I posted a little update yesterday and since work is slightly less crazy today, I figured I'd follow up.
New Item Type
In yesterday's update I mentioned that we'd have a new item type. I'll go a little more into what item types are on Gaia. Each item has a type. For example, any equippable item is an equip type item - when you use these, you are taken to the equip screen. There are game type items, which are stackable items like fish, bugs, and inks - these are unusable from the inventory interface. Collectible Letters are their own type - when you use these, you are given a choice of items to turn the letter into (in a sense). There is a "photo" item type, which when you use it it shows you a graphic - like Gambino's autograph item, Liam's Letter, or the Celebrity Snare cards.
There are dozens of item types, each which different behavior which the inventory interface knows how to interact with. The item type I'm making behaves in a new way from that interface, and opens up a lot of potential for new items. I can't go into specifics, but it will allow items that have more interaction and possibly a "story" to go along with them -- depending on how the artists choose to use them.
If all goes well, I'll be creating another item type shortly afterward that will hopefully improve the way users buy outfits.
More on Halloween
So usually I like to write a bit more about events I work on, so this will be my opportunity to do so. Like X-Mas 2007's Orphan Event, Halloween 2008 was "The Event That Almost Wasn't". Which is to say, the entire company was strapped for resources, and since I was the only developer dedicated to the project, the Event Team was asked to downscale the event so that it could get delivered on time.
Of course, we're never quite satisfied with crappy events, so we decided to take last year's Halloween Event, fix almost everything that was wrong with it, and make it something really badass on our own time.
Stuff we fixed/upgraded
Normalized team structure - Last year we coded it so the backend only supported 2 teams: human and vampire. This year we made the backend code not care how many teams there were -- originally we were going to have 5 teams (I won't say what the 5th was!) but we cut it down to 4 for the sake of time. We could have just as easily added 100 teams without having to change the backend that powered the event.
No post generation on attack - Last year, every time you attacked it created a post. There was a fun aspect to this, but it made the forums nearly unusable for actual conversation. It also created a large amount of the load from the event, and cutting it out enabled us to speed up the event dramatically.
Optimizations for much shorter wait times - We were able to optimize it to the point where users could attack every 10 seconds without taking down the site! This was opposed to last year where they could act every 2 minutes, and the site slowed down some.
Stronger location concept - Last year to keep people from spamming the same post over and over, we made each post attackable only 3 times. Kind of a hack job. This year, we created a stronger "location" concept - you had to choose an area to enter, and when you were "in" there, it took an action to move to a different one. It became almost irrelevant when we dropped the wait time down to 10 seconds, but it made more sense than the previous solution. Dark elves exploited the ability to move quite a bit, though, but hiding in their home base, coming out to attack anonymously, then going back to their home base. I was REALLY happy to see that kind of strategic gameplay.
Game log - Last year you would die and not know why - this year, we kept a game log so you could see each attack and cure being made against you
New stats / Levelling concept - Every time you levelled up this year you earned "Skill Points" which could be spent towards increasing your max health, max energy, or the new "Attack Strength" and "Defense Strength". This allowed for players to better customize their event characters for different styles of play.
New ability types - We also added a wide variety of new ability types, including buffs and debuffs (that modify strength, defense, speed, attack listing) as well as multi-attacks, anonymous attacks, percentage-damage attacks, and more. We also gave over 17 abilities per team, and allowed you to target enemies, friends, and yourself (or any combination, depending on the ability)
In-Game Documentation - We were very adamant about putting in a ton of in-game documentation so players would never be confused about what to do next
It wasn't perfect, there were some issues, and the game HUD concept didn't work as well as I hoped it would - but all told it's the event I'm most proud of, both from a gameplay point of view, and from a technological point of view. In fact, the tech behind it was interesting enough that I ended up doing a presentation on it a week after the event launched to a bunch of other PHP programmers in the area!
Sponsorships
We're going to be improving the way we do sponsorships a LOT going forward. My hope is that by the end of it, we won't be announcing every single sponsorship we do, and especially not re-announcing the same sponsor over-and-over. We've got a great team with some new faces, and 2009 is going to be a lot about making stuff around here better rather than just bigger.
Answering Questions
I'm gonna take a second to respond to some comments/questions from yesterday's journal:
FF_RedXIII: "Sounds like this new item will be cash shop. looks like I won't be able to buy one."
We will debut the new item type with an item in the Cash Shop -- but we will be able to use them as a regular gold shop items, event items, sponsorship items, etc. It's just a new item type - not a specific item - so there isn't really a limitation there.
Spirrow: "New item types sounds good... I'm guessing it has to do with Item Norm, because that opened a whole door of possibilities, right? How about an ETA on when we can expect your work?"
It could have been done without Item Norm, but Item Norm made it much, much easier. I think we may see it prior to Thanksgiving, but I'm not 100% sure. What you'll actually be seeing is the vision of the items team that leverages the code I wrote. The item itself will not be inspired by me (though I made some pretty neat demos of it that I may reveal after the event).
Cube B: "A Conditional EI? Or something more...?"
Not exactly, but funny thing is, it could actually be used to make this a reality!
Spriteless Girl: "I predict it is an item you activate to play a mini game, and the mini game changes the form of the item, and you can feed it game items to get a bigger form, like a pet who will eat all the newsprint I have in my inventory. I don't actually think I'll get this, unless I put the idea in your head and you want to do it... which you probably have better things to do, anyways."
We've talked about doing something like this before, even during the development of this item type. It's a good idea!
Ungoliath: "I just hope that this new kind of item fits the Gaian spirit..."
Me too. The item type is kind of agnostic -- it is neither in or not in the Gaian spirit. That will really depend on how the artists choose to use it.
Chocobo Princess: "You also worked on zOMG, right? You could tell us about that if you wanted."
I'm credited in the game because I wrote the Quest System and made some enhancements/optimizations to it for the game. So yes, all the zOMG Quests are running on my quest system. Kaia actually did a TON of the upgrades for zOMG though, as one of the primary PHP backend devs on the project, so he really deserves much more credit than me.
Styk_Figure_BoB: "Why don't you just take a small day off?"
Oh man, you have no idea. After a month of working on the event, then spending the week after that running the event / preparing my presentation on the event, then getting dumped on this new item type project. I think I did manage to cram a Friday off in there somewhere, so I'm doing alright!
Edible Substance: "MEGA ULTRA CHICKEN. BillyWitchDoctor.com! Fleep, my fellow Earthbound fan! Have you played the fan translation of Mother 3 at all yet?"
You win this week's prize for getting my somewhat obscure reference. I just decided right now that I'm giving prizes for that. I may never do it again.
Yeah, I've started Mother 3 and made it a decent amount of the way through. It doesn't have the same magic for me that Earthbound did ... maybe because I'm older ... maybe because I feel like some of the added animation they put in actually distracts from the gameplay ... maybe because I've been forced to identify with and play with multiple main characters, rather than the same one from the get-go, like I did with Ness. Basically, I think it's a great game, but it doesn't inspire the same joy for me that Earthbound still does.
Cleocatra: "Is it food? Will we now have to exercise our avatars? IS IT VIAGRA?"
I could create an item that's all three -- but not this time.
Community Member
Buy me one hehe wink once they come out rofl