Hello everyone! I've been working on this for quite some time and I feel it's as ready as it's ever going to be for a test. It's a true flash MMORPG engine I've developed. The game is called Infested and while I still have a lot of work to do on it I think it should give you an idea of what I am trying to accomplish. Anyway, I do appreciate anyone taking the time to check this out for me. Any feedback you have is helpful for me to decide where to focus my future efforts. One last note - please remember that I am not an artist or a writer, so if the story or graphics are a little lacking please be kind! (Though I'd still like to know what you think about them) Thanks again! Michael Deremick http://www.deremick.com/main/Games/Infested/tabid/60/Default.aspx

I forgot some things:

You will need about 1.5GB of free RAM to get it to load and play properly.

Also, sometimes the game gets stuck in chat mode - making you unable to move via the keyboard and unable to cast spells.

To fix that issue, click in the chat text box and then hit the escape key.

I gave your game a quick go, sadly I'm unable to get more than 10fps on the computer. :P Then again I'm way below the system requirements with 1gb of ram. I found the game to be kinda like Ultima Online. When I get on a better computer I'll have to give this another go. I've never seen an MMO made in Flash before, very nice job!

Thanks for the responses so far!

eedok - You are absolutely right, I need to flesh out the 'quest log' to provide the description again.

As for the framerate/locking up problems I will be working on slimming my graphics down a bit. Right now I have a lot of animations I'm not using, so it may be possible for me to do more with less - which should help a lot considering each character loaded into the game can take 100-150 MB of ram.

Even the game's server is running out of my house, which probably doesn't help speed the game up, considering it's running off a standard cable connection.

Again, thank you to everyone who tried this for me, I simply do not have the hardware to test this myself.

There was a suggestion I forgot to mention. Your t's make your text unreadable at first glace, at least for me anyhow. I kinda found it annoying to be honest, maybe just used t's that don't look like crosses?

finaly loaded, going to have a check at this. Is it not possible to release a downloadable client too?(when I clean my cookies etc will I have to reload everything?)


EDIT: sorry there was more loading to do :/

after running around town trying to find the lists I get stuck and the running animation just goes on as I'm stuck. I also notice lag when running with my arrows keys but its probably because as you said the server is at your home and im in europe :P

You should look into loading only the objects around the player. I have a system like that set up for my flash client and works well to keep the bandwidth down. If done right you can get it so that there is no load time (or very little).

Nice game. Are you using bitmap rendering? The game seemed to only get 15 fps which is kind of unusual since the resolution you chose is manageable.

There was a bit of stuttering also with the movement. Are you using a fixed timestep for the gameplay or frame based one?

Hello again everyone.

I've received so many comments both here and in game (chat logs).

I've also made quite a few changes from those comments and hope to have them posted later today.

As suggessted I've changed some fonts, made some things a little clearer, and worked on some 'sticking' issues people were reporting. I've also changed the way quests work so when you finish a quest and there is a follow up it appears to you right away - some people were getting confused and didn't know where to go to resume the quest chain.

Sirisian, I am using bitmap rendering, however the framerate slows considerably at 'night' - though I have cleaned that up a little in the next release (hopefully today). As far as loading times are concerned, I do have the browser load everything which does work pretty well for the second load because of caching.

Eventually it's possible I would release a downloadable client version complete with all the graphics which does help loading times significantly.

Right now things keep changing so quickly it doesn't make sense for me to do so.

Last thing, movement speed is tied to the framerate - but only in the sense that the animations will skip frames or slow down and add more frames per second depending on the user's framerate. I believe the stuttering you may notice is due to the fact that I am running this from my home, on a home network on an old laptop I had laying around. The server probably isn't responding as quickly and you may notice your character snapping back to the spot he was in before you get the server's response that you've been granted the ability to move to the new spot. This weekend alone I had to completely reset my network at least twice... (I need a new router badly, may pick one up today).

I doubt you will remember this Sirisian, but I was here about a year ago with a GotoAndStop engine I had first built for fun, but it was horrible. You had pointed me in the direction of Bitmapdata and copypixels and I went back to the drawing board - and this is the result. Much thanks to you for that.

Anyway, just waned to thank everyone again - all the comments are helping to make this better.