What I did today…

Another thing we’ve got ready for the TME server is gold drops. Soon, all monsters will drop a variable amount of gold when they are killed. This will be an interesting new faucet for money to more than compensate for the more meaningless items we’ll be removing. Of course, we’ll have more money drains to compensate for that, too. Above are the three denominations (few coins, some coins, and many coins) I whipped together by editing QOAL’s unused casino coin icon. I originally had more grandiose plans but I think these three are effective.

Meet the Vampire NPC with whom you’ll be exchanging that blood, your hard-earned spoils of battle. Sanga’s tweaked the code to prevent potential “blood-farming” by making the blood a bit more challenging to get. I look forward to seeing this dynamic implemented and how it will be received.

Blame asked me to give a cactus monster a shot. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far (not even close to finished). This forwards-walking animation still needs a little bounce in the back.

A few things I’m working on…

I’m working on a few things to add replay value to the Mana Experiment, a side project a few fellow players are setting up so that any and all can experience new content, finished or not, before it’s ready or up on the official server. As I said, we hope to make it interesting enough to play that enough people will be around to test and develop these things.

Above you’ll see the Water Goblin, who currently spits blue fire but will be adapted to spit streams of water. This one’s nearing completion.

Here we have an example of the “blood” item players will soon drop when killed by another player (PvP). Players will be able to collect blood for bragging rights and perhaps exchange them for “evil” equipment.

The graphics and patch to allow this are complete, but we need the “multiple update servers” patch to be added into SVN before we can implement it to the server itself.

Lastly, I will be changing up a few maps in small ways. I’ve decided that editing existing maps is a worthier task than creating new ones since the incomplete, newer and improved tilesets, once finished, will require complete remapping. There will be a few buildings like these on the outskirts of Tulimshar, among other things, on the server. This project is maybe half done.

If this project is interesting to you and you’d like to play or help, feel free to visit us on IRC (Freenode) at #themanaexperiment, or the game server (IP address: 216.139.26.36.)

Graphics Developer Starter Kit

For the Windows users out there who’d like to start making artwork for TMW, I’ve compiled everything that I use on a regular basis in an organized way so that you can experiment and find what works for you.

Full Version Download (48 MB)
All maps and tilesets (includes unfinished or unused tilesets)
Latest Tiled and TileStudio
Latest installers for Inkscape and GraphicsGale Free Edition
Useful links to tutorials and resources, etc.
Project folder to keep your work organized
.PSD model for making hats by Black Don
Example customdata zips for your education and entertainment

Lite Version Download (5 MB)
All maps and tilesets (includes unfinished or unused tilesets)
Latest Tiled
Links to downloads for Inkscape, GraphicsGale and TileStudio
Useful links to tutorials and resources, etc.
Project folder to keep your work organized
.PSD model for making hats by Black Don

The Lite Version in particular may be helpful to Linux and Mac users as well.

Acid Mod

I haven’t posted this here because I haven’t updated it since I posted it on the TMW Forums (and I don’t plan to any time soon), but from the number of downloads I’ve got it’s still my most popular mod and it’s definitely pretty fun for a while.

If you, too, would like to play TMW on acid, download the customdata here.

Sunset Mod Update

Not a huge update to this one… a few monster drops look more like things the monster would actually drop, such as bug legs, red and normal scorpion stingers, etc. I adjusted the lighting and coloring on the apple to make it look more like an apple and less like a peach. The emoticons I made are also default in this mod as well, so there’s no need to download it seperately. I also removed the magic flower and mana seed as they are part of a different project.

To download it, you’ll want to get both the tiles and the graphics. They are seperate now because the tiles are a much larger file and I’ll be updating it a lot less than the graphics. In the future, I’ll post updates for one or the other.

Sweet New Emoticons

Inspired by and taking the criticism’s left on an old post to update the emoticon set, I’ve made a whole batch of them from scratch. I replaced the “Winking Face” with a somewhat sarcastic emote, and the “Angel Face” with a blank expression. The only problem with the latter is that now Santa Slimes give you blank, expectant looks

Since it’s possible that an away toggle will someday make it into the game, I made a matching AFK bubble. This one is animated, so hopefully it would be coded to allow for an animation sheet.

Lastly, since Fate asked for icons for a visual cue when players are ignored, I made two alternate bubbles for this purpose:

You can download the emoticon set customdata to replace the default here, though since neither the Ignore patch nor the AFK toggle have been implemented yet, you won’t see those in-game.

16-bit Mod

Have you ever wanted to play an early Genesis RPG online? Well, you can approximate that feeling with this mod. Nearly every image has been pixelated to the lower resolution of the titles of those eras.

Download the customdata zip here.

Sunset Mod

This mod is designed to be easy on the eyes with lower contrasts and saturation, and hues that are warmer or cooler depending on their location. I’ve called it “sunset” because the world always looks prettiest at sunset, doesn’t it?

This mod will be extended over time to include facelifts for most sprites and icons in the game, and hopefully, tileset facelifts as well. Right now I am focusing on the ones that need it most sorely (read: look the ugliest but are used the most). You can see examples in the preview, but you really have to try it out to get the full effect.

Download it here. This zip is ready for customdata, so just place it in ~/.tmw/customdata (or C:\Documents and Settings\(your username)\.tmw\customdata for Windows XP users.)

Edit: The download link has been updated for a newer version.