Hello everyone!

Today I am proud to present to you the opening of the first public beta server for Skellitown!

The Game

Skellitown is a cross-platform multiplayer game with MMORPG-style combat and character progression. The game is optimized for the tablet (or large screen phones) market. As for desktop computers it will run with max settings on low-end Mac/Windows/Linux.

" title="External link">Trailer video

You can grab a copy of the Beta test client over at the Skellitown website: Skellitown Downloads

Features

• Three different classes each with a wide variety of skills and builds
• Character progression through attributes, skills and talents.
• Play solo or in coordinated team-battles
• PvP game modes :
  Death match - Two teams, the team with the most kills at the end wins!
  Arena - Two teams, best of 5 rounds, no re-spawn.
  Capture and Hold - Capture and defend points on the map.
  Objectives - Objective based battles.
• PvE game modes :
  Boss Rush - Defeat the Boss and his minions as fast as possible.
  Arena Pit - Fight through 20 stages of increasingly more difficult enemies

Current State

The game is pretty much finished, the game engine might have a few unknown bugs and there are always stuff on the “future features list” but overall I’m pretty pleased with the current state of the engine and the game play. The engine is built with the LibGDX framework using Bullet Physics for collision and physics. Networking is built on top of Kryonet and has a MySQL backend. I only host one server at the moment located in the EU. When the game takes off I will also host one server in NA.

Current Focus

• Finish the work on statistics, leader-boards and ranking.
• The maps need some more work to look a bit better and be more fun and dynamic.
• More maps should be added.
• Multiplayer needs some more testing. I have had problems to test large team multiplayer since I need more people to play at the same time.

Future Features

• Statistics and rankings - currently working on adding this.
• Pre-made teams
• Friends list and messaging
• Attribute enhancing items. I.e crystals or runes that gives increased stats like 1% critical rate increase or 2% deflect chance.
• Mini game for items. Combine lesser versions of items to create more powerful ones
• Adding stun and interrupt mechanics
• External gamepad support
• Branching active skills to have combo and charge-up mechanics

Requirements

I have tested this on a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro and a Samsung Ace4 and I would not recommend using it on anything weaker unless you want to turn down all graphics settings to minimum. For desktop computers, I have not found any computer slow enough to give Skellitown any problems.

@aet9

Youtube Channel

Skellitown Website

Just wanted to tell you that Skellitown is now on the Google Play Beta test program:https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.aperico.game.skellitown.android

No more need to change settings on your mobile device to install, simply download the game from Google Play and go!

Hello everyone and thank you so much for helping me test Skellitown!

Hi,
First of all, compliments of what you've achieved. I don't know with how many your team are, but it looks very nice. It all falls together, like you took the time to create a good well thought design.

I've played it a short 20 minutes (on windows/ desktop PC), here are my first thoughts:

- setup, launcher etc. Stable, no issues
- creating an account went so quick, it almost felt like it was creating a local account
(can you see the account I've created? :))
- movement felt a bit unnatural on a pc, maybe because the joypad method was chosen because of your primary target hardware (tablets). It would be nice that on a pc, you could right click on the map and just go there
- tutorial was clear and got me started
- when entering the world, I think I didn't see any others. Have you built up some players yet?
If you want to do a mulltiplayer/ battle test on short term, I could free up an half an hour at night (somewhere between 20.00 and 23.00, EU timezone Amsterdam)

Just a small remark, I'm not specifically a MMORPG (or MOBA) player, just trying it out a bit (did some research on LoL lately). I mostly play FPS's, and 3rd person action/ story games, sometimes with some RPG elements in them.

Lastly, are there any specific potential bugs you want to see tested?

@cozzie thank you for the feedback!

The game has a data server using a MySQL back-end and new accounts are added to the MySQL server. I do however not require users to verify their email since this is a beta so account creation is really fast.

Movement is indeed tailored for tablets and by design I do not have any other movement for desktops. This is because I wan't all platforms to play on the same terms. If you could play with a mouse like an FPS game and even strafe etc it would be such huge advantage for mouse+keyboard players. You can flip the UI in the options if you want, that should make it feel less awkward.

I am however considering to scrap that whole idea and favor desktop since I have had pretty bad results from testers on mobile devices. I have optimized and removed a lot of things to make the game run well on mobile devices (Ardeno 320 or eqiv.) It is the network connection that seems to be the culprit though. Using wifi, my own testing with phone and tablet has worked very well so I am not sure yet as only about 150 people have tested the game so far (released it on GP 5 days ago)

No known bugs for now, some small glitches with the camera and obstacles and a problem with users having really high ping causing them to disconnect, not sure if I can do anything about that though.

The big problem is that I need a larger player base and more people playing at the same time. So far I had few opportunities to test any larger scale PvP matches for example.

Sounds clear.

Just some thoughts:

- you want build up a player base to test, if you don't take offers of people wanting to help out

(like I did, to do a play test some time :)

- on the movement of the player, FPS movement with WSAD etc. is not what I meant, take LoL or Warcraft, there you can click on a spot on the map, and go there.
This could work the same for both tablets and desktop (if you continue to support both)

Yes sorry you are right, now that I read your post again I see that. I'd love some more help with testing. I will look at click to move some more. Strange thing is, I had that in the earliest versions of the game, not sure why I removed it.. can not think of any reason now. I have also been thinking about using the same fixed angle camera with the player character in center of the screen just like LoL and Warcraft have, then it would make even more sense I guess. Thank you for the feedback!