StormyVenture

I'd very disappointed if I didn't get a totally fresh start as a (newly born?) member of the opposite sex (filly, mare).

It would probably be profoundly disconcerting at first, especially if I still had all the now "foreign" memories without the body/context/etc. But at least I'd get to be my own pony from the start with minimal baggage. The absolute last thing I'd want is a direct 1:1 translation.

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?

Forever!

It does depend on how you define "being a Brony" though. I consider myself a fan indefinitely and as long as there's a convention I can reasonably make it to, I would definitely go! At least for a long time yet. How active anyone will be in the future is undoubtedly going to vary though.

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.

20 hours ago, brambleshadow4 said:

Ah, so we have elected to descend further into architecture debate.

I still don't think you've made a clear case for why a downloadable client is better. Neither a web app nor a client can operate without a website/web service/P2P proxy servers running, so that bullet has to be bitten either way.  A client doesn't solve any of the problems you mention with the web app: "they have to visit the website too" will also be true for the client since everyone involved will need to download the client from somewhere, and while "you assume that both people have a browser with which the web app is compatible" is true, client apps don't escape that problem because with client apps, you'll need to release a stable build for every OS you want to target. It's pretty easy to test a website on multiple browsers (except Safari ugh), but testing an app on several OSes? *shudders*

 

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.

Quote

And we haven't even talked about the security implications of downloading random executables off the internet. It's WAAAY safer to visit a website than to run an executable.

So yeah, I think having a downloadable client is a bad design choice for something this lite.

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.

21 hours ago, brambleshadow4 said:

Someone did make a standalone client and server application back in the day (here's their reddit post if you're interested). I'd argue that having a downloadable client is a bad design choice though. The web app significantly lowers the barrier to entry to getting a game started; all you have to do is visit the website, click host game, send the link to a friend, and once they've clicked it, start the game. With a client app, you have to download it, run it, host a game, send some sort of password/lobby code to your friend, have them download the app, launch it, copy in the code, and that's all assuming someone else is running a dedicated server. If not, there's still a whole server app that needs to be setup properly with port forwarding and the whole mess. Sure, someone who's really interested might jump through all those hoops, but 99% of people won't.

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.

21 hours ago, brambleshadow4 said:

I go back and forth on whether I want to try to have some sort of public lobby system built in, but that also comes with the need to implement some sort of communication system, probably text chat. Public lobbies also only work well when there's many players online at any given time, which is not currently the case. Even if there was a public lobby system, it's almost always more fun to play with people you already know, and those communities can more easily solve that problem. You definitely don't have to use discord to find people, but it's definitely the most popular gaming social platform these days.

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.

21 hours ago, brambleshadow4 said:

HTTPS is always more painful than HTTP I'm afraid Let's encrypt make it better, but I'd hardly describe it as painless. I put getting it working off for a long time because I wanted to prioritize adding actual features to the site, but everything's now https/wss now, yay!

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.

On 5/9/2020 at 5:27 PM, ggg-2 said:

Two earth ponies can have twin offspring with one being a unicorn and the other a pegasus. People don't seem to realize that genetics in MLP are clearly vastly different than our own.

Our own genetics can lead to outcomes which on the surface are seemingly improbable such as two light-skinned parents having a dark skinned child. And there's all kinds of other stuff in play besides the genetic recombination including mutations, epigenetics, etc. It's even possible to be chimeric and have cells in the same body that have different DNA, which can potentially result in women giving birth to children that seemingly don't share their DNA.  

 I'm not sure that two earth ponies having offspring that aren't "earth ponies" is proof of anything. besides an argument that they really are the same species, or three very closely related ones.

Going on a real-life model, you might infer the presence of hormones or genes which either control or code for the development of wings, a horn, or neither. And from that you could branch out to ponies born with a horn and wings or ones which might technically be a different species but never fully developed the outward characteristics. Perhaps you could have pegasi that can stand on clouds but can't fly because the wings aren't functional or unicorns who have very limited magic because they basically don't have a horn.  With the right system it's not very hard to conceive of a situation where there are earth ponies with unicorn ancestry who might end up with unicorn offspring under the right circumstances. A lot depends on how you figure the differences work.

Something as ridiculously over-simplified as variants of a single gene which separate pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies (or a distinct gene/set of genes that separates them) could produce odd combinations given Mendelian Inheritance. Pick your favorite pairing, and then what? And what if a pony who appears in most respect to be a earth unicorn actually harbors earth pony genetics that just aren't dominant/active/etc?

@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...

Some of the problems I see with the redemption of villains are whether there is enough of episode time/a plot arc to explain background, intermediate period/immediate problem. And then how probable, sensible the cause/effect are of whatever change in heart is supposed to happen. At least with Fluttershy and Discord there was sort of an ongoing dynamic tension. After all he's the self-styled? "Lord of Chaos" so he's not exactly going to become a perfect, orderly goody two-shoes, but he can be persuaded not to be as wantonly antagonistic.

I'm not sure what to make of Chrysalis and Sombra, I guess they're irredeemable villains? However the way Starlight is treated vs Cozy Glow seems kind of skewed...

5 hours ago, Singe said:

Neighsay wasn't really a villain. He just had opposing view points and concerns given the prior history, that the show never addressed. Plus he was holding Twilight accountable for mismanagement. I think he was made to play on the current political climate at that time.

For what it's worth he could have been a villain, not every single one needs to be cataclysmic world ending matter, but they already had Cozy Glow.

He didn't seem to be holding Twilight accountable so much as just generally being a lead weight saying that things needed to be the way they'd always been and she had to bend to the way of doing things that he was in charge of. I mean it's right in his name (neighsayer -> a person who criticizes, objects to, or opposes something). Heck the guy was even a total speciest from the start. If the "friendship school" had been less of a gag act... And then once she was out of the picture temporarily, he tried to take over the school and was going to kick out non-ponies.

https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Chancellor_Neighsay#Depiction_in_the_series

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?

18 minutes ago, Misscellanio said:

Open world like similar to anthem, fallen order, etc. and yea it probs. Would get a c and d but you just said what I would want in a game and that’s what I would want. 

And yea as someone who plays Civ. V and Is a brony I’m sure you could assume I know about the steam workshop and the pony mods. The mods only take you so far. Still feels like Earth setting but with a pony mask over it. 

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.

Alright.

Having to go out of the game to change the date is a little weird, just my two cents. Surely it's not that hard to store values in the game and provide a point and click interface to adjust them.

Seems like this could be at least an amusing point and click 2D adventure with a bit of work.

How do you change the date; do you have to change the actual time on your computer? I'm not seeing any kind of actual interface. Is there any other gameplay besides presumably visiting the other 'stages'?

As an aside, regarding your game art:

The typical form of the TARDIS (which could look like anything technically in the DW universe) is a UK police box design probably from 1960. So you can just use a real picture of one or draw a close facsimile. I doubt there's any need to worry about copyright or anything, unless you use an actual shot from the show. Similarly I would use something else for the inside than a blurry capture from the show itself. If you really like that particular example I'd suggest tracing or freehand drawing to get something visually similar which resembles but it's a one for one copy of the show set.

https://www.deviantart.com/urimas/art/MLPonline-Sprite-Sheets-341840400

^ might be some useful sprites there and for the price of giving credit you have a lot of freedom. Also, although they are small, probably rpg maker sized, as long as you scale in powers of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ...) and without anti-aliasing you can probably scale any of them up to a workable size.