Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

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a_bertrand
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Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

Post by a_bertrand »

Don't think we even slowed down with the development because it's by far not true. However what I can report you is that we have what could be called a release candidate. All the bugs I do remember about have been fixed, and all the must have features have been implemented.

So what do we will work on now? We will continue to work on advertise our service as we started since a month or so, but that may not interest you much right? So what about next features you may ask and this is why I thought I would make a post:

I will change the session handling such that in the event the server goes down the engine will try to save the state on your PC as local storage and recover from there next time you log in. Also, the session should automatically be re-created such that you don't end up on the home page anymore after a server restart or for some internet cut. This should improve greatly the reliability of the service and should prevent most if not all data lost. This is also important as if you work many hours without saving (who is the monkey not saving every now and then?) it would be more than frustrating to lose all your work. The local storage will therefore be used as "temporary" save.

Another feature which I'm working on which in my opinion will help new comers as well as maybe more advanced users is an integrated pixel painter. This should let you edit existing images / sprites as well as paint brand new one. Therefore for those not having all the tools to do pixel editing or for those which need a quick sprite fix, we should have a solution. Hopefully our tool will at some point offer tools specialized for pixel editing which could actually lead you to use it as primary tool for the image editing work of your game but as I always work with iterations, clearly the first version will not offer all what we have in mind. One of the issue with such tool is what if you loose internet connection while painting? Well as we will solve the session handling we should cover the problem with pixel painting as well.

Another feature we plan to create in a relatively short term is the game wiki which let the owner add player documentation. It seems something game owner could greatly profit on, for example to explain the game rules, give a background story, have lists of monsters or whatever they want to share. We don't have a plan yet how to charge it, if it should be included or not but even in the event we will charge something I doubt we will be really expensive. Could be that we simply add your content as general content and you will just have to pay for the storage size.

Remains another point which I was wondering. What if you don't have internet and want to work on your game? Well would be cool to have like an offline mode such that you can edit maps, world rules, add items, create art and more even if your are on a laptop in train would be cool to have a way to solve that. Therefore depending on the interest we could try to offer either a standalone version of the editor or an offline mode of the maker such that you can still work on your game on the go. As always please share your thoughts and let us know what you think.

As you see we are still pretty much going at full steam and we shall continue as the project certainly gets quite some interest from many different users. I shall take finally the opportunity to remember you that if you like our project and want to profit from our special pre-release price, head to our site, login and open https://www.dotworldmaker.com/prices.html you will see there a "buy license" button which unlocks all the advanced features for the small price of 24$. Any sale will yet push us more and show us in a clear way that our project is appreciated, for that we thank you in advance.
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KyleMassacre
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Re: Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

Post by KyleMassacre »

Great work as always. A stand alone version would be cool though too but would it only work on Win? You know me, a hardcore OS X user haha. Or maybe even a Chrome App for it may work.
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a_bertrand
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Re: Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

Post by a_bertrand »

I was initially thinking about a chrome app. Creating a win / osx / linux "standalone" is not impossible using something like: https://nwjs.io/

The issue would be the sync with the server which needs to be checked how to do it. BTW sorry Kyle, but would that mean you would use this engine if I do an OS X version? OS X is a tough issue as the market share for it is really small (around 4-6%) plus I would guess I need OS X to build for it which somewhat limit my possibilities as I don't really want to purchase a Mac. Could try with a VM and hacking the OS, but again not something I really want to do.
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hallsofvallhalla
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Re: Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

Post by hallsofvallhalla »

Awesome update! I would think the amount of people that don't have internet these days is so small that it won't matter. Why would anyone build a MORPG and not have access to the internet? I get that there are times we might not like when I am flying but in those cases I work on story or graphics. I would not spend a ton of time on the offline version in my opinion.
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a_bertrand
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Re: Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

Post by a_bertrand »

Well imagine being able to take with your your game to be able to further work on it during holidays or transport? Like being able to draw new art, or edit the maps? Maybe it doesn't make much sense but I just thought it could be cool.
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hallsofvallhalla
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Re: Dot World Maker status and future - Nov 2016

Post by hallsofvallhalla »

Nope it makes total sense. I have been there before with some online game engines where I had a long flight or long drive and could not get online to work on it. It especially sucks when you are all hyped up to work on it and cant.
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