. This will give some food a higher value, and will by that increase the games economy possibilities.

I hope that answers your questions.I have no intentions to make a game that pisses you off. I am trying to make a deversitile game.

Enforcing roleplaying pisses people off.

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Oops.. I didn't mean enforce. I can't find the word at the moment. But I meant something like: strengthen roleplaying possibilites. It's not like clicking on a food enfore roleplaying.

Not if your goal is towards nothing but role players.

That's what my secret project is aimed at. ^_^

I've had the hunger system coded in for a few months now. >.>

My game won't be aimed for roleplayers in general. I myself don't like roleplaying, but I like making a game where you may if you so want. And if you do not wish to roleplay that works fine as well.

Hunger system forces role play.

Hunger systems only attract roleplayers.

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No. That is like saying: having a HP system forces roleplaying.

In my game you will be getting hungry as time passes by, but you will be able to play for quite some time before you have to "eat". Eating will basiclly be to use an items which takes a few seconds to finish, and when you're done you will either just keep on playing, or keep on playing with a positive effect to your stats. (somewhat of what a buff spell is)

And same as health it regains by either finding, making or buying health potions (or waiting). You will for hunger need to buy, find or make food.

Very simple.

Forces role play.

I dunno. I just asked because from a designer's point of view, it doesn't make sense to add something that the players will not benefit from. To me, it's like placing an incurable poison on each and every player to join your game lol. But yeah, I can see how it would boost the economy. Personally, I prefer systems where players have the ability to eat food leisurely for stat boosts and whatnot. Perhaps it won't be so bad if you actually have the sort of boosts you mentioned.

How quickly would your character become hungry?

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