Title: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Signe on August 04, 2005, 07:44:08 AM Here it is. (http://www.prairiegames.com/)
At least it has a happy name. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: HaemishM on August 04, 2005, 08:37:27 AM What the fuck is Massively Single Player Gameplay?
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Dren on August 04, 2005, 08:51:35 AM "Prairie Games, creators of the massively single player, multiplayer, persistent world RPG Minions of Mirth!"
Tee Hee, that's just sounds silly. I'm sure it is all explained later. ... It has to be. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Signe on August 04, 2005, 08:59:24 AM I know... it makes me giggle, too.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Aenovae on August 04, 2005, 09:21:46 AM Maybe your avatar is HUGE!
ba-dum-CHHH! Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on August 04, 2005, 09:27:31 AM Minions of Girth?
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Aenovae on August 04, 2005, 09:34:55 AM Maybe Diablo II was massively single player. There are thousands of people you COULD play with, but everyone mostly chose to ignore the rest of the populace and play by themselves. You joined 8-player games and farmed beefed up mobs by yourself for extra exp and loot. Or you joined 8-player Baal run games and killed the demon in under 2 minutes without saying a single word to your teammates.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Aenovae on August 04, 2005, 09:40:40 AM No wait, I got it. Minions of Mirth is like .hack. It's a single-player RPG where you play a character playing a MMO. So every player you meet and interact with is really just an NPC with AI.
What would be really great is if the NPCs went on quests, formed groups, raided, and joined guilds all on their own. They could be coded to always be polite to the player, never kill steal, never farm, always let the player into their guilds, sell items at the auction house for reasonable prices, always be available when the player is lfg, and to never spam general chat with inane chatter. MMO with all other players removed = best MMO ever? Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Yegolev on August 04, 2005, 09:49:29 AM MMO with all other players removed = best MMO ever? Yes. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stormwaltz on August 04, 2005, 09:52:26 AM MMO with all other players removed = best MMO ever? Morrowind? That's not a criticism, per se. I rather like Morrowind. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sairon on August 04, 2005, 10:14:44 AM I wouldn't be suprised if it's just a single player game with a built in IRC client
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Signe on August 04, 2005, 11:11:19 AM If someone would just sacrafice a wee bit of time and sanity, we could all find out what it means.
Not me. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Nebu on August 04, 2005, 11:28:19 AM MMO with all other players removed = best MMO ever? [mmog_general_chatl] OMG lik WTF ur gay LOL [/mmog_general_chat] I think the use of Mirth in their title is apt. I just don't think they realize why. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: stray on August 04, 2005, 11:32:12 AM Ugly name, ugly graphics, but from what I gather, you can also create content/entire zones and host your own server...Which is interesting (there's also an official server IF you want to play online).
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Signe on August 04, 2005, 11:44:39 AM Oooh! We could have it for f13.
Because, you know, we're so mirthy and stuff. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Soukyan on August 04, 2005, 12:16:20 PM I'm checking it out. It's cool that they're doing simultaneous Windows/OS X testing, but that may be taking a lot more dev time for them. Ah well, we shall see how it goes.
The hosting your own server thing sounds promising. Perhaps it can replace the Winter's Roar EQ server thing that was shut down by SOE recently. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Dren on August 04, 2005, 01:05:27 PM Hrm, if I can use the game to test out some our crazy game design ideas, I'm starting to pay attention. I'd even bypass graphics for that feature.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Trippy on August 05, 2005, 07:40:20 AM What the fuck is Massively Single Player Gameplay? It's a game world designed like an MMORPG a la EverQuest but you can play it by yourself if you want to on your own private server. It's a Torque engine game that's customizable/modable by the end user similar to the way MUDs are.Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sky on August 05, 2005, 12:06:52 PM Bad graphics + OSX = I can play it from work....
I better abandon this thread now ;) Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on August 06, 2005, 12:22:39 PM What the fuck is Massively Single Player Gameplay? It's a game world designed like an MMORPG a la EverQuest but you can play it by yourself if you want to on your own private server. It's a Torque engine game that's customizable/modable by the end user similar to the way MUDs are.As Trippy pointed out, the main precept behind MoM is very similar to how both MUDS and NeverWinter Nights (as far as I am aware, never played NWN) is set up--based around single group action (and you can even play multiple characters at once, in the same group), although in a multi-player environment. A little bit of background on MoM: it is a fully indie project that started as a custom code base, then migrated across a couple of different solutions and finally landed in the Torque Game Engine with some heavy modifications. It is basically written by a single person (Josh Ritter), on a budget as far as I am aware of under $15,000 (and probably MUCH less than that), along with one partner that did level design and story. As Trippy also alluded to, it's designed so that you can set up your own servers, and fully control the content and the access, much like muds: once it's in final release, my understanding is that you'll Josh is a very active member of the GarageGames community, and you can read a thread that is kept pretty up to date on the latest additions and related news here (http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=31756). You can also take a look at some of the history of MoM as it's been developed over the last 2(?)-ish years in Josh's various .plans (http://www.garagegames.com/my/home/view.profile.php?qid=4280). I do want to say again that this is a completely indie project that was written by a team of exactly two people, working with an extremely limited budget. Much of the artwork has been contracted out of their own pockets (neither is an artist), and just 4 months ago they had just about zero artwork at all. Pretty damned amazing actually if you ask me! EDIT: Josh just let me know that there is no additional fee for the server portion of the code...it's part of the base package. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Dren on August 08, 2005, 09:10:04 AM Ok, I just made a reminder to check this out from home tonight. If it isn't too hard to get implemented and change, I've been looking for something like this for a long time. I'll gladly pay them for their time if it fits my needs. :-D
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on August 08, 2005, 02:05:16 PM Ok, I hadn't even clicked on the original link. But I'm going to seriously look into this given what Zepp said. That's some clever shit. Yay for customizable shards. :P I love pet projects.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Roac on August 08, 2005, 02:10:44 PM So OK, there's you a graphical MUD. Now go forth and prosper.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Kitsune on August 11, 2005, 10:22:07 PM This deserves some investigation. Build your own EverQuest for $25? Depending on how flexible the development tools are, it may very well offer someone the ability to put their money where their mouth is when they say that they could make the best MMOG, 'if only...'
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Dren on August 12, 2005, 08:21:31 AM Ok, I downloaded the clent last night. You just have to register on their forums and then you get to download it. I'm going to try it out this weekend when I have time.
Anyone else working on this game? Is there anything I should know before starting it? I'll try to provide feedback as I work through it. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on August 12, 2005, 02:33:57 PM Ok, I downloaded the clent last night. You just have to register on their forums and then you get to download it. I'm going to try it out this weekend when I have time. Anyone else working on this game? Is there anything I should know before starting it? I'll try to provide feedback as I work through it. I'm not actively working on it, either playing or developing, but if you have any questions of a tech nature I can try to help out. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Alkiera on August 12, 2005, 02:48:01 PM I made a character on the Prairie Games server, a wizard. Had some issues connecting/staying connected, so I restarted in single player mode...
It's a somewhat amusing game. Wizard nukes are pretty amazingly powerful vs. normal critters. Anything with a prefix "Stalwort Skeleton, Large Skeleton, etc" quickly becomes, uh, exciting. Wizards have little to nothing in the way of defense... Tho I can hit things with my pipe and do fire damage, instead of whatever fists normally do. That's a plus in my book. Alkiera Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Dren on August 15, 2005, 12:19:24 PM I put in about 30 minutes for single player to just get a feel for the game world and mechanics. The graphics are poor, but I figured it would be. The mechanics are a bit touchy, but again I didn't expect much.
I started a basic human warrior and found killing the newbie stuff was easy, but purely autoattack. I may have missed something else that could be done during combat, but I didn't see it. My next attempt will be with the multiplayer aspect and try a few other game features and/or different character class/race. I am actually surprised at how well done this game is with so little invested and so few people involved. If it turns out to be a nice little sandbox to play around with, it should be adequate for some fun. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Alkiera on August 15, 2005, 02:03:16 PM I put in about 30 minutes for single player to just get a feel for the game world and mechanics. The graphics are poor, but I figured it would be. The mechanics are a bit touchy, but again I didn't expect much. I started a basic human warrior and found killing the newbie stuff was easy, but purely autoattack. I may have missed something else that could be done during combat, but I didn't see it. As far as that goes, it seems not all classes are equally well developed at the moment... part of the issue with having so many, I think. Then again, it might just be a warrior thing... I know people in the global chat mentioned some assassin-type class had lots of special attacks. And the wizzard I played had quite a few spells. Alkiera Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Dren on August 16, 2005, 05:30:06 AM Yeah, I'm not making any judgements yet really. I know I need to spend more time with it and try other things. I was amazed at how many classes and races they've taken on though (like 15 of each?.) That's a pretty big bite.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on October 26, 2005, 11:41:38 PM Thread ressurection for teh win!
Ulterior motive: find out if/how/why this particular Indie game doesn't seem to attract much interest from the f13 community. Personal Opinion/Observation: I'm pretty in touch with a decent proportion of the Indie Dev community, and MoM is one out of 2 of the non-funded, "pure indie, large scale-possible" online games out there (Mount and Blade being the other), so I'm curious to see if I can get some solid feedback (positive feedback not important, just concrete observations) on why Minions of Mirth hasn't seemed to draw much interest from the folks here at F13. Disclaimer: While MoM uses Torque, GarageGames doesn't have any particular ties to the developers or the game itself, but it is one of the strongest examples of a hard-driven indie development team, and my interest/request in how F13 is responding to this project as it develops is more of an abstract nature than a marketing/buzz one. I'd simply like to know what may be negative about the project itself that has (or at least appears to have) given it a lack-luster response here at F13. Can anyone provide constructive (or hell, even destructive!) feedback on why this project doesn't capture their attention? For those not reading the entire thread, the project is a "Massively Single Player Online Game", with the ability to host your own server/design your own world built in. The current demo can be found at MoM Demo--Windows (http://www.prairiegames.com/MoMDemoInstaller.exe) or MoM Demo--Mac (http://www.prairiegames.com/MoMDemo_OSX.tar.gz). If the demos treat you well, the beta can entered by pre-ordering MoM ($25) at the pre-order site (http://www.prairiegames.com/ordering.html). I know it sounds like I'm trying to pimp the game itself, but quite honestly I have no ulterior motive to do so...my interest here in this post is to find out why, even with what I observe to be some pretty incredible progress in a short period of time, the project doesn't appear to be drawing much interest here! Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Evangolis on October 27, 2005, 01:37:19 AM Well, I'm almost instantly turned off by the name, as it suggests the project is some sort of joke, and the 'Massively Single Player Online Game' doesn't really tell me anything. As someone who often shoots his own message in the foot by getting lost in the fun of wordplay, I think I recognize the mistake.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on October 27, 2005, 02:09:44 AM Well, I'm almost instantly turned off by the name, as it suggests the project is some sort of joke, and the 'Massively Single Player Online Game' doesn't really tell me anything. As someone who often shoots his own message in the foot by getting lost in the fun of wordplay, I think I recognize the mistake. Valid argument for sure! I personally felt the same. Branding is extremely important, and extremely easy to make mistakes with as well unfortunately. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sky on October 27, 2005, 06:47:17 AM Well, I'm almost instantly turned off by the name, as it suggests the project is some sort of joke, and the 'Massively Single Player Online Game' doesn't really tell me anything. As someone who often shoots his own message in the foot by getting lost in the fun of wordplay, I think I recognize the mistake. Heh. Yes and yes, I do the same thing :PTitle: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Merusk on October 27, 2005, 07:40:25 AM Can anyone provide constructive (or hell, even destructive!) feedback on why this project doesn't capture their attention? For those not reading the entire thread, the project is a "Massively Single Player Online Game", with the ability to host your own server/design your own world built in. You answered your own question in the next line. Many of us thought NWN's 'build your own world' aspect would be great and keep us going. Then the amount of work was truly appreciated as scenarios and encounters and campaings were started to be put together. It's not worth it to dedicate that much time to developing your own content unless you have some aim to be in the field or simply love the process. Personally, I'd much rather be a consumer than a provider of games, it's what I enjoy. If I wanted to develop or build them I'd look at doing so, not play a game that has me do it. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Nija on October 27, 2005, 08:50:02 AM Because, well... How do I put this lightly?
It sucks. You have played Mount & Blade right? I fire up MoM (this acronym should only ever be applied towards Master of Magic, btw) and I create a single player world. Then I have to create a party, but I don't really want to, so I create one guy. Then I'm in this weak-looking typical 3rd person mmorpg world. I hit F1, the universal help key, and nothing. I hit I for inventory, it opens up. I've got meat and water. That is innovation right there folks, I don't see why people aren't flocking to this game. I then notice the ? button and my worst fears are confirmed. "Double click on a monster to begin combat." No thanks dude, I hated that shit in 1997 and it's no better now. Bonus, in my wild keypressing a SKELETON was selected! I found him and ran up to him and proceeded to autoattack his ASS. Man, it was awesome. Then I saw two more skeletons, and tried to kill them. They were whipping my ass so I ran back to town, only to notice them STILL HITTING ME FROM 20 FT BEHIND ME DESPITE BEING A SINGLE PLAYER ONLINE WORLD WHATEVER THEY CALL IT. So to summarize 1) it's got a very silly name. If people overlook that and try it they are greeted with 2) 2) an awful what-looks-to-be an EQ clone. If the game is different in some magical way, you best go out of your way to show me what's different within 5 seconds. Now, to visualize Movies using Koepi's Xvid (http://www.koepi.org/). Click on the images to see the videos. (http://206.14.213.30/mom1.jpg) (http://media.putfile.com/Minions-of-Mirth-Sucks) (http://206.14.213.30/mb1.jpg) (http://media.putfile.com/Lance-in-the-FACE) I don't like M&B because IT'S INDY DUDE, PS CHECK OUT MY AWESOME VINYL COLLECTION. I like it because it's fun. Indy doesn't have anything to do with it. I'd probably like MoM if it was a non-EQ clone that uhh you know what I mean, just look at it. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Roac on October 27, 2005, 09:21:19 AM Ulterior motive: find out if/how/why this particular Indie game doesn't seem to attract much interest from the f13 community. Because it has nothing that stands out to attract my interest. While not a penalty, being indie is not a selling point. What any product needs is something to set it apart. The name doesn't exactly do that - Minions of Mirth? That doesn't sound like something I'd like to play. Massively Single Player? Oh come on. I'm sure they were trying to do something clever, and I'm sure it makes sense to them - but I'm not them, and I don't read their minds. It's not funny to me, it's just goofy. So's the name. But OK, enough about branding. Quick scan of their website also shows nothing to grab my attention. The screenshots are ugly, and there's nothing catchy to set the product apart. I don't mind ugly screenies, mind you - hell, I warmed up my NES the other night to play Dr. Mario. But if pretty pictures isn't the selling point, something had better be. Looking at their feature list (burried below screenshots, so you might not even see it), are very ho-hum features. The first one on their list? "Windows and OSX support!". This is what they want to highlight about their game most? Second is the singleplayer thing, which makes NO sense. Not trying to insult the devs, and maybe if I would grab the demo, I would really like the game. Unfortunately, I work 50 hours a week plus, have a wife/daughter, and see offers like this all the time. I'm not going to do much more than glance at something, and my mind is going to get made up very quickly. If you're going to go cheap, that's fine - but you still have to have SOMETHING to get noticed. Hell, if they would just throw the phrase "functional fetuspult!" and put up a screenshot of it, I'd probably run the demo just for laughs. And maybe find out I like it. Or maybe not, but at least then they've gotten me to get my eyeballs on the game itself, and not their website. Do something odd, like allowing players to add multiplayer content to a live game (ala MUDs), throw in a lot of easy mini games (Puzzle Pirates). Something. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on October 27, 2005, 09:28:36 AM Heh. Yes and yes, I do the same thing :P Same actually - I really don't think I understand the game and looking at the website I cannot say I'm any wiser. I should be the ideal market since I'm at least as much interested in building worlds as I am playing games. In fact for all my years with games it seems I spend more time tinkering with their innards than playing them. Currently I'm poring through both of Ken Finney's books and playing around with building my own NPC AI. I'll follow the forums for awhile to see if it is something I'm willing to buy. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Nija on October 27, 2005, 09:55:08 AM More stuff now that I'm at work with nothing to do.
As you can see in the videos, there are wildly different things to do. In MoM, I hold down W and run up to some monsters, then I double click on one of them. I click the "kick" button a few times, and that's the extent of what I can do in combat. Oh, I hit spacebar a few times to JUMP, because, well, what else was I going to do? Then the contrast is M&B. HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE ME LANCE THAT GUY IN THE FACE?! I didn't autoattack, I didn't even target him. I brought my horse up to speed, the lance dipped, and I used small, slow movements to position the LANCE in front of his FACE and then I ran into him. And he died, now imagine that. People bitch about how hit calculations and stuff that ADVANCED can't POSSIBLY work in massive games, yet I bet they would work fine if they got rid of all the retarded dice rolls and concentrated on collisions. Minions of Mirth suffers from the fact that the don't have the money to hide their shitty core gameplay. Something like World of Warcraft has TONS of money, and they used it to hide their crap-tastic core gameplay, like a VC would hide a booby trap with bamboo scraps and leaves. Hell, even I was fooled for a little while with WoW. After a week, I just played to hang out with friends. After a few months that wasn't even cutting it. When you hit 60 most people will see how shallow it is and (hopefully) give up. Doing 5 man instances with people you know is OK, but you'll probably exclude one of your friends and that isn't OK. 15 man instances, evey with people you have known for years are bothersome. 20 man instances are worse. Now imagine trying to do that shit with people you DON'T know. Sitting around on Ventrilo for 4-5 hours a night listening to the same faggots day in, day out. Surprised it hasn't driven anyone insane. At the end of the day you're left with hitting a button on the top row of your keyboard and 'HEY DIPSHIT DON'T STAND THERE U'LL GET AGGRO NOOB' 'THAT ROLL DOESNT COUNT YOU DONT HAVE THE DKP TO ROLL' 'SORRY ONLY WANT HOLY SPEC PRIESTS' 'WTF ROGUE JUST SS U WILL DRAW AGGRO' And you'll be happy with it for the next fucking decade as people scramble to copy it. Anyways, nobody cares about any of this obviously. See my avatar. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Merusk on October 27, 2005, 10:09:57 AM Psycho.
It's old, but applicible. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: HaemishM on October 27, 2005, 11:22:26 AM My biggest stumbling block has been time. I haven't had a lot of time to devote to even looking at the demo I downloaded (and this was on the computer that blew up). I tried it out on the same day that I tried Irth Online. I will say that it certainly was better put together than IO, which was a total POS. But between WoW, MLB 2k5 on the X-Box, TV and DVD's, MoM just kind of fell through the cracks.
Now, I put about half an hour into it. It felt rough and alpha-ish, which fits. It's interface was crude. The "shiney" was decent; it didn't sparkle me, but it didn't turn me off either. I ran around, tried to kill a skeleton, had to run into a guard tower to get the guard to save me. It had potential that I just haven't had the time to explore. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: AOFanboi on October 27, 2005, 01:44:22 PM To be viable, indie games have to offer something unique, not just copy or attempt to clone some other $20 million game - and especially not EverQuest. Add something, dammit, something that will make it worth it.
An interesting allegory to "why don't people play Minions of Mirth" could be "why do people play indie game X instead"? In my case, I play Uplink because it's simple yet addictive with a decent and simple interface. I play HoneyComb because it's a vastly improved Minesweeper. I play Swarm because it's an old-school four-way scrolling shooter with a simply brilliant interface. I play FATE because it's an improved single-player Diablo, with great variety in character design. Did I mention I happily paid for all of those games? In the case of HoneyComb even twice? You cannot make an indie MMOG-style game in the World of Warcraft age; Rubies of Eventide is older and more established than MoMirth, and even they cannot hope to attract many players. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on October 27, 2005, 02:06:29 PM Mini-tangent:
While not a penalty, being indie is not a selling point. Seems obvious enough, but that really is something to keep in mind. I've noticed that many fans of indy games will make special allowances for a game because it's "indy", and some indy developers will make something that's basically a mediocre rehash of a successful commercial game and hope to sell it primarily on the basis of its being "indy". That actually does work to some extent, because the developers will find success among those aforementioned devoted indy fans, and it is all well and good to be passionate about the "cause" of putting game development in the hands of the little guy instead of the EAs of the world, but if that's as far as you get then you're never going to grow past that small fanbase. I'm primarily speaking from my frustration with Darwinia and the fact that it had horrible crashing bugs on release. When I went on their site looking for solutions, the only technical support option was the official forums, which was absolutely packed with Introversion fanbois that obviously had a lot of personal investment in Introversion, and said things along the lines of "hey, this game was made by only 5 people working out of a house, that's really something! And they worked really hard on it! You shouldn't complain if it's buggy!" I paid real money for this game, I'll damn well complain if it's buggy and/or sucks. And these are the same people that beta tested the game - BAD PLAN. Incestuous circle jerks are all well and good, but it's really important to realize that selling a game as "indy" won't get you any further than that. Games need to be sold on their merits, not their means of production. Gish caught a lot of people's eyes because its physics engine did things that nobody else had even attempted yet - not only that, but it was able to turn that gimmick into fun gameplay. The fact that it came from a small indy developer was purely incidental. </tangent> <MoM> I mentioned this when we were talking the other day, and others have stated it in this thread as well, but MoM just never really "grabbed" me - it did sound at first like maybe it could be a framework to rapidly prototype new MMO gameplay systems, and that could be kinda cool as far as that goes, but after I poked around on the site for a bit all I saw was a graphical Diku-EQ-clone toolkit, so I left. If MoM does have capabilities beyond rehashing EQ, the developers would do well to advertise that a bit better, and maybe put up an example or two of something bold and innovative (bonus points for fun) done using the MoM framework. Look at Counter-Strike - love it or hate it, CS was a whole new type of FPS, it was a very powerful demonstration of the flexibility of Half-Life modding, and it drove Half-Life sales through the roof, not on the merits of Half-Life itself (although that was also a damn good game), but on the merits of the Half-Life engine as a framework that other games could be built and played on. In the case of MoM, the core game isn't anything exciting, so it will need a Counter-Strike if it's going to get anywhere. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: HaemishM on October 27, 2005, 03:03:04 PM In other words, innovation and independence mean fuckall if it's broke.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on October 27, 2005, 05:19:01 PM I hate to re-rail... now I feel dirty. But MoM itself - there's some hate here besides Nija's Therapy Thursday. Is it genuinely bad?
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on October 27, 2005, 05:29:53 PM Outstanding feedback folks (and much I happen to personally agree with re: MoM), so thanks for spending the time!
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Evangolis on October 27, 2005, 08:20:48 PM I hate to re-rail... now I feel dirty. But MoM itself - there's some hate here besides Nija's Therapy Thursday. Is it genuinely bad? I don't know. And nothng I see or hear of it inspires me to change that. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Alkiera on October 27, 2005, 09:22:07 PM I actually played this quite a bit when this thread started up...
My basic reaction was 'Wow, it's like EQ, only without netlag'. Almost exactly like EQ. I ran around, killed snakes and beetles, graduated to killing the skeletons in the tower, and the thugs outside the town... got to level 15 or so with a Wizard. The game was obviously in an alpha state, tho... lots of races still had default human models, many of the classes were there in name only, with no special abilities to speak of... Fortunately I picked wizard initially, it seemed to be one of the most fleshed-out. After that, I lost interest. I never really figured out anything about altering my own server, and the game didn't seem anywhere near complete, anyhow. Alkiera Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Evangolis on October 27, 2005, 10:54:45 PM Then the contrast is M&B. HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE ME LANCE THAT GUY IN THE FACE?! I didn't autoattack, I didn't even target him. I brought my horse up to speed, the lance dipped, and I used small, slow movements to position the LANCE in front of his FACE and then I ran into him. And he died, now imagine that. People bitch about how hit calculations and stuff that ADVANCED can't POSSIBLY work in massive games, yet I bet they would work fine if they got rid of all the retarded dice rolls and concentrated on collisions. The argument is generally that latency forces you to use queued combat systems, and auto-attack systems. It's pretty hard to test this notion, since you'd have to build an MMOG to test it directly, so we end with the argument from authority. Until now. Terra Nova has a post on the IBM conference Net Games 05 (http://www.research.ibm.com/netgames2005/program.html). It is chock full of ultra geeky papers on damn obscure shit, all of which are downloadable. Among them was this: The Effect of Latency and Network Limitations on MMORPGs (A Field Study of Everquest2) (http://www.research.ibm.com/netgames2005/papers/fritsch.pdf) What they did, for those who don't want to wade through it, was take two matched PC setups, two similarly experienced players, and two similarly experienced characters, and hook them up to a network switch which had a Linux box attached to it that would allow them to increase the connection latency to any desired value for one or both setups. Then they had the players perform some standard MMO stuff, like fighting, under variable lag. They found that combat in EQ2 was robust up to about 1250ms (1.25 seconds) latency. Over a second of lag. Here is their exact statement of what they found: Quote Our hypothesis has proven to be partially correct. The game expectedly turned out to be non-playable at very high latency sequences. The"breakpoint" (point from where the game was no longer fluently playable) however occurred at 1250ms, which was more than two times higher than expected. Two main reasons are responsible for this effect. On the one hand the movement seems to be rendered locally (a detailed analysis of rendering and movement can be found in section 4.3). On the other hand the combat seems to react pretty accurate even at 500-1000ms. The Everquest 2 player combat system is based on a special queuing mechanism that allows the player to queue up to one combat move. This action is already sent towards the server, and as soon as the current combat move is done, the new ability is instantly executed. This makes even players with higher latency feel like they got no delay. Because most abilities take around 1 second to perform, it is easy to understand why the combat turns out to become very problematic at latency times of more than one second. They did a bunch of other stuff as well. So now we have a benchmark. Now, I am neither geeky enough, nor a sufficiently capable programmer, to introduce a similar variable lag mechanism into the UI of a PC Game like M&B, or CS, but for one who was, it should be fairly straightforward to do so, and determine how resistant the combat mechanics are to lag relative to EQ2. As a side point, their method could also be used as a testbed to determine how well different MMOs responded to latency, which would provide customers with an actual benchmark to consider these games by. Of course, if you are dealing with a locally hosted game, this is not an issue, and there is no excuse for having a dull combat system. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on October 28, 2005, 03:00:10 AM I don't need to set up a high latency connection to tell you that something twitchy like CS really really sucks at high latency, even with good netcode (the Half-Life netcode is possibly the best of any FPS). With "high" being anything over 100ms. Anything where you have to react to the actions of something that's on the other end of a sluggish connection is going to be extremely frustrating. The more interactive and/or reflex-based the combat, the snappier the response time from the server needs to be. Not exactly rocket science.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sky on October 28, 2005, 06:48:29 AM Quote The argument is generally that latency forces you to use queued combat systems, and auto-attack systems. It's pretty hard to test this notion, since you'd have to build an MMOG to test it directly, so we end with the argument from authority. Bwhawhawha?Planetside? Best usage of the mmo space thus far. Maybe not the best implementation of the idea, a bit generic and lacking in Vision(tm). But proof of concept that you can have player skill interaction on a massive scale. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: HaemishM on October 28, 2005, 07:27:28 AM I hate to re-rail... now I feel dirty. But MoM itself - there's some hate here besides Nija's Therapy Thursday. Is it genuinely bad? I don't think it' bad so much as it is not good. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Evangolis on October 28, 2005, 01:31:06 PM Quote The argument is generally that latency forces you to use queued combat systems, and auto-attack systems. It's pretty hard to test this notion, since you'd have to build an MMOG to test it directly, so we end with the argument from authority. Bwhawhawha?Planetside? Best usage of the mmo space thus far. Maybe not the best implementation of the idea, a bit generic and lacking in Vision(tm). But proof of concept that you can have player skill interaction on a massive scale. These are opinions, and they may indeed be perfectly valid ones. However, it would be better if we could talk about relative playability at different latencies for all online games using actual numbers. This is the sort of 'popular science' approach that is largely lacking from game reviewing, and which would help remove us from the editorial fellatio that characterizes too many reviews. As it is now, we are faced with constant 'yes you can'/'no you can't' discussions, which really don't move anybody toward anything but flame wars. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on October 28, 2005, 03:42:33 PM A game that's based on fast reactions does not work well past about 100 ms latency. Period. Done. You don't need to set up an experiment to figure this out. Ask any online FPS player, because any online FPS player is very familiar with the effects of lag, and will probably tell you that right around the time their ping hits triple digits, the game becomes much less playable.
This is most likely directly related to the reaction speed of the player. Most humans are perceptive enough to spot tenth-of-a-second lags in fast-paced combat, so 100 ms is where stuff like that starts breaking down, even if the netcode tries to smooth it out - you'll notice the tenth of a second difference if you shoot at someone who was there (on the server) a tenth of a second ago, is still there on your screen, and you miss. Smaller intervals of lag (I personally can't tell the difference once it gets below about 40 ms) aren't noticeable because you (the player) aren't able to process things that quickly anyway. For something like a game of chess, you don't need to react in real time, so lag makes almost no difference - even a game of speed chess is going to be perfectly playable with a full 1000ms of lag between the players. A standard game will probably be fine with up to a few seconds, even for the really basic opening moves that require no thought. An IRC conversation starts to feel laggy past about two seconds, depending on the speed of the typists - people who type at snails's paces anyway probably have higher tolerance for latency. Basically, it all comes down to how fast your reactions are expected to be under optimal conditions. If your latency exceeds that time frame, it's no good. The real question, to my mind, is not how can we deal with crappy latency, it's how can we design systems that pare latency down to acceptable levels. This is partially a matter of hardware (fat pipes and fast servers) and partially a matter of software (netcode that minimizes the amount of data sent back and forth without allowing a client to cheat). Right now there are precious few examples of games that can do twitchy combat on massive scales and keep latency low, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on October 29, 2005, 01:33:49 PM A game that's based on fast reactions does not work well past about 100 ms latency. Period. Done. You don't need to set up an experiment to figure this out. Ask any online FPS player, because any online FPS player is very familiar with the effects of lag, and will probably tell you that right around the time their ping hits triple digits, the game becomes much less playable. This fundamentally is why I tend to dismiss the "Mmogs are not twitchy enough" rant. There are interesting things done these days with client forecasting and server master reconciliation but that only goes so far until one encounters other remote users. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on October 29, 2005, 02:09:48 PM I do, however, think it's a fallacy to say that twitch doesn't work in high-latency environments and therefore MMOGs can't have twitch. This presupposes that all MMOGs are necessarily high-latency, and that's simply not true. Most of them have been up to this point, but I think that's in part because the way that MMOG gameplay is currently designed, paring down the lag to levels that would be acceptable in a twitch game hasn't been worth the effort.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Venkman on October 29, 2005, 09:21:02 PM As Merusk said. Checking out something that just enables me to make my own content isn't so compelling when there's off-the-shelf stuff that got paid development budgets, and Second Life which is like collaberative Maya. If I'm paying money, it's for content.
Plus the abbreviation is a bit cheeky :) Mom? Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Nija on October 29, 2005, 09:21:22 PM Gimme a break guys, have you even played Mount & Blade? You don't need a 100ms ping to play that. 500ms would work, maybe even a 1k ping.
We're not talking retarded hitscan weapons and yeah, look at Planetside. Argument dismissed, it's possible but nobody cares. (http://www.ihostphotos.com/imgt/184293.jpg) (http://www.ihostphotos.com/show.php?id=184293) That was during AC2 beta when people actually played it. Not a glitch either, just a typical LPB ping on the MS backbone. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: koboshi on October 29, 2005, 10:08:15 PM re-railing because I couldn't give a flying fuck about latency...
The reason I didn't go for this game had nothing to do with the graphics, the indie-ness, the anomalous single player lag, or the failures of marketing. The truth of the matter is the marketing worked, they had me at ‘you get your own editable server’. I mean that was it for me, I left for work that day with visions of cyberspaces like Iduru's Hak Nam or Snow Crash's Black Sun. I thought that with the introduction of a MMOG maker, users would be able to create their own worlds, or at least rooms, in which their rules reigned. I imagined people developing their own dungeons and inviting friends to join them, in some sort of personalized questing system. DMing reborn. I had thought the same of NWN, and was just as wrong. I also thought of the possibility to use the system as a proof of concept generator for MMOGs but the truth is that any true improvement to an MMOG, especially in the eyes of those most jaded of gamers you find here, would be too great a change for this particular system to handle. Furthermore, to truly experiment with the possibilities that would be up for review would require the massively multiplayer part more so than the online game part. In conclusion I wanted something from the game which was perhaps too much to expect, and when it couldn’t deliver on its promise of greatness, fell into worthlessness, perhaps through no fault of its own. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on October 31, 2005, 09:08:47 AM I suspect to really take a proof of concept as far as it would need to go you'd windup having to go to the underyling engine anyway. Mom seems mainly an easy way for moderately techy people to setup virtual chatrooms for their friends.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on November 07, 2005, 10:10:46 PM Or a kickass place to run a PnP campaign...instead of IRC.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on November 07, 2005, 10:12:12 PM Only if you're not the one who'd be putting in a month of coding/modeling/mapping before each two hour adventure. :-P
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on November 07, 2005, 10:13:59 PM I was being sarcastic. MoM will be proof of concept that player generated content bites ass. Though NWN did a good job of that. I like acronyms. The entire playerbase of video games is FUBAR when it comes to doing work themself.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on November 07, 2005, 10:22:48 PM Actually, after I posted that I did start to envision a toolkit that could be used to set up PnP style sessions with a minimum of pain. It wouldn't look like NWN, and my guess is that it'd look even less like MoM. It would have turn-based combat. The DM would have every character's stats at his fingertips - at a whim he could right-click a character's name, say "Make Spot Check", and the system would tell him the results with the player being none the wiser unless the roll was high enough. Also, the toolkit would ship with thousands of pre-generated locations and models, and an NPC generation system that would put SWG's character creator to shame.
Anyone who wants to buy my idea for a million dollars please PM me. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: stray on November 08, 2005, 04:39:34 AM The entire playerbase of video games is FUBAR when it comes to doing work themself. Entire? I only see vast amounts of crap from people who gravitate towards rpg's and fantasy games. Call me condescending, I don't care (I doubt that you do either), but most of this crowd has zero taste and doesn't know a damn thing about fun other than abstract number crunching bullshit. And the more creative rpg'ers that do exist are, for the most part, in PnP land. Basically though, dorks, as a general rule, are boring people. Not very well rounded either. As for other genres, there's a higher percentage of decent stuff from the fps/rts playerbase, or even sim/simcity players. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sky on November 08, 2005, 07:02:16 AM Quote MoM will be proof of concept that player generated content bites ass. Though NWN did a good job of that. Yesverymuchso. When I see devs crow about player-made content...I just :roll:Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on November 08, 2005, 08:40:14 AM So there are no player scenarios out there for NWN you all liked?
(http://www.thefoolsparadise.com/$icons/skeptical-inquirer.gif) Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sky on November 08, 2005, 09:35:26 AM I wouldn't know. By the time player content (or even official content) actually started showing up, I was long gone, it was off the hd.
My biggest problem with NWN was that to make the module you wanted to make, and not just cobble something together, you needed to be a 3d artist with MAX (or whatever 3d app applies, I'm not a 3d artist). It was like a lego set with just the custom legos. All helmets and ray guns, no bricks. Exceedingly limited for the end user. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Nija on November 08, 2005, 10:51:22 AM What NWN really lacks is a good interface to go about finding new player-made content. Something that looks like a gamespy browser, but instead of sorting by deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF, you'd sort by single player mods, multiplayer mods, fantasy, ROMANCE, whatever.
Then you'd SELECT a server, but it would be a mod, and the little MOTD screen would have some information about it or something. All from within the game. You're supposed to rely on your own hosting and your own advertisement, or use one of those godawful places like nwnvault to host your stuff. It just sucks. Pony up the bandwidth/server stuff like Blizzard did for Battle.net. Where would Diablo be without Battle.net? Oh yeah, same place NWN is now. Forgotten. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on November 08, 2005, 10:54:43 AM NWN wasn't fun. It doesn't matter if the playermade shit was good. The game itself was boring boring boring.
As for player made content: Counterstrike, a few ut2k4 mods (if you like war sims, bleh), a Deus Ex mod I forgot the name of and wait for it - translations of japanese games. Yesh, I'd say nearly all playermade content sucks. Sorry I used the word "entire" earlier. It was so far off the mark. Now one thing you can count on - playermade content is often funny when made to be humorous. As players we're much better at bringing the funny than we are at creating more fun. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on November 08, 2005, 11:54:19 AM /shrug
I agree to some degree - NWN as originally sold was a Not Fun rule set and the game mechanics were tedious. I hated the graphical perspective and was astonished Bioware so thoroughly miscalculated the average DM's abhorrence of all things technology. But I also was very impressed with some of the player modules, especially the later ones. What I liked and still like is the business model and the idea that sophisticated tools would make for better player content. I still think that is the trend and fully believe there is a market somewhere between NWN and Torque. Player content often enough is crap simply because the tools are too restrictive/laborious for most players to really want to dedicate themselves. But if nothing else has been breathtaking these past few years it'd certainly be the improvement in tools. And for example look at GG's tactic to make money selling addon components, everything from primitives/textures to full-blown scenarios. Kind of silly to slam player content when one bailed before all the good modules started appearing. NWN was the first product of its sort and the tools required learning curve - should not surprise anyone it took time for things to ramp up. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Sky on November 08, 2005, 12:26:36 PM It wasn't the learning curve. I was making cool stuff.
It was the sheer amount of limitation placed on worldbuilding. See also: The Movies (just a hunch). Nothing like that will ever work, because you're limited to the set pieces they give you, unless you work in 3dmax or maya or whatever. That's fine for dicking around, but not for making good original content. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: HaemishM on November 08, 2005, 01:56:27 PM It didn't help that the game in NWN really wasn't all that great. DND does not make good real-time Diablo play. It also didn't help that they said over and over that you couldn't make the game 1st person, until some came up with a hack that made the game first-person. Unfortunately, first-person (and other assorted better camera angles than the default) showed off how bad some of the models really were.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Viin on November 08, 2005, 04:23:00 PM Don't forget all the other good HL mods. (DoD, Natural Selection, etc)
Sure, player content can suck but having the ability to make content is better than being stuck with the content the devs gave you. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Evangolis on November 08, 2005, 08:11:44 PM It wasn't the learning curve. I was making cool stuff. It was the sheer amount of limitation placed on worldbuilding. See also: The Movies (just a hunch). Nothing like that will ever work, because you're limited to the set pieces they give you, unless you work in 3dmax or maya or whatever. That's fine for dicking around, but not for making good original content. In some ways, the problem for me was the reverse. I needed more and more detailed set pieces. For example, a functioning Inn, no special tricks, just a building with entrances, and, inside, NPCs who would rent rooms and sell you food. Everytime I started to work on a module, I'd wind up having to create all these side areas, so that my module wasn't a hallway. You really needed to be able to plop down a stock village, etc, so that you could set the specific plot points as desired. Then you could go back and mod in story as it grew, the way you would with a PnP setting. Of course, what they did have didn't fit together very well. The tilesets really weren't standardized between themselves. I guess I'd say that the problem was that NWN expected the players to provide the content, instead of allowing them to. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: JRitter on November 09, 2005, 02:16:39 AM Unfortunately, we're already selling enough to keep working on the game improving and expanding it.
Please don't tell the people who are having fun playing it in single and multiplayer, that it totally sucks and is doomed. Ok? :-D -Josh Ritter Producer, (Sole) Programmer, Game Designer, Web/Forum/Online Server Admin, Marketing, Wrangler Prairie Games (http://www.prairiegames.com/games.html) Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on November 09, 2005, 03:35:10 AM Josh, your engine and concepts don't suck and aren't doomed.
Player made content sucks for the most part and it's the players that are doomed. But hell, most of us will buy anything once. At least that's my experience. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Nija on November 09, 2005, 08:05:26 AM pity reply
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: HaemishM on November 09, 2005, 08:11:59 AM Unfortunately, we're already selling enough to keep working on the game improving and expanding it. Good for you. We don't have to like it for it to be a success, or for someone to like it. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on November 09, 2005, 12:12:42 PM Please don't tell the people who are having fun playing it in single and multiplayer, that it totally sucks and is doomed. Ok? Josh do you have time for a rebuttal? Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on November 09, 2005, 12:59:24 PM Just caught this quote in Josh Ritter's last .plan (blog) on our web site:
Quote The RPG World Server code is located in the./common/mud/world folder of the installation. This code is the full RPG logic of the world server. The game can be changed DRAMATICALLY by editing these files. Quote @Mark: This is no where near the full source code. The source code we've made available is the (complete) RPG logic of the World Server. This combined with the full RPG Database source code and compiler allows people to heavily modify the game. -Josh Ritter Prairie Games So basically, it appears that the worries people were commenting about (not being able to really change gameplay isn't correct anymore. FYI, the dedicated server itself is completely free, but requires the beta client ($25) to play. A link to his full (latest) .plan (http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/4280/9153) (requires a GarageGames account, free). I'm certain that he will have this information on his web page (http://www.prairiegames.com/index.html) as well in the near future. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Pococurante on November 09, 2005, 01:01:05 PM Good point Stephen - I should look at his usual haunts first. I like what they're doing and want them to succeed.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: JRitter on November 09, 2005, 01:29:21 PM Quote Josh do you have time for a rebuttal? Not really, I'm very busy working on the game. I've invested everything I have into making this game. Of course, I don't think it sucks ass. I also think Mount & Blade, Oblivion, NWN, etc are cool. Though, I am a huge fan of RPG titles. As far as mods sucking, I don't think they all do. Here is some mod art we will be incorporating into the official build of MoM. The artist happens to be a professional game environment artist working on an XBox 360 title. It was very generous of him to make this and other artwork. He seems to really like MoM: (http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/8835/totem015lc.jpg) Our website and image need a complete overhaul. We'll get to this in 2006! -Josh Ritter Prairie Games (http://www.prairiegames.com/games.html) Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Evangolis on November 09, 2005, 06:30:45 PM When you do that overhaul, I hope you'll consider addressing the initial and general concerns about your name and slogan. I suppose changing your name is a bad plan at this point, but I think you need to get your core mechanics across better. It isn't fair, but the fact is that I have far more games than I can reasonably play, and I'm not going to look far beyond the surface unless what I see makes me interested from the first title.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: JRitter on November 11, 2005, 07:13:23 PM If anyone is interested, I shot and edited a quick promo video this afternoon.
Here's a link: http://www.prairiegames.com/MoM_Promo1.wmv (http://www.prairiegames.com/MoM_Promo1.wmv) Vibes, -Josh Ritter Prairie Games (http://www.prairiegames.com/games.html) Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: EvilTodd on November 11, 2005, 09:18:38 PM As far as mods sucking, I don't think they all do. Here is some mod art we will be incorporating into the official build of MoM. The artist happens to be a professional game environment artist working on an XBox 360 title. It was very generous of him to make this and other artwork. He seems to really like MoM: His character art looks like a cross between a fencer and a Knight of the Holy Grail. You should ditch that clown and hire the person who did the totems. Those look nice. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: koboshi on November 17, 2005, 05:30:48 PM Ok so I’ve stated my problems on the high end but upon further thought there is also a low end argument...
What is the value of my effort to add content in a grand sense? Should I complete the task, what good is it? I cannot be expected to make an entire game, which is a job that might optimistically take a few years. I can not afford that loss of time, for fun. And what of any project that stands short of that? Obviously it is worth less. Less than the original game, less than the handful of great mods. In the grand scheme a lesser game is not a game which will garner much, if any, attention in light of far grander contemporaries. Why mod? To put it in more simplistic terms, I 'm poor but I like to make stuff. I am frustrated because when I try to make a little teepee out of twigs I do so in the shadow of the pyramids. I can't make that so why make anything? I find myself being depressed by the idea even as I write about it, but there is also an image which gives me hope, coral. Each little creature does but a tiny amount and yet it's effort allows for the grandest formations on earth. So, to take a step back from the poetic for moment and a step over to the logical, let me offer this proposal. If each and every player's product must be compared and a scant few chosen as the winners, you will have made a game where all of your hard work has been to depress most of your players and reward a small handful. If instead you line the players’ accomplishments end to end with each gaining from the value of each other you will have a game in which each player feels they are personally responsible for the greatness of the hole. Just so I don’t get ignored for lack of a rational application for this theory here’s my one line psudocode: each player creates in-game, small objects, areas, rules of operation (code), which is then either traded around in the game for use in other player creations or placed like dungeons with gate fees so that players can, when not creating, or instead of creating, play in them. I don’t know if this theory is being applied to this game but it would seem that few if any are in a better position to attempt it, if for no better reason than someone else could do it with your game. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on November 17, 2005, 05:36:31 PM Just so I don’t get ignored for lack of a rational application for this theory here’s my one line psudocode: each player creates in-game, small objects, areas, rules of operation (code), which is then either traded around in the game for use in other player creations or placed like dungeons with gate fees so that players can, when not creating, or instead of creating, play in them. I think you just described Second Life to a T. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: koboshi on November 17, 2005, 08:01:19 PM Yea, with one caveat, I want Second Life without the requisite bankroll of real cash.
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on November 17, 2005, 08:16:31 PM So "free" is a prerequisite for the perfect game? :wink:
Second Life's pricing scheme is actually pretty reasonable (as far as I can tell), despite the stories you hear about people paying thousands of dollars for stuff. Those are the same people that pay thousands of dollars for castles in UO or Swords of Whoopass in EQ or whatever. Not representative of the game as a whole. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: AOFanboi on November 18, 2005, 09:56:08 AM I think you just described Second Life to a T. I was going to say MUSH/TinyMush/TinyMuck, but that would be dating me back to the text-interface days.Ah, playing a MUD on a DEC VT-102 terminal... Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on January 12, 2006, 01:49:56 PM I'm a little late with this, but FYI Minions of Mirth is now shipping (http://www.prairiegames.com/press.html).
Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on January 12, 2006, 03:02:56 PM Quote PRAIRIE GAMES, INC RELEASES GROUNDBREAKING ROLE-PLAYING GAME: MINIONS OF MIRTH "Minions of Mirth gives the player an incredible amount of freedom in their role-playing experience! It can be played in single player, multiplayer, and even allows friends to run their own custom persistent worlds! We're very pleased to be releasing this amazing product. We've worked very hard with our community to make sure Minions of Mirth totally rocks!", says Josh Ritter co-owner and programmer of the title. Minions of Mirth Features: Auto-patcher that delivers immediate content and feature upgrades Full single player support Player vs Environment and Player vs Player multiplayer No monthly service fees for multiplayer Form your own party of up to 6 characters. Join other players in online alliances with up to 36 characters 16 playable classes, 12 playable races, Multiclass characters in three careers up to level 100 3 playable realms: Fellowship of Light, Minions of Darkness, and the Monster Realm 14 huge and diverse zones to explore Unlock monster templates to create your own stable of monsters Epic Battle System A tremendous amount of unique NPC, creatures, items, and quests 2 hours of original music Free dedicated world server with source code is available. Host your own persistent world with your own original content. I keep getting the feeling that I'm missing something big about MoM, because from my previous visits to the site and this press release, it just sounds like it's the bastard child of EQ and NWN. Which part of it is "groundbreaking"? Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: schild on January 12, 2006, 03:15:31 PM Zepp didn't write that.
I got an email from an indy dev house the other day pimping a groundbreaking clone of.....breakout. Goddamn. Stop painting targets on yourselves. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Samwise on January 12, 2006, 03:21:18 PM Zepp didn't write that. I know, but I'm still curious, which is why I asked the question. Title: Re: Minions of Mirth goes into free alpha amongst cries of, "WTF?" Post by: Stephen Zepp on January 12, 2006, 06:13:01 PM Zepp didn't write that. I know, but I'm still curious, which is why I asked the question. Quite honestly, the term "groundbreaking" is probably marketingspeak, but also quite honestly, the ability to pick and choose how to play the same game, single player or multiplayer, combined with completely moddable world servers is pretty new. I wouldn't call it bleeding edge or anything myself, and all negative-ness aside a combination of EQ and NWN isn't a bad breakdown of the abilities either... |