Island Forge: A world of Player-Created Content. Create Islands with Stories for Others to Explore!

Classic old-school RPG elements in a brand-new MMO world.

Island Forge is written entirely from scratch (by me) in Java. I've been a Java developer since the beginning, but this is my first fully-featured game. Expertise and advice from the JGO community would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for checking it out! http://islandforge.com

Yet you're browsing javagaming.org 
 
On topic: Looks good. Can't play though, I'm on my tab  How is performance, using only java2d?

same here, "web sense" blocks all other gaming related forums and sites for me at work. I guess obscurity helps?!

Java2d performance has been adequate for years.  I posted an example with hundreds of manually blended alpha sprites that only moderately degraded frame rate at least 5 years ago.

Im 16 and blocked out because of not being a us citizen, and secondly being only 16.
You, sir, just locked out 97% of your potential players.

Because we're a small operation, that is a legal necessity for our Terms of Service. (Other Internet services have similar restrictions.) Rather than hide such things in the legalese, we prefer to be open and up-front with our community of players.

We appreciate your feedback on this issue. I sincerely hope that someday we can accommodate a broader audience.

UPDATE: To clarify age limitations, you may not play if under 13 years of age. If you are 13-17 you may play, but you need an adult to create and be responsible for your account. Please see the ToS for full details. The reason for the US residency (not citizenship) requirement (see ToS) is that we are based in the US and cannot guarantee compliance with the laws of all countries.

The sign-up was really arduous.  I can understand that you need that kind of process for when people actually pay for an account and start playing but we're fellow devs trying to do you a favour.  Can you make a dummy account or something?  I almost didn't bother.

The "You must be a US Citizen" box is extremely unfriendly to an international audience.  I've never seen that before on other games I've played.  Could it be hidden in the EULA or something?

Web-start failed.


I ended up downloading the .jar and ran the jar as instructed:
java -Xmx1024 -jar IslandForge.jar

It downloads some content then it shuts down.  I tried to restart it:
java -Xmx1024 -jar IslandForge.jar

but now that fails with a dialog: Terribly sorry, Island Forge failed to start...

Eventually get it running with: java -jar IslandForge.jar

I could not figure out how to start the game.  Clicking on that sword isn't obvious.  I ended up creating a map too because I thought I needed to.

Finally figured out how to join the game but the painting is borked.  I can see my avatar and move via right-clicking but nothing else paints and all I see is myself walking around on a mostly white screen with lots of graphical glitches.

MacBook Pro
java version "1.6.0_26"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_26-b03-384-10M3425)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.1-b02-384, mixed mode)

The problems you experienced are due to OutOfMemoryErrors. This accounts for all the failure cases you mentioned. You managed to get into the world, but the graphics could not render because of memory. Starting the client with 1024m heap size fails immediately, because your computer must not have that much RAM. We're recommending 2GB RAM, to account for a 1GB heap plus JVM overhead.

Can you tell me how much memory your MacBook has? (Thanks for reporting your OS and JVM versions by the way, that's very useful. We haven't had enough testing on MacOS yet.)

Unfortunately, the client did not respond well and tried to keep on processing. It actually tends to be rather robust to most failures. I will improve this failure case, so the client at least tells you what is wrong and dies gracefully.

Regarding Java Web Start ... well, my thoughts from 2007 pretty much still hold up: http://www.potentialgames.com/blog/2007/11/27/java-web-start-antithesis-of-usability/

(I'm planning to ask for application deployment advice here at JGO.)

Regarding the registration, we're a small operation, and we cannot guarantee compliance with the laws of all countries, which is why US residency is required (see ToS). Most games probably do limit you to a certain country's laws, but they hide that in their EULA. We prefer to be open with our players. At this point in our development, we need users to agree to the ToS. Since registration is only a one-time event, we hope it isn't too much trouble, but we appreciate your feedback. (I'll be sure to have a look at the JGO Business-related forums.)

I have 8 GB.  Should I try it with some other vm options?

I got put off by the 'US only' thing...

Are you sure you need to? This is the first time I have ever seen this.

Edit: Nevermind. I do believe you can offer a product like this on the internet, worldwide, without having to obey laws by all the countries in which your product can be bought. When markus started selling minecraft, there was no such thing. Only paypal and you were set, no matter of nationality.
I dont believe you need to limit yourself like this.

To clarify, I agree that there is not a reliable way to know where visitors/customers come from over the Internet. IP is a distributed protocol and there are a myriad of routing and proxying technologies that make geolocation unreliable. The issue at hand is Terms of Service compliance.

I worked closely with a lawyer to make these ToS as open as possible. I personally told him that I'd like every computer in the world to have a copy of Island Forge. Unfortunately, that is simply not advisable. I will explain some of what I have learned, regarding the business/legal side of starting an independent game company.

I am not a lawyer, but this is how I understand the US residency stipulation (which was created by a lawyer): By agreeing to our Terms of Service, we protect ourselves from being pulling us into international legal cases. I have learned that these types of agreements are largely about risk management. We're a small operation, and we cannot risk putting a product onto the global market that might not be acceptable in all locations. Large corporations spend lots of money to make their products acceptable in various countries. We must focus on getting Island Forge off the ground as best we can.

While I personally, technically, and philosophically believe in the Internet as a global resource, market and legal jurisdictions are not (yet) global. These are some of the hardest parts about trying to become a legitimate independent game development business. I hope the gaming community can appreciate that we are trying to be as open as possible with our ToS.

(By the way, thank you for expressing how you feel about these issues. In the future, we hope to be able to improve our international accessibility.)

Quite! Still, you've hit the nail on the head. If you can provide me with a universally accepted (legally perfect) definition of naughty, then I could write the ToS such that all naughtiness is strictly forbidden. As it stands, any country (or local legal jurisdiction) could have its own definition of naughtiness. We are attempting to be as careful as possible, so we can actually bring this game to market.

I think these discussions are very important to the independent gaming community. Beyond the technical aspects of writing game code, there are some even taller hurdles to overcome when actually trying to market a game. Unfortunately, these are big hurdles to overcome for micro developers like myself. I hope this discussion clarifies some of the business realities for those interested in independent game development.

In the USA you get sued over patents.  The UK is the favorite jurisdiction for libel suits.  In Germany, random third party legal mills sue you over copyrights whose holders they don't even retain as a client. 

Still, I think you could do with the opinion of a slightly less paranoid legal counsel.  Usually it's just payment that's difficult to do globally.

I'd say good luck suing on discrimination grounds.  He could legally limit the game to people with prime-numbered IP addresses if he wanted.  It just wouldn't be very good marketing.