Cities Game

14:30 / 25.08.05

Hi. I've built an online game which my friends have been getting quite into. Any lith'ers want to play?

Cities Game

This was built for the shear joy of coding it. New sub-quests are being added slowly to make sure there's always something to do. No advertising, no special pay-only features.

12:00 / 28.08.05

Quite interesting. Took a lot of wiki reading to get the hang of it (a bit more of a preamble before sign up would be nice). My only problem was that it has made me want to go back to MUD2 which I weaned myself off last year. Don't make me go back there, I'm wasting enough of my life on GTA as it is.

10:03 / 30.08.05

I was trying to make something which would keep people interested and with lots of things to try, rather than something strategic.

People seem to be having fun, which is the main thing. The wiki is slowly expanding into some useful help. I'm going to bring in some things soon which require multiple established players to complete. ie. fire players can melt sand, air players blow glass, earth players crush grapes, water players make wine from bottles and crushed grapes...

As ever, suggestions are welcome.

10:16 / 30.08.05

earth players crush grapes
Well, in that case I'm creating a new character called Stu Francis. Any dollhouses in the pipeline? [Warms up jumping skills]

10:57 / 30.08.05

Sweet Zombie Jesus. You understand that I have to hurt you on principle now. Although I'll have to add that reference into the game now.

22:45 / 30.08.05

Fun so far. I HAD to pick the guy that makes the wine. I have slain many Fire Flies and I'm strolling on towards the Earth city.

00:24 / 31.08.05

I just wrote the code for crushing grapes including the retro TV reference. I feel dirty, but in a good way.

Also, the in game booze has healing properties which seems like a bad role model or something.

Although there's also "magic powder" which wizards sell which gives you extra action points. Although it has some bad long term affects...

All my free time lately has been spent trying to come up with more silly weapons. (suggestions welcome).

00:55 / 31.08.05

My only suggestion so far is to make the movement part of the play screen smaller. I can't see the entire area, and have to scroll back and forth if I want to see what's east of me.

12:43 / 31.08.05

try a Smaller font?

02:18 / 01.09.05

Didn't make much of a difference- it was more the size of the windows.

Also, what's the deal with the Glass Sword? it does completely ridiculous damage, but I assume it breaks. How many swings do I get with it?

09:32 / 01.09.05

It's a homage to the old Ultima (not online) series of games.

It does up to 1000 damage but breaks the first time it does damage.

The theoretically best weapons (so far) is golden gun which does damage equal to half your current gold (and costs half your gold to fire!), the midas wand.. instant death but has about a 1 in 4 chance of breaking each use, and the Dawn Horn which does 7 points of damage but only between 4 and 5am.

The best normal weapons are probably the short sword and broad sword, the only side effects of which is that they change the size of your characters font.

---

09:59 / 01.09.05

I'd so totally have a Reznor Blade if you coded one.

This looks cool. I've just started so I'm still finding my way around. With the screen layout, maybe there's a way that the tables on the left hand side could have some of the width taken from them so you didn't have to scroll back to the right hand side? That looks like it'd solve the scrolling problem anyway.

18:05 / 02.09.05

OK. Reznor blade added, plus there's a way to control the width of the control panel.

Lemmie know your username in cities and I'll give you a reznor blade.

18:05 / 02.09.05

How about a Vorpal blade (snicker snack)?
A device to temporarily gain another power, call it a Kettle (contains an element, fnar)?
A CO2 spray, or Heavy Water?

---

22:11 / 02.09.05

Haha! Thanks, that's brilliant!

My name's 'Xyu' ingame, and he'd love to have one of those blades, that'd be awesome.

With the table adjustment there's about 10 pixels overlap sometimes, (between the tables and the adventure squares.) I think it was going over every odd adventure when I just used some turns up, but apart from that it works great, nice one!

The Timaximus, The!

21:48 / 03.09.05

What are the hats all about?

00:44 / 04.09.05

Okay, I've finally been to all four cities, but now I can't find the temple of air. I've found the Shrine of Air, but it doesn't do anything. Help.

10:40 / 04.09.05

temple of air is about 8 spaces north of air city, visible from the road.

10:49 / 04.09.05

Hats. I don't know exactly. yet. Someone suggested them and I added them. There's no reason to have a hat, accept that you get a hat point for every hour you are wearing one.

I may come up with an actual point to it later. Maybe there's a discount in shops, or you can only get to a certain place when wearing a hat. Suggestions?

16:57 / 05.09.05

I might set up a roadside milliners and parrot stuffing shop...
I just met Mr T the parrot, and rather than say his name I had to slay that sucka. I pity the fool.

18:08 / 05.09.05

Hmmm. No XP for killing stuff with sacrificial sword? The way it works is cool, but not getting experience seems inconsistent.

unheimlich manoeuvre

01:05 / 06.09.05

I'm playing air aligned been wandering around killing toads and undines. Stole a top hat from Quantum, I think. Intriguing.

12:03 / 06.09.05

Bastard! Wait 'til the Duel quest...

I was thinking you could have other accessories than hats, like gloves. Then we could form a religion around it, then we could have other temples (can you see where this is going?) then we could have a Temple Of Gloves- shine like thunder cry like rain dude...

12:30 / 06.09.05

Hey now! Stop that. Hey now now...

12:54 / 06.09.05

94N 9E Temple of Love - has been there for weeks.

At some point I'll add the Temple ov thee Lemur, but that'll probably be the middle of the map.

12:36 / 07.09.05

sweet TOTL goodness, atop a crag like Shangri-la. I want a Temple of Gloves though, ACCESSORISE!
Where can I get a fire sword? My Vorpal blade broke on a sparrow- buggrit.

Jack The Bodiless

10:31 / 15.09.05

I just tried to hit a Sparrow with a Clean Bandage. Must. Remember. To. Change. Items. For. Combat.

I spent ages trying to figure out why I wasn't doing any damage, too...

unheimlich manoeuvre

22:30 / 15.09.05

Yes I keep doing that. Found out the hard way that moving with some items active cost more AP's too.

Some how does making things in concert work? Do you need to get different alignments at the same place at the same time?

moonweaver

01:22 / 16.09.05

thank you C.E, it is a lot of fun, i am sitting depressed and alone singing to the sisters of mercy while a mountain of broken swords lie around me... damn ironclad toads with rocks for bellys...

14:48 / 16.09.05

Love that Reznor blade. Here's a question- why is a rusty sword so deadly (4 damage, more accurate than a Reznor)? Tetanus?

06:43 / 19.09.05

Swords have a bonus to hit as they are longer. Knives do about 3 damage, swords 4 because they're heavier. The rusty swords break pretty quick so they are easier to get. They are handy to save for the bigger stuff.

I think I'm going to leave the game for a couple of weeks as I've got this week to prepare for the 5 day eprints training course at the end of the month. I've got to prepare about 9 hours of training. (for those that don't know eprints is my day-job free software project).

I'm starting to think about the end game now. There will be some pretty hard bits. Maybe things which cost useful items, damage your max-stats, maybe routes which only work on certain days of the week(!). In true ultima style I'm thinking of adding 4 dungeons - one for each alignment. But I'll have spend a couple of weeks thinking about it. Until then people can just keep killing the dragons.

Charlie's Horse

03:55 / 25.10.05

God. Is anyone else helplessly hooked on this? I completed all the initial alignment quests, got knighted, headed back to Fire City. Then I just started walking East - and not along the road. Through all the forests and badlands. Walking the earth like Cain from Kung Fu. I've amassed such a heavy load of weapons and items that I normally stuff it all into an enormous magic boot that follows me about. That, or I put it all on and roll around, since it's faster than waddling. Just slew my first dragon - shot it with a golden gun like some Bond villain - and now I'm wondering how much longer it'll be till I can head through the deserts in the Southlands. Two new cities? An ocean? Has anyone seen these things?

Charlie's Horse

03:58 / 25.10.05

Oh, and C.Elseware - thank you. This game is wonderful. I mean, I have a clock of invisibility. And a reznor blade. And a growing caffeine tolerance at any given moment.