18.05.10 - YEAH!During the past month the application I've worked hard with the application. It is more or less completed and functional now. Almost everything is working. Inbox, friends, actions are finished and somewhat balanced. There is a fair amount of equipment, potions and food in the shop. Balancing of leveing is completed and pretty much of the help-section is functional. Stuff that needs to be finished is the following: Lots of achievements, history-page, profile page, settings, better fight-page, hall of fame, repair and sell-pages. After that Bending Arena is more or less 100% completed. Please test as much as you'd like!!
27.04.10 - Betatesting!The link to install the Facebook application is: http://apps.facebook.com/avatar-the-game/index.php21.04.10 - Soon thereOkey, the progress is still there. I spend a few hours every week to complete this game. A lot is finished, and only some small functions are left. The inbox and possibility to send messages to other users is finished, along with the friend-system. All the actions are finished, althought I have to ballance some of them again. Potions are working in fights, but I have some small stuff that is unfinished on that part. The shop is filled with different types of armor/equipment. Potions and food will soon be added, in huge amount. The stuff that is missing right now is 'Sell', 'Repair' and 'Ranks'. The rest is more or less finished. Stay tuned for more information in near future!
21.02.10 - Even more progressI've spent many hours for the past few weeks, or the last month, actually and the whole thing is coming together very nicely. The training-function is nicely balanced, which is about time. Moves are considered 100% finished. The shop and the inventory is partly finished. The work that needs to be done is the potion-shop and the potion-inventory. The rest works great. Chakras is soon finished, just some more work there and I think it's okey. The last action that is not finished at all is tasks. I guess I will try to fix this during this week, or something. Furthermore, the frontpage is now showing nice information and the new design is nice and slick. New pictures will come soon!
25.01.10 - More progressI've spent a few days making some really good progress in the application. I've made some progress here and there. Polished a few errors and fixed a couple of bugs. The real progress however is in the level and point-system. I dropped the old version of the training-function, which was version 2, in favor of version 3. In this version, which I think will be the final, I have completely dropped the whole idea of levels, accept main-level. I have introduced something called growth rate. This is hard to explain without going in details when it comes to the mathematic formulas. I can say that it has to do with balancing so you can't train just one level, say strength, without training equally the other levels.
I have also fixed an early version of the inventory v2 and the equipment behavior v2. The new shop is also looking great. I will take a few pictures of this later, but I like that I have done so far. What comes next is tasks and something new called 'Chakras'. More info about this soon. The overall progress is looking awesome right now!
11.01.10 - New picturesI promissed a few more pictures a few days ago. Time to show off the fighthistory page and how fights looks in this game.
The first picture is of the overview fighthistory-page. Here you can filter and select the stories you would like to view. It also provides the basic information.
In second picture is an example of a fighthistory. Much of this text is just for debugging and will not appear in the final game. Hope you like what you see
Later this week I will try to update and fix the training-function. It is, and has been, very broken for a while. I will also add some bad/good/excellent-randommizer in the function. In addition I will try to fix the bank-function, which is broken for some reason. If I have enough time I will try to begin coding the task-functions. But some stuff is undecided there, and I need to figure out a few things there first.
30.12.09 - Back on trackI worked alot yesterday and today with the application. Moves are working perfectly now, and the functionality is considered as finished. The same goes for Fighthistories. I've created a page where you can search thought old fights and duels. It's working really good now, and I am pleased with the final design. What I will do now is to begin at ranks and code "stuff-you-can-earn". At the same time I will take a look at achievements and training, both of them needs a makover. I have also planed several more achievements that are not implanted yet.
29.12.09 - ApologyHello there, people. First and foremost I must say SORRY. I've taken a long break from developing this application and I am sorry. What I can say now is that I am back, and I work pretty hard to get something ready before the summer. I hope I can get a playable version finished pretty soon, but there is so much that needs to be done, and so many things that only I know how to do correctly/fix that most people will struggle to understand how to simply play the game. I've used some hours now and tried to get an overview of stuff that I must fix, stuff that is somewhat broken and missing stuff. The list is pretty long, with I believe that everything is within the reach. I can really make this application. The first goal is to make a playable version, then fix the oblivious mistakes. Later I will try to optimize the speed and make the code behind the game simpler. When all this is done I will begin to work on the design of the application. As you can see, there is a lot to do, and the time is short. A half year is over in a snap and I have a lot stuff going on RL now.
My nearest plans is to fix the duels. For some reason the next duel in line does not start, and there is not possible to search for people you want to duel. When this is done I will once again take a look at moves. They are very broken, but seems to be working in fights. Later I will take a look at actions, which I never started on. I will try to update you as often as I can (when there is something to report, of course). So, just stay tuned. The project is not dead, but there's been a looooong break. For what reason? Ehm....I don't actually know.
12.10.09 - SlowlyyyyyyyyyyyyyHello everyone. Just a little update here. I have not had a lot time to work on the application, but I've fixed the duels, meaning that there are just a few more goals left untill I will make a new list. The training-function will be a mix between my plan 2.5 and 3.0, I tried some testing a few days ago, but version 3.0 was not like I had hoped, so I am moving some of the basic elements to the 2.0 version and calling it 2.5. Just minor stuff, but nice to notice. The fights are more balanced and better than ever before. In addition I have started to plan the new equipment-behavior, but I have a long way left. I plan to make the equipment 4 or 5 pieced. Body, legs, boots, head and arms, but this is not final, yet. Stay tuned a few more weeks and I'll make a good and up lighting update. I wrote this because there's been a while since I last reported anything
20.09.09 - Rise & ShineHi there! Time for a new update. I've almost completed all the stuff I mentioned the last time I wrote an update here. The duel-system is correctly working, but not perfect. You can send a request to a player, the player can accept it. If you are both free the duel will start right away, if not the duel will be placed in line. The scripts that fix this line is not optimized, yet, so I need to get rid of some bugs there. Betting is working, but the payment is not written yet, so you will not receive any money or get any messages if you win anything. I have not started to code the Tasks yet, but I plan to complete it the next week. In addition, I must also figure out the train-function. I stand between using my train-version 2 in a new and updated version, or recode the whole thing to train-version 3. They are pretty different and either way will include a lot coding, but I must settle on one of the two version. More info about that is coming soon.
Also, I have updated the bank-function. It works very good now, with a section to view your transaction-history and possibility to upgrade your bank-account. In addition to finishing the bank-system and the betting-system I want to code Tasks and beginning at the new training-version. Al ot to do, in other words. After that, the light in the tunnel is getting closer. The first version is not that far from going live. I aim towards Christmas or something like that.
12.09.09 - Some stuffHey again. Well, there's been a while since my last update, therefor I might forget some updates made from the last time to now, you see I've worked really hard the past weeks. First off is that all the counters have been redone and is now using ajax instead of Javascript and redirecting. As I describes in the post above; this game is realtime, meaning that if you decide to train that training will not be over when you click the button, instead you have to wait a amount of minutes before you can do anything else. Before you were always redirected to a new page when training, banking and fighting was finished, this is no longer neccesary. It took some time, and the game could function without it, but I decided to add it now, rather than later.
Also, I finally found out how to solve the duel-problem. The way this is working now is: You send a duelrequest to...say Aang. Before that duel starts Aang must accept. After that the duel will begin if none of you have any duels in progress and it is the first in line. If Aang first accepts another duel before your you have to wait till it's done. This means that you can duel while you train, fight, job and doing transactions. Wierd you say? Hmm, agreed, but it's the only good way to solve this problem.
Also, the bank-functions have been updated a bit, the betting is updated a bit, but it's still missing a bit. The idea I mentioned earlier will be added before anyone here can try this application. It will be called Tasks and will include stuff where you earn experience in more that one skill at the time, which is different from normal training. However, this will only give you a small boost, compared to normal training. There will also be a training-limit each day, but this is not decided, yet. More info around that will come later.
The next things that will be added is a duel-system that is working, making the betting work 100% and adding Tasks. I update here once that is finished! So long
01.09.09 - The new design (test)So, this is just a test, but the idea of chinise signs representing everything in this game is very old, and I would like to stick to it, if you like it (ofc). So what do you think?
29.08.09 - Some more picturesHello! Finally I got around and took a few more pictures. Kind of funny if you compare them with the first ones. The progress is pretty easy to spot!
(The
1st picture is showing the bank-system in realtime. You enter how much money you want to take in/out of the bank and it calculates the time for you. The
2nd is the updated frontpage. The old one is below in this post. The
3rd is a picture of the achievements-page. Still under heavy development. The
4th is the new "select an oponent"-page, with a profile-popup-window in the center. The
last picture is the betting-page in very early state. Hope you enjoy these pictures! More comming soon!)
17.08.09 - More, more, more!Hello again. The past 3 days have been very productive.
First, the moves are pretty much working 100% percent right now. Both the training and the chance at starting a special-move in a fight is working great. Now I just need to ballance the whole thing and find names, description and stories for all of them. I guess that is something that will happen a bit later along with all the other text and pictures. Second, I added a bonch of new achievements and I have began to work in making them all function. That is perhaps one of the biggest jobs in the whole application. Blah, seems to take forever, but I got a few of them up and running already. Bear with me here.
Also, the shop has been a bit redone. You can now buy multiple items at once, not just one and one like before. The "tab" where all the links to the different pages has been complety chanced and is now a tab/dropdownmenu. Alot work remains here, but I like the design alot. It is very Facebook-ish. I also had to move some links because the were too many of them side-by-side. I need to fix the order at a later point.
Now, the biggest thing. I found a problem in the application a looong time ago, but could not come up with a solution to fix it. The problem has to do with money. In the "old days", meaning a few days ago the user had all his/hers available at all times. In fight you have a chance at stealing/winning some of this gold, but how much will be fair and how much will destory the gameplay? This was a pain in the ass to find, therefore I came up with the idea of a bank. The bank had to be a place were you could have your money without beeing afraid of loosing them, but at the same time it had to be a downside with the bank, or else everyone would just move their money there as soon they could. Therefor is the trademark for this application "real-time-timers" introduced in the bank too. Say you have 1000 gold on you and you want to put all this in the bank. The traveltime from your "house" to the bank is always 5 minutes, but reduced with your speed, agility and strenght-points. The weight of the gold however makes the time longer. I decided to go with the norwegian wight of ~5gram for 0.1 gold, meaning that 1000 gold will give your character 5kg extra to carry. You can lift/carry as much as you like, but the time will be longer and longer the more gold you decide to move. This goes for money taken out of the bank too. In addidtion, you must upgrade your bank-account to hold over xxx gold (as an upper limit). This fee will be pretty much, and it is simply to make people not having all the money in the bank. I also planed to add a 10% fee on everything that is put into your bank-account, but I am not sure if will be too much, or not. I'll take a look at this later.
The final part today is that I began working a bit in the duels and they should not take as long as first feared. A week or so and they should be up and running. The only downside is that I begin at school again on wednesday. I wonder how much homework we will get this semester... Hmm. Anyways, I'll keep you updated. I edit the progress-section above every time I do some progress on the application. Be sure to take a look at it some time!
14.08.09 - Just a little note!I've done some small improvements since my last update, but I post this just to tell you that I just made a progress-overview in the 1st post. Please take a look at it. Easier for you to watch my current progress and what I have improved over the last few days. I will also inform you a bit more about the Bank-system that I came up with just a few hours ago. The idea is written down, now I just need to fix the whole thing
09.08.09 - Awsome!Hello people. The summer did not turn out excacly how it began. The bad weather came after a while and I was stuck inside. Therefor I have made a huuuge progress in the application since last time I wrote an update. Listen to this guys. First of all, I decided to redo the whole training-thing. Now you train for either 30minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours. When you are done training you gain points in the skill you just trained. The longer session you train, the more points you earn. When you are level 1 you need 10 points to gain a new level, then you are at level 2 and have 10 points you need 10*1,25 = 12,5 points, and so on. Because of this the whole fight had to be redone.
More...I have fixed the fight-function, it runs perfect right now. The function where you select who you want to fight has been redone too. I had a huge problem with time and timezones, but after several hours of testing (and failing), I finally found the problems and fixed them. It feels sooo good to have that problem out of the way.
I came up with an idea called Moves. Moves are special attacks that can start in a fight. You must train up moves from 0% learned to 100% in order to unlock the next move. The more a move is learned, the bigger chance you get to activate it.
The shop has been redone, the inventory is going to be redone pretty soon. I optimized the code with a new language I just learned; Ajax. The betting-function is comming together. It all looks pretty neet, but it does not work...yet.
And one last thing. I came up with the idea of Gaangs. I will add this in the game at a much later time. Gaangs will work like small clans, with a limit of 6-7-8 people. They can in bigger matches fight against other Gaangs and achive ranks and so on. As I said, this is far into the future and will not be done before 90% of the other stuff is fixed.
I would say the total progress of the game is near 60% right now. I plan to open a beta in late September, perhaps October. I will post some more pictures as soon as possible. I really want to show you how this game is looking right now. I am sooo pleased!
Older stories
