I’ve added a recent tweets section to the sidebar now that I’m back on Twitter and you probably also noticed that I’ve slimmed the header down a bit. Hopefully it looks a little slicker and gives more room to the actual content.

I’ve moved the comments over to Disqus as I think it looks nifty but you do need to login to comment now so if anyone has major objections let me know. You can log in with a bunch of different social networks, OpenID, Google etc. or just create a separate Disqus login if you want so hopefully there’ll be something for everyone.

I’ve also added a note to the footer and the about page to license the blog content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. I’m sure nobody is much interested in republishing my posts but there we go, at least they have explicit permission now.

Yep that’s right, it’s not the actual game they want funding for, just the demo.

Goblinworks was formed in 2011 and has an exclusive license to develop an MMO based on the Pathfinder RPG. One of the founders of Goblinworks however is also a founder of Paizo (owners of Pathfinder) so it’s fair to say the two companies are closely linked. Given that’s the case, it’s even more baffling that they are asking for funding on Kickstarter as last I heard Pathfinder was outselling D&D so presumably they aren’t short of a bob or two!

Who exactly out there is willing to fund a project that the developers aren’t willing to fund themselves?

If you’re that hard up at least grab some cheap middleware and stock art and make something yourself, just to show that you’re serious. The company blog is full of the usual lofty designer stuff (and nothing anyone who’s played MUDs or MMOs over the last 20 years hasn’t heard or seen before by the way) but it sounds like they have a team and offices and all that good stuff, so what they just didn’t budget enough to make the actual demo?

It looks like the Kickstarter page has been pulled for now, but according to Goblinworks CEO Ryan “Steve Jobs” Dancey it was published prematurely and more information is to follow.

Let’s hope cooler heads prevail and they abandon the Kickstarter idea because the whole thing doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence in the project.

Over at Mudbytes, Idealiad has questioned the wisdom of trying to bring together such diverse game types and while I see his point, from a reader’s point of view I’d love to have material from the worlds of Interactive Fiction and Persistent Browser Games alongside more familiar MUD specific content. You could even include forum or play by email type RPGs in the text game mix.

Drakkos is right that the current text game community is spread thinly over several different sites, and even within the MU* community there doesn’t seem to be much crossover between sites like WORA or TMC for example. It’s very easy for us all to get absorbed in our own little worlds and I know I sometimes get frustrated at people who seem to think the MUD world begins and ends with Diku, or that IRE invented commercial MUDs.

While I think that community support and consensus is important, what the project really needs to be successful is an individual (or a small group) driving it. You could probably say it’s like making a MUD in that respect; while you want to try to cater to your community as much as possible, you’re never going to give everyone everything they want (if they even know what it is they want!) so in the end you have to follow your own vision.

Given that the original Imaginary Realities was abandoned and the material left languishing in copyright limbo it’s reasonable for people to be hesitant to contribute to a new version. Hopefully this time the material can be contributed under a license (Creative Commons perhaps?) which would allow others to mirror or archive the material against any future problems.

It’s definitely a tall order, but I’d love to see the end result and I’d be happy to contribute in whatever way I can.

Each gift Xpango offer has a credit value with one credit being worth approximately £10. You gain from 1 to 4 credits for each affiliate offer you complete, as well as 1 credit for each person you refer who also completes at least one offer. When you sign up you have to select your initial gift to work towards, but this can be freely changed at any time.

I decided to go for an Apple TV for 10 credits.

The Offers

Offer: Prime Scratch Cards
Credits: 2
Paid In: £10
Paid Out: £21
Start Date: 16.01.12
Completed Date: 27.01.12

Offer: William Hill Bingo
Credits: 3
Paid In: £10
Paid Out: £25.86
Start Date: 17.01.12
Completed Date: 18.01.12

Offer: Backupify
Credits: 2
Paid In: NA
Paid Out: NA
Start Date: 19.01.12
Completed Date: 21.01.12

Offer: Bingo Liner
Credits: 3
Paid In: £10
Paid Out: £0
Start Date: 21.01.12
Completed Date: 25.01.12

The gambling offers are a good choice provided you have the discipline not to gamble beyond the minimum required to complete the offer. Most of them will match your initial stake so with a bit of luck you can make at least some of it back, although do read the fine print.

I figured that the most I could lose was £30 which was an acceptable amount to risk for something valued at £99. As it turned out I actually made a net profit of £16.86 from the three gambling offers. The Backupify offer was just a free 30 day trial with no payment information required and no commitment to continue so that seemed like another easy 2 credits.

As you can see all offers except Prime Scratch Cards completed within a week and overall I was impressed with the speed that Xpango tracked the offers and credited them to my account. However it took much longer to actually receive the gift.

Timeline

16.01.12 – Signed up for first offer.
27.01.12 – Final offer completed.
31.01.12 – Emailed Xpango to ask when gift would be despatched.
31.01.12 – Reply stating gift will be despatched after verification process of 30 days.
29.02.12 – Emailed Xpango for update.
02.03.12 – Reply stating due to backlog of orders gift will be despatched week beginning the 15th.
09.03.12 – Email from Xpango asking if I wanted to wait for the 3rd gen Apple TV (official release date 16.03.12)
25.03.12 – Emailed Xpango for update.
29.03.12 – Reply stating gift had been ordered via Amazon and should arrive within 10 days.
04.04.12 – Apple TV (3rd gen) arrived!

So a couple of things to take away from this; firstly it takes a while from completing the offers to actually getting your stuff! I don’t quite know what the “verification process” is but I assume it’s mostly so they can stall you as long as possible to improve their cashflow.

On a positive note though they usually replied to my emails within a couple of days. I’m not sure how much of the delay at the end was due to waiting for the new model to be released/stocked/despatched  but the whole process took just over 2 months from offer completion to the gift arriving.

Conclusion

If you’re not in a hurry then I can definitely recommend Xpango. I spent a couple of hours playing some online bingo and other games (making a £16 profit in the process!) and then a couple of months later I got a brand new 3rd generation Apple TV. While I did have to chase them a few times they replied promptly and gave me all the information I asked for. I certainly never felt like I wasn’t going to get my gift eventually.

[I've included my referral code in the Xpango links in this post.]

If you’ve been following along you’ll know that in March 2011 I sold my shares in The Binary Forge Limited to my partner Wade and left the staff of Maiden Desmodus.

After making the game completely non-commercial Wade announced around October time that he was shutting the game down. Soon afterwards he posted on the game forums that ownership of the company had been transferred to a staff member called Seiti who was now the sole owner. Seiti was a long time player who Wade had brought onto the staff as an RPA after I left.

Seiti took over at the beginning of November 2011 but in December he posted that he was ill and wouldn’t be around much. A few weeks later it was reported that Seiti had passed away. Wade initially posted on the official forum that following Seiti’s death ownership of the game would be reverting back to him, but very soon announced that Seiti’s widow would be taking over instead. She was introduced by the character name Mri but never actually made a post on the forum, although she did appear briefly as a staff member in game.

Moving into 2012 the game seemed to be up and down a lot with several longer periods of downtime. This got worse towards the end of January and the game was offline for almost all of February. Also in February The Binary Forge Limited was officially dissolved as a company.

At the beginning of March 2012 someone named Thrace introduced himself on Kongregate as the new administrator of Maiden Desmodus. Apparently he is a friend of Mri and had been brought in to get the game back up and running despite not being familiar with the code or even having played the game before. His first act was to perform a complete wipe of all account and character data.

The other day I found the game server online and popped in to have a chat with him. I found him evasive and inconsistent, and with a strangely familiar typing style. I have my own theory on what’s been going on, but you’ll have to make up your own mind. As of this posting the website and game server are offline again.

Getting your Fire

Although Amazon will only ship the Fire to a US address you are able to use a UK card and billing address when ordering it. I ordered mine on amazon.com and had it delivered to a friend in the US who then shipped it on to me. There are companies which offer a similar service but you will probably pay a premium for this.

Shipping to the UK was $19.45  with USPS First Class Mail International and took 10 working days from door to door. The value of the Fire falls just outside the range where import duty is payable but you will still be liable for VAT at 20% on the total value of the Fire and the shipping costs.

Amazon Appstore

In order to download anything from the Amazon Appstore (even the free apps) you need to enable 1-Click settings on your Amazon account and set a US credit card and billing address. Provided you only want to download free apps you can use any valid US address and a test credit card number.

If you want paid apps you can either get a real US credit card or load your Amazon account with a gift card. Any purchases should then use the gift card balance instead of trying to charge the non-working US credit card.

If you don’t want to use this workaround then GetJar is a good alternative to the Amazon Appstore and can be installed on the Fire without rooting. You can also use Google’s Android Market but you will need to root your Fire first.

Amazon Instant Video

The Kindle Fire comes with a free month of Amazon Prime ($79 per year thereafter). As well as free 2 day shipping (not much use outside the US!) Prime membership also gives you access to a lot of Amazon’s streaming film and TV content for free, as well as one free book per month from the Kindle Owners Lending Library.

As well as requiring a US credit card and billing address as mentioned above, Amazon Video has two more hoops you have to jump through; it won’t work on a rooted device and it will only work if you connect from a US based IP address.

If you have a rooted Fire you can download OTA Rootkeeper from the Android Market and use that to temporarily unroot your device when you want to watch videos. After unrooting you may also need to force stop and restart the video service as it checks for root when it starts.

Solving the IP issue is a little trickier as the Fire has no built in support for using a proxy or a VPN. However you should be able to use TUN.ko Installer to enable VPN support and then use a regular VPN client to connect to a US based server.

An alternative to a VPN or proxy are websites like UnblockUs or UnoTelly. These are designed specifically to avoid geo-restrictions on streaming services and cost around $5 a month to use. The advantage these services have over a VPN or proxy is that they work using a custom DNS server which can be configured as part of the regular Fire settings without any additional software or rooting required. They should also be faster as only the traffic necessary to establish your location is routed via their proxy with the rest of your internet traffic being routed normally. This does mean however that you will only see a benefit for the specific sites that the service supports.

The option I use is the World Wide Kindle Fire app. This temporarily unroots your Fire and connects to a proxy service giving you an all-in-one solution for streaming video to your Fire outside the US. I’ve emailed the developer a couple of times and had responses the same day (much faster than I ever reply to emails!) and I think it’s well worth the $0.99 price.

Kindle Books

I encountered a strange situation with my Fire where the Store buttons for Newsstand and Books were redirecting me to the amazon.co.uk website rather than using the Fire specific storefronts. My Fire was registered to my .com account and I could access the amazon app store and videos just fine but I couldn’t get the US book store, even through a US based proxy. It turned out that my Kindle account was associated with my amazon.co.uk account rather than amazon.com and this was causing the country specific redirect.

You can solve this by migrating your Kindle between .co.uk and .com accounts from the “Manage Your Kindle” section of the Amazon website.

UK Release?

Hopefully it won’t be too long before the Fire is released in the UK and I can stop having to use these workarounds to access content.

A lot of the new functionality hasn’t had much testing so if you come across any problems please let me know and I will try to fix them ASAP. Bear in mind that MXP is only partially supported and life is probably too short for me to expand it much beyond what is in place now.

Skinning

There is now an images directory at the same level as the swf which contains png images for each of the buttons and one named ‘skin.png’ which can be used to overlay the entire client to provide a more custom graphical look. Simply replace the button images and skin file with your own graphics. I’ve included some plain buttons and a basic skin.png image you can use as a template. Unfortunately the buttons don’t support different states but this was the only way to do it and have the images loadable at run time.

You can also adjust the spacing of the output and command windows relative to the edge of the container in order to better accommodate your custom skin. This is done using flashvars in the embedding page, see the README for a list of the new parameters.

MSDP Support and External Interface

The client will negotiate MSDP and can accept basic MSDP_VAR and MSDP_VAL data which is then passed to the container in the receive_msdp function. Each line from the server is also passed to the container using the receive_text function:

function receive_msdp (msdp_var:String, msdp_val:String):void
function receive_text (txt:String):void

In addition, FMud implements the following callbacks from the container for sending data back to the server:

function send_msdp (msdp_var:String, msdp_val:String):void
function send_text (txt:String):void

In theory this should allow you to build a GUI in javascript on the embedding page around FMud and communicate back and forth.

This was requested by a couple of people but it’s not something I have much experience with and is basically untested so please let me know if it isn’t working as intended.

MXP Support

FMud now supports SEND, A, GAUGE, COLOR and IMAGE tags, as well as SUPPORTS and VERSION. Context menus using send are also supported. Querying of specific tags using SUPPORT is not available, instead the client will send the full list of supported tags regardless.

Only temp secure mode (4) is supported so you need to send ESC[4z before each MXP tag. There is no negotiation.

Simple !ELEMENT definitions are also supported with a single attribute only, for example you could define the element ‘x’:

<!el x '<send href="&text;|l &text;" hint="move &dir;|look &dir;">' att='dir'>

You could then send the following shorthand tag:

<x 'over the hill'>hill</x>

Which would be parsed as:

<send href="hill|l hill" hint="move over the hill|look over the hill">hill</send>

When clicked this link would open a context menu with two options, “move over the hill” and “look over the hill” which would send the commands “hill” and “l hill” respectively.

Support for up to four gauges is built in using the names gauge1, gauge2, gauge3 and gauge4. You need to specify caption and color attributes for each gauge and then send the data using the entities curr# and max#, for example:

<GAUGE gauge1 caption='Hit Points' color='red'>
<GAUGE gauge2 caption='Mana' color='blue'>
<GAUGE gauge3 caption='Move' color='yellow'>
<!ENTITY max1 100>
<!ENTITY max2 100>
<!ENTITY max3 100>
<!ENTITY curr1 56>
<!ENTITY curr2 78>
<!ENTITY curr3 24>

The gauges are shown above the input bar so you’ll need to adjust the position of the output window accordingly.

Tags are not case sensitive and !ELEMENT and !ENTITY tags can be shortened to !El and !En. You can use Hex or standard HTML color names with the COLOR tag. Embedding multiple tags within !ELEMENT definitions probably won’t work and embedding tags within tags probably won’t either.

Unicode Support

This is another feature that has been requested a few times now and I’ve implemented what I think is the correct algorithm to decode UTF-8 but I’ve had difficulty finding a live mud to test it on so if anyone uses this on their server please let me know how it works.

You can get the new version from the downloads page. Make sure you check the README for updated flashvars information as well as some more explanation on policy files as this seems to be what trips people up the most.

I think this type of gameplay will work better with server populations scaled in the hundreds rather than the thousands so I’m deliberately aiming for a small scale world. Besides, a traditional MMO with heavy PvE based gameplay and a massive world is just not feasible for a small team, nevermind a solo developer, so I’m not even going to attempt to go there.

I’m producing the game under the umbrella of Bantam Cricket Games as I think it looks a bit more professional and makes it easier to bring in other people further down the line if necessary. For now though it’s mostly just me with a couple of friends I’ve roped in to help out with a few things. Yes the name is a bit odd, but trivia fans should note it’s what the “bc” in bc-dev has always stood for.

I’m using BigWorld MMO middleware which should take care of a lot of the backend requirements for the game. It was a toss up between BW and Hero Engine, and while a lot of people seem to be moving over to Hero for me BW was the best option (a topic for another post maybe!)

It’s very early days still but I’ve got my BW server and development environment all set up and have worked through some of the tutorial documentation. BigWorld ships with a fantasy demo that includes some basic functionality, but there’s still a lot of work to do to make any kind of game. The system is a little daunting at first but when you consider what it’s actually doing behind the scenes it’s amazing how (relatively!) simple it is.

I’ll post more information about the game and my progress as I go.

These were quite different projects with Avalon wanting something similar to the client I did for Maiden Desmodus whereas The Two Towers had an existing javascript based web client they just wanted recreated in Flash for use on game portal sites.

Although the T2T client appears to be just a simple reskin, it was probably the more challenging project as I had to implement MXP !ELEMENT tag parsing which is something I’ve always avoided in the past when working with MXP.

You can see the T2T client up on Newgrounds (among other Flash game sites) and the Avalon client (named Lumiere) is now live on their site, although it’s not quite finished yet.

Arthur James Adcock was born on 16th July at 8.08pm and weighed in at 8lbs 8oz.

With all those 8′s it’s a shame he’s not Chinese.

It was another section but at least Suzy knew what to expect this time and fortunately in the UK there’s no requirement to eat wallpaper paste for two days afterwards.

Yes he is ginger strawberry blonde, and yes his hair does match my beard!

So now we have one of each and I think we’ll probably quit while we’re ahead.