StormyVenture

There are tools out there that can to rip/extract game data or files from the game's "archive" file. So at least some stuff could be recovered if he's got the executable version. Is this more of a "lost most of his recent work", then? P.S. Does anybody have the version 0.2.0 demo?

No offense intended, but threatening to call the whole show off if someone doesn't magically provide whatever you need isn't a good way to attract help. Also maybe just pick -ONE- specific asset you need to help with and focus on that for now.

Definitely a we there because you're the one that made the initial assertion. It's better because no one has to run a web browser and all the intrinsic overhead, just to play your game. Surely you've used Discord? It's an absolute resource hog for the fairly modest task it performs. And they also have to hope that you keep your website secure, updated, compatible, etc. Basically they're relying on a cloud client and a cloud server that could just go poof. With a true Peer-to-Peer (aka P2P) setup and proper port forwarding a direct connection is possible. As you point out once there's a proxy involved you might as well just have client-server. As for releasing a build for "every OS you want to target", that's not such a big deal since there are basically only two OSes of real importance to most people. And once you make it run on Linux it shouldn't be a huge problem to make it work on macOS. You shouldn't release an unstable build, so the "stable" bit is kinda moot. I think what you're trying to say is it's better and easier for -you- as a developer, whereas I'm looking at this from more of a user perspective. Honestly, that's an absolute load of tripe. A game client downloaded from the legitimate website of the developer isn't "a random executable" and downloading stuff off the internet isn't magically more dangerous than your friending giving you some files they made on removable media. Sure there is some risk, but the vast majority of the time that risk is negligible. Visiting a website is only as safe as the browser you use makes it and is still subject to whether the site's server is malicious or not.

I don't see how the downloadable client is a "bad design choice", it's really not that big a hurdle to download a program. native client: download it (launching it is nothing). host a game, send some sort of password/lobby code to your friend (not much different than sending a link), have them download the app (again launching it is trivial), copy in the code web app: visit the website, click host game, send the link to a friend (they have to visit the website too), start game (note: you assume that both people have a browser with which the web app is compatible) These are simply not that different, the only real difference (most of the time) is the code sharing step. I agree that hosting a dedicated server is a hurdle, but hosting a website can be too. A peer to peer solution would make a bit more sense, albeit the port forwarding and stuff can be a mess. Having a server that provides a lobby (to facilitate finding and joining games) is probably essential though. And that same server could be a gateway for data without needing to run the game itself or do anything beyond assigning one of the clients as authoritative (I'm assuming the client is a pseudo-server here). In other words some sort of hybrid architecture. You don't really need chat, though it can be more convenient. Simply providing some means of sharing contact data directly is all that's needed. In other words some way to send a specific person info like your_username @ chat service. Thanks. Firefox doesn't seem to like the security/certificate, but idk why. It complains about your site: https://www.tsssf.net/, but not about this one: https://www.bronies.be/spelletjes/pmq.php. P.S. Thanks for the link

Seems cool. Personally, I'd prefer a full client-server application model over a webapp, but that's me. It would also be nice if there was a way to not have to use Discord to find games. I mean I realize it's a niche and you have to find players somehow... P.S Please consider setting up HTTPS for your website, it might not be strictly necessary, but it assures others that you are reasonably concerned about security and saves people the pain of web browsers that complain. Supposedly using Let's Encrypt (https://letsencrypt.org/) is fairly painless.

Sorry to hear that, what a bummer. Make this an opportunity to handle things better. If you didn't have a well defined GDD (game design document) for that project then do yourself a favor and write one for this new one. Having that sort of thing ironed out will help you to rebuild if you lose stuff again as you'll what it was supposed to be like. In addition, it's never a bad idea to take notes on a physical medium. And definitely learn to back stuff up whether that means an external hard drive, a flash drive, burning it to a CD/DVD, uploading it to the cloud (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) or giving a copy to a friend. Losing code, content, project files, etc is an inevitable risk and therefore is something you should be prepared for.

That seems like a good basic foundation, but I think it's important to somehow ensure that everyone gets a unique mark or as unique as can be managed within reason. Even at one hundred (100) options, after 1000 people have played there's a pretty good chance that at least 10 people got the same one. Also as far as the show goes it would seem that a cutie mark might represents what you're actually good at/talented with, not necessarily what you want to/end up doing. Those two thing may not even have a clear, direct correlation Consider that the mane six have the following cutie marks: Twilight Sparkle (six pointed purple/magenta star with little white stars around it), Rainbow Dash (a cloud with a tri-color lightning bolt), Fluttershy (a trio of pink butterflies), Rarity (trio of purple diamonds), Pinkie Pie (trio of balloons in yellow and blue), and Applejack (trio of red apples). What do these mean exactly? We associate them with the matching elements of harmony, but that could be entirely incidental. Which defines Dash more: loyalty, competitiveness, speed, or being able to do a sonic rainboom? Or how about Rarity? Do the gems symbolize her gem finding talent, an eye for beauty, an ability to make pretty clothes, or generosity? One way to make this really interesting would be to use some hidden statistics about the character and a way of assessing them. So playing the game becomes a voyage of discovery rather than "I think a weather cutie mark would be awesome, I'll just focus on weather". E.g. let the player be the conscious decision making part, but not necessarily in charge of who the character is intrinsically. Alternatively you might want to add as many different things for the player to do as are practicable so that they can express themselves.

https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Adventures_in_Ponyville Is the game mentioned on the above wiki and the link to it the version you are talking about? Do you have any idea why the game is crashing?

Some of these really sound to me more like specializations than classes. For example all of the stuff under Unicorn could be Mage/Wizard/? in any other system with the exception that healing is usually relegated to a separate class. GW2 has a single Elementalist class that combines the same four elements chosen above. One possible naming scheme is this: Aeromancer, Pyromancer, Geomancer, and Aquamancer. It's not quite correct usage given that the greek word which the ending comes from refers to divination... You could also choose to combine some word for each element with any number of active verbs, though they'll be fluff unless you come up with some lore that defines practicing that sort of magic. With regard to the Kirin it seems like rage is a mechanic rather than something distinct to a class, albeit the way it is used could be considered a specialization as above Is there a reason you need a different name for damage dealing / support roles for every single race/species? P.S. Your website page for the game makes some confusing statements that you might want to update. It indicates that Open Beta would start on January 16, 2021, but then at the bottom says you expect to do that in June/July of whatever year it was at the time... And of course you just told us in the thread that October 10, 2020 is the current date...

Yep, can confirm, sounds dumb. Notepad is right up there with the worst editors ever. For one it doesn't respect/understand anything other than Windows line endings. Also word wrap is a select-able feature that shouldn't even exist, because enabling it means you can't tell the difference between a file that is just one long line and one with actual line breaks. I'm sure I could come up with a few other reasons. It's even more terrible when it comes to coding for a hundred reasons, not least because it doesn't syntax highlighting, indentation handling, line numbers (and jumping to them), and half a dozen other really useful baseline features.. It's okay for quick note taking, reading old school text documentation for games/software, and editing config files. For every other case I'd rather use almost anything else.

@Rikifive To be perfectly fair, I got the impression at the one point (maybe incorrect) that Legends of Equestria (LoE) was trying to avoid being too violent. And honestly if the game didn't seem rather content poor otherwise it wouldn't bother me that much. Nevertheless the last time I played it, it still felt really lacking in content and very placeholder-y, which is a shame. The introductory content for foals/fillies seemed somewhat interesting, but not sufficiently engaging. It really, really needed engaging interactive content so that 'fun' isn't dependent wholly on other players contributing value via informal RP. Of course it's hard when they can't use show-specific location names or characters and so have work out of whole cloth so to speak. I mean they might as well rename it Legend of 'Equus' or 'Equendria' or some other knockoff name since it can't really be Equestria... Given that, aside from the art style and character design, story is what the television show runs on it should be no surprise that games without much, if any, story (i.e. weak plot/narrative) aren't all that exciting. This is particularly so when the other game mechanics aren't particularly engaging.

Usually it's Eclipse for Java development and Notepad++ most of the time for anything else (like Python or Lua). I've used Sublime Text (v2) and VIM a bit, particularly for C in some of my college classes and I like them both. But NPP is better for WIndows and I'm not keen on what seems like an excessive price to actually have a ST license (it's up to $80 now). Atom and VS Code are neat, but both are too unsure of what exactly there are imho and then, well Electron...

def main(): print('Not cool, huh. Well take this!') print('I\'m betting that\'s some kind of Lisp.') main() P.S. Yes, previous example is Java.

class DefinitelyAProgram { private static String msg = "Indeed, it does require execution, but I'm pretty sure that's Brainfuck. Running it through an online interpreter for that language did yield a plausible output."; public static void main(final String[] args) { System.out.println(msg); System.out.println("This one had better be easy to guess!"); } }

Yes. It's not quite the same as being somewhere (in many ways) and I wish Discord wasn't everyone's favorite thing (blech), but it is something! I was pretty sad to see HAHCon (https://www.hahcon.com/) go away, for all that it was apparently masterminded by one person I thought it was reasonably well done. They had been going for four years (though I wasn't aware until 2018) and had a proper website, a nice schedule page with links, and for a small donation would send you art files to print yourself a badge. PonyFest Online (ponyfest.horse) which afaik became a thing post-coronavirus seems to be headed the same way. I kinda wish there was a bit more in the web presence department, though. I know that forums take quite a bit of effort though and are better for longer term stuff. I'd be pretty happy if it became a little bit more of a thing in general. Personally I've been fortunate to make it to a couple Pony conventions including BronyCon twice (2013, 2019) and PonyCon (NYC) a handful of times, largely because my parents were willing to help me get there and in the case of BronyCon 2019 because I spent a fair chunk of money to do so between a ticket, a hotel room, and a train ride. But I also happen to live in upstate NY, so it's only ~5 hours to Baltimore and around half that to NYC. Presumably a lot of people can't go or at least weren't able to go to the really big events (like BronyCon, EFNW, and BABSCon?). I recall an online forum topic? chat? where somebody once said it was like 8+ hours of travel for them to anywhere with a con and most of them involved crossing over from Canada to the US.. P.S. Good time for people to hang out on LoE or something too, probably, if just being in a Discord chat room is too boring...

Care to elaborate on that? Will it be a digital board game or a physical one?

I suspected as much on the latter, but some of that's just the game and it's mechanics not earth intrinsic per se. Most likely what you're after is a total conversion mod as opposed to a pony skin (so pony leaders, pony civs, pony units, pony buildings, possibly an equestria equivalent map w/appropriate art style and terrain, a pony tech tree, etc). And ultimately, even with the monumental effort that would be, there will likely be a hard limit to what can be modified . Unfortunately there is a world of difference between a game which can be 'modded', a highly flexible engine that was used a particular way and can be used other ways, and a situation like Minecraft where -modding- means mucking around with the game's source code to the point that you can make so different as to be barely recognizable.

@Misscellanio And how exactly are you defining 'open world'? That terminology is used in multiple ways, from flexibly about player actions/choices to non-linear progression to a substantially explorable world. I'm afraid a mane6 storyline would probably get any project C&D in short order. I believe there are pony mods for Civ V. Searching 'pony' in the steam workshop for Civ V gets you 60 results.

Reminds me a little more of the layout of that room they had the royal wedding in than the throne room itself. (which was part of the show intro). Looks nice for a basic map though, albeit it doesn't quite have that MLP art style and the thrones seem a bit primitive.

Sure, any time. I'm never sure what to make of Equestrian technology, it's kind of an unfortunate hodge-podge in the sense that it's hard to place it in a real world timeline. Some things seem practically medieval (circa 1400-1500) like Ponyville and Canterlot kind feels like it should be lit by torches or at best gaslamps. And all the guards are wearing plate armor and carrying swords and spears. Oh and there are pegasus/earth ponies pulling wagons and chariots. And then other places seem somewhere between victorian and early 1900s like Manehattan. I mean they appear to have electric lighting, but you have trains run on pony power or steam/coal. And then there are taxi cabs that sort of resemble these -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansom_cab I think we can rule out using Discord related references but I see a couple phones here -> https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/My_Little_Pony_Friendship_is_Magic_Wiki:Workshop/Phones Manehattan of course seems to be significanlty 'ahead' of most places. That's understandable, creating art is a lot of work. If you're hoping for others to contribute significantly on the art end you might call that out a bit more directly; I just saw the tag on the thread today. And in that context I can see you might have been making hinting at that in the first post. I could try modifying your TARDIS so it looks more like what I'm thinking of, but idk when I might get around to that. Tangentially I was looking at the background for the inside again and was thinking that if you want to be able to move the character around inside you'll want to slice up the image into a couple background pieces and some assets so you can draw the character in front of/behind various bits of scenery. Most of the space is pretty open but in a few spots used as a simple background you'd have the pony standing in front of something they should be behind.

Nice art choices there. What's with the weirdly thick, rectangular border on the TARDIS? Is there some artistic purpose to that or is it a game engine thing? I am wondering because the original has a considerably more distinct 'box you can walk into' feel that's not quite coming across. As it is your TARDIS looks rather flat. I do like the horseshoe motif, though you might consider giving it some gems/lights on that to kinda give the impression of the original glowing blue light. Also it would look nice to have a a pony/equestria appropriate notice sign or warning (possibly against using magic near/inside the box) and a proper door handle. On a similar note I would recommend either going with the full 3 panel + glass like the original or shrinking the overall height so that 2 panels and glass fills the door. Ideally it should feel like doors rather than rectangles. The color difference between the door and the sort of 'inset' panel is not particularly great either which leads to the impression that they are the same color and may be responsible for the 'flatness' I am perceiving. Making the surrounding edge a darker blue and introducing a center strip of dark gray/black might make the 'groove' seem more pronounced. The sign seems a little odd to me too, given that neither pony/police nor magic/public are equivalent in any way, but I suppose what matters is that it's vaguely recognizable. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/395582/Call-to-open-Tardis-police-boxes ^ nice example of the real thing here at the top of the article. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTOKBEq67Kt2rlRwwQZox15_shnZexEDSIjihW_qdh7HKmlHXp8 ^ this is an example of a five-paneled door. this was a fairly common way to construct doors at one time