f13.net

Now, you might be wondering: Why is schild making a thread about a facebook game? Well, I'll tell you - because I'm just that kind of guy.

For the last 6 weeks or so, I've been a game designer at Challenge Games. I've working on a number of things, and one of them happens to be an absolutely insane rewrite of a diku-esque web thing on Facebook. It's called QQ. Or, Questy Quest if you want to type it out. I think QQ is more appealing, but whatever.

The whole world is pretty much upside-down and I'd say about 45% of it is rewritten. The entire first town is done, the items are done, and parts of the second town and one of the encounter areas is complete.

You should f'ing play it. Why? Because I want feedback, and it's hilarious, imo.

Three things:
1. It's slooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. This is because FBML (Facebook Markup Language) was used. You don't need to tell me it's unbearably slow, I know. So consider I'll consider it a blessing if you tell your friends to play it, it really is unlike other web games in terms of content, I think.

2. Please give me any feedback you have, private or public. I'm really hoping we can rewrite the frontend to be lightning fast, but for now that's just not in the cards, we have more important stuff to do. But if we get enough people, maybe?

3. Some of the flow is off. I'm reworking everything, so it's taking a while. The first town, however, is complete as far as I can tell. The third town and dungeon have not yet been touched. Hopefully I'll finish that by next week.

Anyway, link:

http://apps.facebook.com/questyquest/

Well, that puts you 2 shipped games ahead of Schilling by my count.

IT WAS MUCH BETTER THAN CATS
 :pedobear:

THIS GAME IS RACIST AGAINST HILLBILLIES

Oh shit, my items didn't get put in. I need to get on that.


YOU'RE A HILLBILLY.

And midgets.  And elves.

HILLBILLIES AND MIDGETS ARE NOT RACES.

THEY ARE MUTATIONS.

Elves are a fake race. They don't count. Also, they're whores.

Fuck a facebook app.

HEY. I haven't blocked your blog pimping, you can get your shit on this facebook app, or else.  :angryfist:

Hey did you steal those avatar graphics from duels?  :awesome_for_real:

Actually, all the art and such from before was kept in place. Yea, they used the Duels stuff. All I'm doing is a 100% rewrite, as well as adding new stuff. It's mostly just a pet project I'm doing on the side. If it's at all successful, I'll be updating it with more weird stuff, so tell your friends or something.

The first Rat is winning in the war of me trying to load an attack and him hoping the browser times out before I can swing at him.

Yea. That can happen. He's a crafty little bastard like that.

Still waiting.....  :heartbreak:

Just reload. It remembers the page you were on and/or the result.

Page not found.

Server down. Items are getting put in. Sorry!

congrats, I will check this out

Is there a way to have it throw a little "we're down for the moment" message then?  Might help those whom are easily dissuaded from never checking back.

Facebook is awesome.

How does one make money from these Facebook games?  That is the point right?

Server back up!

For those of you without a facebook account, here's what you're missing. The intro screen - sort of - as a teaser:

Edit: Scratch that, image added to top post.

I didn't know porn games were allowed on Facebook :awesome_for_real:

How much does the sex act "Restore Hope to the World" cost?

There's no porn! I followed the letter of the law here, a little too perfectly.


SYSTEM ERROR

Very fun. I think the frist fight should be over in one hit. Little grammar things bug me, like "If only there were a mechanic to deal with him" should be "If only there was a mechanic to deal with him" or "If only there were mechanics to deal with him." Other than that, fun and addictive, as it should be. The writing style is appropriately cheeky. Vampires and Mafia Wars seem to take themselves too seriously. You guys are doing it better.

After I finish rewriting The Whole Shebang, I will make a sweep on grammar and such, as well as look into rebalancing. Balance, however, was at the bottom of the list. The writing was necessary.

lrn2subjunctive

Just got back from lunch. Managed to get one swing on the rat, now its hanging again.

Okay.

Mechanic is singular. It was a mechanic. It is a mechanic.

Mechanics are plural. Those were mechanics. Those are mechanics.

Your turn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive#Modern_form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive#Future_subjunctive

I didn't bite his silly grammatical bait because I know I used it just fine. DON'T GET SUCKED IN, EZRAST.

TOO LATE

 :heartbreak:

Good point. Technically this is correct, just as it is correct in modern English to say "thou art," and also "The company are" is just as correct as "The company is." Just like building a UI that has a trick to it, or using graphics with colors that purposefully clash. This too is something to get used to. And then you have to justify it, and drag out references just to make sure it's technically correct. Entire meetings to be planned over this grammar usage!

Or you could just say "mechanic is singular, so use a singular verb" and be done with it.

RIGHT. OK.

Anyway:

I any of you want to friend me in the game, feel free. It'll increase your exp gain and stuff. Hell, you may as well friend whoever. Facebook is like that.

I want a grammar-slaying sword!

My character is Scottman btw.

I just want to kill that rat without the game hanging on me.   :tantrum:

Is there a way to delete my character? I don't like my name.

I find it funny that you think proper subjunctive is wrong, but find "mechanic" as singular for "mechanics" to be acceptable.

I know, I know. I won't bring it up again, promise. :oh_i_see:

I don't know! You could maybe uninstall and reinstall the app! Unfortunately, I don't have admin tools on the live server, sorry!

GRRRRRWWAAARRGGGABBLEEE

The game runs fun, until I fight a rat then it hangs. Every time. Fucking rats.

Feature. Try a different Browser, or a different computer. I assume you're at work. Unless you work for a gaming company, I'm just going to assume you're on a Packard Bell 8086, even if you're running photoshop all the time.

this not like Safari under OSX?  First encounter, not working (rat).  Journal not populating either.  Do you want feedback here or somewhere else?

Here is fine! Also, worked on my mac on Firefox. I never use Safari.

Just so you all know, next week I will be doing the following:

Abilities
Monster attack text
Supplementary Text (level up, etc)
The Second dungeon.

The week following I will probably do the third town and dungeon (which will be raid-y! except like, not)

I gave this 5-stars on a review. Not necessarily because I think it is 100% perfect, but someone has to offset all the 1-star reviews from mouth-breathing Facebook attention whores and Guidos who think that FarmVille is the pinnacle of Apps. Go show your support and rate it 5-stars. It's doing your small part to fight the stupid on the internet, and realistically, what shit will you be giving a month from now as the Bat Country pattern of game interest is followed.

Go vote 5 before you see something shiny.

Ok, I'll give it a try.

Increases your  by 3 ?

Your what? You can't paste an image. Each one of those icons corresponds to a stat. Some of it isn't completely clear, which I'm working on. What did the little icon look like.

There was no icon. In fact, I haven't seen a single image since selecting a class.

Also:

Error:  The requested address '/facebook/-43ef-b201-640d40835416' was not found on this server.

When selecting the meadow in the first dungeon.

ORLY. Hm.

I have killed rat. I hope that "publish to your wall" shit doesn't pop up often.

Only when you level. You should publish to your wall though. When you level. Because you'd be supporting me. Not some Mafia War asshat.

Oh, those dreams!  :heart:

Beginning to get a small case of the TLDRs. I don't mind reading a bit sometimes, but... cut to the action, please!

Sigh, I must not have caught everything. I need to keep digging through the content. There's... a lot.

Also, lamaros, no one is telling you to read. I think most of it is worth reading because even I find some of it funny, and I wrote that shit. But it's a diku game, you know how to play. You don't need text. Press butan, kill, press butan, kill. Shortest tutorial ever. You can almost be illiterate and play this game.

I meant more that sometimes you click three pages of text in a row before you some to a fight or a choice. Or maybe I was just unlucky and it's random?

Hm, most of the fights only have one screen. Some of the other stuff has more than one screen. Also, some of the dungeons have multiple screens of text telling a slapdash story - but for the most part, I think you're imagining that particular situation. There is a LOT of text though.

This is nice man :) Love the in jokes from F13 especially, hehe.

Note to self: stay away from level 3 wolves...and don't hold your hands out near any dwarves :P

I have a feeling I'm about to be smacked for asking this, but is there anyway to see this without making a facebook account?  Yes, I'm socially stunted and refuse to make one. 

I can see why someone might want to avoid making a FB account with personal info, why wouldn't you make one using a pseudonym without personal info?  That way you can play all the games and even friend people you don't even know just to exploit the FB games!

Because the damn kids won't get off my lawn, that's why. 

In reality, it's just because I don't need something else occupying my time.  Schild's game isn't wasting time, but logging into facebook is.  Also, I'm lazy. 

I have this vague fuck facebook/myspace/twitter and the horses they rode in on feeling that I've never taken the time to analyze.  I doubt you and I are alone in never having made an account.

After wasting all my points at the Q yesterday, I couldn't get to the meadow. But, finally had points, went to the dungeon, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand... Worked fine.


If this wasn't what you were talking about, I'm going to play through the whole thing and see if I can finish it. That said, Facebook is a finicky bitch, so sometimes shit just breaks that's not really broken. Bugwise, on movement and such, there aren't any bugs. I've played the game extensively on the admin side. Whenever FB says "OOPS SOMETHING IS BROKEN, THE QQ TEAM IS STILL WORKING OUT KINKS" it's really "FBML is trash and we're going to blame the QQ team."

Facebook is much less "Twittery" than the other crap out there. It's much more "opt-in/opt-out" so there's not as much random friend adds or spammy crap.

I'm seeing "Locke's Heart (requires party size 3)" Are there plans to add friends after clicking it? Like, "You don't have a party size 3, click here to invite people now!"

(Funny how I said Facebook isn't spammy, then offered a suggestion to make it so!)

Facebook is pretty spammy. Most games require that sort of thing now. Me being a fan of it or not is pretty irrelevant. That said, hey, go ahead and invite some friends. I don't know if you can use that thing for current invites, but I would join your party. I'm fairly certain 3 is as big as it needs to be to see everything in the game at least.

That said, it'll be a week before I populate stuff past Locke's Heart (or even the dark cave and secret dungeon).

Why the hell am I bludgeoning things to death with the butt end of my crossbow instead of shooting them in the face with the pointy end?

Because it's hilarious.

And here I thought it was because someone couldn't be arsed to write different text for different weapon types.   :awesome_for_real:

Well I mean like, linking the friend-add dialog to Locke's Heart, so you can add friends straight from there instead of (and in addition to!) clicking the "Party" link. But that might be TOO spammy.  :grin:

There's a fine line between annoying, spammy, and Well-Designed. It's a curvy, impossible line.

That said, the bigger issue - no one has made a facebook game where people simply WANT to invite others, so it's become a silly virality design decision. We'll see it for another generation or two of games on facebook until someone really breaks the mold with something EVERYONE wants to play. I have some ideas for what that sort of thing might be, where invites can be totally optional, but we're not there yet. No one is.

And it is :) I have to admit I didn't expect that level of humor--nice work man!

Reminds me of some of the very old text-ish RPG/Adventure games from the mid 90's--Spellcasting 101, XXXQuest stuff.

Yep, that was the part I was talking about... I haven't tried it today.

dude, the backend -- its sucking wind...

The server is fine. Seriously. I did all my work directly on the backend. It's the goddamn Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and how it works with facebook. It's... yea, sucking wind is a good description.

It's a fun diversion.  I wish it played a bit quicker, however.  Maybe it's just because I'm low level, but I hardly use my energy much and play sessions take longer than what I'd want from a facebook game.

I agree. But this was released 4 months before I got there. I'm just the one who happens to be redoing all the content and such.

I think this is my only problem with webby-games, especially on FB. There's so much potential for so much stuff, but the clunky click-and-waiting just gets so much in the way. There are a few games that utilize pulg-ins and Flash to bypass all that, but there's got to be a better solution. (Like maybe I dunno say optimizing FBML.)

Most games now, after the horrible truth of FBML was discovered, use php and/or flash in an iframe. If the QQ page ever gets rewritten that's the way well go.

Should have a patch out this afternoon with reworked items and abilities. Also the second zone (Locke's Heart) will be done. Let's just say there's going to be a lot of orc orphans when you finish it.

"You chide yourself for being such a cheap whore and carry on with your day. "

I lol'ed

Patch should be in tomorrow. Not sure what happened, I was working from home this afternoon.

Why doesn't your company just make Facebook Tele-Arena.  God damnit schild.

I can't answer this question without being nostalgic.

I could not see the box to enter my character name due to intrusion from the QUESTY QUEST logo, so my name is ICANTSEE, Level 1 Fizzler.

Facebook : Page Not Found

Is it gone?

Been gone for a while now.