The Chipped Dagger 2D MMO -- Alpha Testing

[donmc]

Update: players in general did not like that your character did not have any form of permanent advancement.  I have added an interesting an unique system to the game to address that.  Please see the latest post in this thread for details!

What if Swing and MMO made baby?

It might look something like this:

http://www.chippeddagger.com

It's alpha, it's rough around the edges, and it's still a work in progress.

Here are some features:

•One seemless world (no sharding and no instancing).
•Random dungeons. Lots of them.
•You can find new items!
•You can invent new items!
•You can reverse engineer an existing item.
•Nearly everything in the world is craftable including the ability to mint coins.
•PvP (you can attack anyone anywhere, but in some areas there are penalties for attacking).
•Full loot PvP (if you can kill your opponent, you can loot his belongings).
•Player owned housing.
•No restrictive classes, no skill-by-use grinding. Actually play the game instead of watching your XP bar or a countdown timer all day!
•Monsters spawn in random locations at random times. Overtime they migrate. No more spawn camping.
•More than 200,000+ monsters roaming the overworld and in dungeons!
•Have an permanent impact on the world. Place your house where you want to. Setup markets where you want to. Modify the terrain near your buildings. Be remembered as the person who found (or invented) a legendary item!
•A sandbox game instead of a themepark one.
•Very low system requirements to play. Nearly any modern computer with Java installed should do.
•Runs on Windows | Mac OSX | Linux | Solaris and maybe a couple other places where Java is installed.
•Compared the multi-gigabyte downloads of many MMOs, this one is only a couple-megabytes.


and a screenie:

[donmc]

Build 86 is now live.  Thanks for those who have posted bugs and given their feedback ingame!

Is anyone having launch issues with the game?  Any other feedback or advice?

thanks!

[teletubo]

My advice is to have the option to login as guest (no registration) .
I was intersted in testing the game, but the thought of registering just to give a quick look made me give up .

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[gouessej]

My advice is to have the option to login as guest (no registration) .
I was intersted in testing the game, but the thought of registering just to give a quick look made me give up .

Good idea. I will give it a try when it does not require a registration.

[donmc]

My advice is to have the option to login as guest (no registration) .
I was intersted in testing the game, but the thought of registering just to give a quick look made me give up .

It doesn't require registration.  Click the webstart, choose any username pass combo you want and you are in.

[williamwoles]

I have tried it like 2 or 3 days ago and after I was closing "Character Equipment" and "Character Items" I was unable to open it again. One more problem I have detected was after going to long to the West, game client was becoming every time slower and slower...

Suggestions:
- Implement path finding algorithm, so user doesn't need to click every time to advance 1 cell
- Make the bodies of killed creatures disappear passed some time, at some point zone becoming full of them

In my own opinion you shouldn't make the game p2p until the moment you feel that you have audience that will pay it. People scary when they see that they need to pay for play...

[adon_y_coya]

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26

java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(Unknown Source)    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(Unknown Source)    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)    at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(Unknown Source)    at java.net.Socket.connect(Unknown Source)    at java.net.Socket.connect(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.<init>(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getNewHttpClient(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.plainConnect(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.connect(Unknown Source)    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.AbstractAutoProxyHandler.getJSFileFromURL(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.AbstractAutoProxyHandler.init(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.DynamicProxyManager.reset(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.deploy.net.proxy.DeployProxySelector.reset(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.javaws.Main.initializeExecutionEnvironment(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.javaws.Main.continueInSecureThread(Unknown Source)    at com.sun.javaws.Main$1.run(Unknown Source)    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

 
I get this error in the console before the game starts. Then the login screen appears and login happens normally.

[donmc]

@ william

i think you ran out of stamina.  most players didn't notice their stamina was gone and thought it was lag.  I guess i needed to make the stamina bar about the same size as it is in diablo 2 for players to notice.

yet, i readjusted the stamina burn rates.  thus, as low inventory weight you burn very little.  this should make it much less frustrating for new players.

I also fixed the inability to reopen the closed UI windows.  thanks for the input on that!

You don't have to click on the map to move.  You can just hold down the arrow keys, wasd keys, or even the num pad keys to move around.  I don't like clicking on the map at all myself.

Eventually I will remove the corpses.  For now i'm leaving them in too see how much stuff players aren't picking up.  I'm trying to make sure the items have enough value that players want to collect them as opposed to just leaving them on the ground.


@adon

Did you get this error more than once?  It appears it timed out.  I haven't had any other reports of this issue.

thanks for the feedback guys.

[Eli Delventhal]

I really like the look of it, but can't play it right now. I'll definitely let you know when I do!

[adon_y_coya]

@adon

Did you get this error more than once?  It appears it timed out.  I haven't had any other reports of this issue.

Yep, I get it each and every time I start the game.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[donmc]

I'll have to look into your issue adon.  thanks for reporting it!

There is also a new build of the game up.  Infact build #90 also includes a major content update with many new mobs and lootables.  This also means that it's been 90 days since I started writing The Chipped Dagger!

[donmc]

I put up 2 new builds today (91a and 91b).  This was mostly fixing UI issues players were having.  I did manage to add hotkeys for spells though which should help with combat. 

[h3ckboy]

This also means that it's been 90 days since I started writing The Chipped Dagger!

woah ur productive!!

I cant try it right now, but it sounds really cool

[donmc]

builds 93, 93a, and 94 have been deployed now.  I won't bore everyone with the patch notes, but things continue to improve!  I'll try to get an updated screenshot or two later in the week.

[donmc]

today marks two weeks since I opens the doors to testing.  I've had just a touch over 250 people log in and play thus far!  I've deployed builds 95, 95a, 96, and 96a now.  I continue to fix bugs and add new features.  Yesterday I deployed the combat update which added significantly more stragety to combat.  I also revamped the event log feedback from combat to give much more granular information.  The graphics continue to get a makeover as well.

don

[donmc]

100 Days of development and 30,997 lines of code later I have a playable MMORPG!

I did some website redesign yesterday to celebrate the milestone.

I've also deployed numerous additional builds including build 100. I finally added in corpse decay as players didn't like all the dead bodies around.

[donmc]

Builds 101, 102, and 103 are live now.  I've fixed numerous bugs related to packet loss.  There are many new small features that went live this week as well.  There are also some new weapon types and armor added to the game!

[markus.borbely]

I have now played this for a couple of days... pretty nice so far.

Some thoughts:
I think I like that there are no skills, no classes and no experience in this game. You could just change your gear around and become something completely different. But, are you at all thinking about ranged combat and magic? It could make the battles more interesting.

I want more terrain. Now, everything is flat, well almost. I want trees and stones. I'm sure you could write a litte program that assigned it randomly. And I want lots of it. Right now, when facing a difficult foe, I have to gather other enemies first and build a barricade with their dead bodies. It would be nice if I could find narrow passages more easily.

Looting with keys! This is a must. I want a key that loots all items I already have at least one of. This way picking out all potions and ingredients. I also want one key that opens all 8 loot windows in a nice layout. So first I pick all potions and ingredients, then I open the loot windows to pick out the rest. I would like it if I could filter out nonmagic items from the loot windows open. Unless I am naked, no way I am touching nonmagic items :-)

The player market need a really good search and sorting functions. I never have the patience to browse it all (yes I know about the tabs, but they arent't near enough). I'm never buying anything (well almost), just trying to sell.

Keep up the good work!

[donmc]

thanks markus!

there is some new fauna with today's build.  I also agree more looting options would be nice.  Players have been asking for a loot all feature since the beginning.   Agree that the market needs better functionality.  You should have seen what it was like before I added the tabs!

Here's todays build info.

Build 109 patch notes:

[feature] added lore for all monster types (a big thanks to Rance for working on this project!)
[change] decreased each security zone radius from 200 to 100.  This means places more than 400 tiles of the start point is now an open pvp area (it was previously 800 tiles)
[change] criminals are no longer allowed in secure areas.  criminals are now respawned near a new lava town in the no-security zone.  Note: players are not allowed to create new accounts to avoid their criminal status.
[change] criminal status now occurs at -200 karma instead of -300 karma.
[change] some of the karma titles
[graphics] updated belt graphics, new club graphic, updated fur, updated hatchets, updated iron ore, 3 fixed terrain tiles, updated bridge tiles.
[added] extra security measures to prevent multiple account creation/logins from a single player.
[bugfix] resolved issue where higher level recipes would sometimes require stacks of the base type.  Since the base type wasn’t stackable the they couldn’t be crafted.
[change] recipes now have a small chance or requiring an additional ingredient type to craft.
[bugfix] private messages sent between players were being logged in the databse as chat messages.  Only public chat channel messages were supposed to be logged.  The bug was fixed and all private messages players sent each other were delete from the server.
[change] recipes now have a maximum numbers of uses before they are no longer usable.  Potion and coins recipes are very high.  Weapons and armor are very.  Note that recipes can be duped using reflecting ponds.  The remaining number of uses is listed in the recipe tools and lore windows. all existing recipes had uses added to them.
[bugfix] items inside bags were not removing the ownership flag of the deceased causing the new owner to be unable to remove the items.
[change] players will now respawn with their chipped dagger after death!
[added] number of world events to stats page on the website.
[added] current world events are now displayed at login.
[change] world event monsters now give more karma than others.
[change] legendary creatures now have a low chance of dropping a token.  World event creatures have a good chance of dropping a token.
[bugfix] player weights were not being updated after successful player to player trading
[feature] hotkeys can now be removed
[feature] hotkeys are now remembered between sessions
[change] player corpses now decay after 24 hours.
[bugfix] all old bugged player corpses were removed.  If you find another player corpse with inmovable items, please report the corpse coordinates!
[added] static tree and rock textures from krumple as requested by the world builders.

[donmc]

patch notes:

[update] many terrain tile graphical updates from krumple. Also some other item/monster graphics updates.
[added] your corpse locations are now displayed at login; corpses are displayed oldest to newest.
[change] removed destroy option for tokens
[added] essences (explained below)

There was a major addition in today's build. There are now various kinds of "essence" that can be looted from dead monsters. Each essence has a given attribute (IE health, piercing attack, backstab defense, etc). If you consume one of these essences you will gain a permanent increase in that attribute! There is no limit to the number of essenses you can use. They are rare drops however. Also, the more of a given essense that you use, the greater the number of essences you will need to increase that attribute further. For example, it might only take 1 essence of piercing attack to increase permanently increase your piercing attack up for the first 10 times you use one. On the 11th time however, it will require 2 essenses of piercing attack in order to gain the +11 bonus. It works similarly for all essence types.

This is a new system. I added it because the game needed additional ways for players to customize their character. Also, many players did not like the fact that the loot was the only thing that would affect their attributes. Since all of your items drop on death, many were discouraged. I added this system to aleviate those issues.

This is substantial change to the gameplay. It might be too overpowered it could also be underpowered, or it might be just right. We need to test it then get player feedback to see how it feels. If everyone hates this new system, i'm not totally opposed to removing it. If you do not like the new essence addition, or if you think it's out of balance please don't hesistate go give me your feedback! Please keep the comments constructive however.

I also added another tab to the market for players who wish to buy or sell essences.

[Dreamcatchermatt]

  Wow, that looks pretty sweet

I can only hope to get as far as you have with my game. I'll have a play with it later

Nice work!

[donmc]

Wow, that looks pretty sweet

I can only hope to get as far as you have with my game. I'll have a play with it later

Nice work!

thanks!

Build 113 patch notes:
[bugfix] removed multiple chat depart messages for players who exit the game unexpectedly
[change] lowered MTU for players who were having issues with truncated packets
[change] player corpse decay increased from 1 day to 7 days.
[change] new magical item attribute randomness was increased a bit
[added] beholders can now drop teleporation potions (and recipes which require 4 different ingredients)
[added] ancient ents can now drop death ward potions (and recipes which require 5 different ingrdients)
[added] an event message is sent to all players when a world event (WE) monster dies
[added] event log notifies premium players how much premium time they have at login
[change] the market window is now resizeable for better name/price readability
[change] partially fixed with where on rare occassions a dead players corpse would be invisible
[bugfix] tokens will no longer drop from bags on death
[change] increased chance that a new item recipe will require an additional ingredient type
[change] doubled the chance of potion and coin recipe drops. halfed the number of uses for the recipes

Notes regarding teleportation potions: you can bind them to any spot in the world.  Stand on the location you wish to set as your teleport point.  Right click on a potion in your inventory (but not in a bag) and choose “Bind.” If successful it will give you an event log notice stating where the potion is now bound to.  If you mouse over the potion it will also give the coordinates of where it’s bound to.  You can also bind a stack of potions.  If you split stack both stacks will still be bound to the same location.  If you combine stacks, the stack you add to is the binding that is used for the new stack.  You can also remove bindings by right clicking on the potion and choosing “Unbind.”  These are very powerful because you can teleport anywhere in the world.  As a result they are also very expensive in terms of ingredient costs.  The costs will likely need to be adjusted in the future.  Currently beholders are the only monsters who can drop the potions (and thus the potion recipe).  The ingredients are very common ones.

Death ward: the death ward potion bestows a chance of keeping all of your items upon death.  You can right click “use” on one of these potions.  It grants a 50% chance to respawn with all of your gear intact.  You can stack the effects.  If you use 2 it’s 75% chance, if you use 3 it’s 87% chance and so on.  Only ancient ents drop these potions (and thus the recipes).  The recipe requires 5 different ingredients to make.  Like the teleportation potion these are very powerful and are designed to be _very_ expensive.  If they turn out to be not expensive enough I will adjust their cost accordingly.

These are just 2 of the new potions in the new alchemy update.  Other potions are forthcoming!

thanks!

[lllaaazzz]

114 patch notes:
[bugfix] resolved issue where some new users were unable to create accounts
[change] monsters grew tired of adventurers who hide behind walls of corpses to avoid being struck.  They have adapted.

Yesterday was also day 30 of alpha testing!  The game has come a long way in the last month.  Thanks to everyone who has been part of our growing community.

[lllaaazzz]

Build 115 patch notes:
[bugfix] the item level of drops from monsters was not being correctly randomized.  Thus it’s now possible to get a much broader range of item levels (white, blue, green, purple, gold, etc) from monsters than before.  Previously a given monster would only drop a single level of items (IE a legendary ent would only drop purples).  This was not the intended effect.  The same legendary ent now has a small chance to drop anything from whites to golds or better.  This bug was also likely causing the maximum item level in the world (currently level 5) to increase slower than intended.
[bugfix] spelling error in death notification window
[bugfix] copper golems and goblins had short swords listed twice as a loot type
[bugfix] resolved issue where some windows were taller than the screen.  the titlebar would be pushed offscreen making the window unclosable.
[bugfix] resolved longstanding bug with server sending null packets
[bugfix] fixed bug where will was able to crash the server
[bugfix] resolved issue where some inventory/bank/corpse items would appear invisible.  The item existed and the slot was occupied, but the item couldn’t be seen or interacted with.
[bugfix] reflecting ponds could sometimes spawn on border lava tiles inside crevasses
[bugfix] resolved issue with players being teleported as criminals when they weren’t actually criminals
[added] admins can now unmute players
[change] combat now uses stamina

[lllaaazzz]

Build 116 patch notes:
[change] further tweaks to the loot drop randomness from mosnters.
[change] increased percent change of magical items aquiring a second prefix and a suffix in the name.
[bugfix] players should all have the same maximum movement speed now.
[change] increased stamina burn while fighting
[bugfix] lore typo
[change] increased chances that lengendary and world event monsters can have health & stamina regeneration
[change] most of the monster attributes were adjusted.  In general monsters now deal less damage.  To compensate they have higher defenses on average.  They will likely need further tweaking in the future.  Approach monsters with caution under you are comfortable with the changes.  Please note that higher meta level mobs (yellow, orange, red, and purple) can still end up with very nasty modifiers!  Overall though the changes should drastically reduce the chances of being one-shotted by mobs.  With their higher defenses however it might take multiple players to kill some of the more difficult monsters.
[change] drop rates for weapons/armor/cloaks/jewelry was increased by approx. 35% for all monsters.  With the new loot system higher level and higher meta level monsters should drop higher quality items more oftne now.
[feature] a mysterious traveller setup shop in town.  He offers a chance to reclaim essences from your unwanted magical items.
[feature] there is now a second route into the distant lands via the road to the south.  The monsters to the south are not as harsh as the monsters to the west and might provide a smoother transition for players wanting to explore the distant lands.
[feature] player lists in chatrooms are now alphabetized
[feature] enabled potion use notices in client

Note: all monsters were despawned.  The new monsters will have the new stats. The server will likely be slow for about an hour or so while the server despawns/repawns dungeons and populates the world with monsters!

[lllaaazzz]

Build 117 patch notes:

[update] images from krumple

[change] a greater variety of monster types can spawn for the world event

[change] the names are WEM are now shown in the event log when they spawn

[bugfix] adjusted all the old bugged +5 stamina regen gloves. existing gloves still have the modifier, but new gloves will have to work their way back up from +1 stamina regen.

[bugfix] small areas of the non-premium part of the world were incorrectly flagged as premium.

[added] ability to open bags inside the bank

[added] ability to drag items into/out of bags inside the bank

[added] ability to stack items into and out banks/bags

[added] ability to split stacks inside bags/banks/corpses

[added] ability to sell/trade items from bags

[change] bags containing items can no longer be sold on the market

[bugfix] ownership flag for items inside bags is now being correctly applied when the bag is moved

[bugfix] traded bags containing items should now correctly apply the ownership flag to the new owner

[feature] ability to name bags

[bugfix] rare packet out of range error

[lllaaazzz]

Build 118 patch notes:
[update] image updates from krumple
[bugfix] with chat tab ordering defaulting to the wrong channel
[bugfix] multiple login dialogs no longer appear if a player idles at the login screen
[change] add extra info to login dialog
[feature] ability to change account passwords ingame
[feature] ability to add email address ingame for account recovery
[change] chat window & event log are now positioned near the center of the screen on clients with extremely low resolutions
[bugfix] bug allowed players who ran out of premium time to remain in the premium area
[feature] added a /roll feature to chat. performs a d100 dice roll serverside and broadcasts the results to all players in the channel

[donmc]

build 119:
increased essence requirements for skillgain (health and stamina excluded from the new requirements)
lowered recovery rate for item reclamation
increased percent chance that items will have + modifiers instead of – modifiers
increased the chance that new item names will aquire a second prefix and a suffix

[donmc]

Build 120 patch notes:
Today’s build has a new musical score and sound effects! A big thanks to Rance for composing the music/sound fx and to Will for integrating the new sound library into the game. The music is location dependent. There are many different sound effects for opening/closing/moving/creating/consuming things. Mobs also have distinct fighting sounds. You can adjust the volume properties via the menu->options window. The changes are another step toward polishing the game. Enjoy!

NOTE: Numerous players have experienced issues trying to log in. Clearing your cache seems to resolve the problem.

Also, for those interested in the technical side of the game, we integrated a Java Sound library written by http://www.paulscode.com/.

120 days and 37,512 lines of code later we've reached the 4 month mark. Alpha testing has been going on for about 5 weeks now and we've had nearly 750 people play TCD! Thanks to everyone who's played, given feedback, and helped out with the game!
cheers!

[Mads]

This is very good.

Suggestions:
 - More advanced walking, so it looks just a bit better without losing the retro style. Kind of like pokemon actually, with 1 spirte less or something.
 - Get rid of the java components. It looks and feel more like a game if you make a set gameframe.
 - Maybe polish the world a bit more, it is recocnize things from others.
 - And please add a map so we can see where we are