Otherworld is back

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SekoETC
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Otherworld is back

Postby SekoETC » Tue Jun 06, 2023 7:20 pm

Some of you might remember Otherworld from 2017. I decided to make a new game in March 2023 and recycle the name. The new version is much simpler than the 2017 version.

Features:

- intimidation: scare other people's characters into doing your bidding. They get a chance to break intimidation once a day.
- make babies: the ability exists but so far, only one child has made it because the majority of people have abstinence turned on
- when your baby grows up into a child, they are mechanically intimidated by you and can be used for free labor until a player claims them
- small world (49 locations, 3 of which form a tutorial area)
- roads are also technically locations, and it's possible to see everybody else who's on the same road regardless of how far they are
- 32 gatherable resources
- 95 craftable items/refined resources
- it's really easy to make iron and steel
- ability to lead other people's characters
- eating and thirst system
- animal encounters
- 20 quests (later there will be more)
- special systems for cooking, baking, brewing beer and firing clay items (these might get rewritten eventually, as they're not very intuitive)
- nobody can die (because the lore is that everybody is already dead and this is a limbo)

The game is currently available at otherworld.fi

In some ways, this is like the old version of Cantr without sea travel and skills. While there symbolically is sea travel, it uses pre-existing routes instead of free roaming.

I'm stubborn in a way and wanted to include children even though I might be the only one who wants to play them. Currently there is one child in the game, with an inactive player, and people occasionally kick her ass because she's unarmed and doesn't have a shield.

Currently almost nobody is roleplaying, it's just in testing stage. 48 people have registered and there are about 70 characters, but many of them haven't cleared the tutorial. It's quite common for new players to log in once, then never come back.

Everybody is pretty much equal, because there are no skills and no levels. Your ability to defend yourself depends on your equipment, but even if you have good equipment, there's a chance that someone might intimidate you and confiscate your stuff.

I realize that for a lot of people, potentially losing all your stuff is a deal breaker. But it's pretty much the one thing that makes this differ from all the other games. It keeps you on your toes because nobody is 100% invincible.
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gudgeon
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby gudgeon » Sat Jun 10, 2023 12:06 pm

The page doesn't seem to load for me but this thread alone already makes me want to try it. I'll try to visit the site some hours later.
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SekoETC
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby SekoETC » Mon Jun 12, 2023 4:31 pm

gudgeon wrote:The page doesn't seem to load for me but this thread alone already makes me want to try it. I'll try to visit the site some hours later.


Did you get the "502 bad gateway"? I kept having it one day but I haven't seen it recently. I've heard other players have seen it too. I wonder if there's anything that can be done about that.
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gudgeon
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby gudgeon » Tue Jun 13, 2023 3:17 pm

It loads now, only very slowly, which is understandable as I'm in China and some oversea sites load very slowly, if at all. This also happened briefly to Cantr when I started playing in '20. Probably it's the ajax.googleapis.com that is partially blocked.

I've finished the tutorial. It's very neat. Those unpronounceable location names are very cool! :mrgreen: The feature of water consumption in travel is quite clever. Only that the floating stomach icon looks a bit weird, my personal opinion anyway. :wink:
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SekoETC
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby SekoETC » Wed Jun 14, 2023 11:10 am

I should probably host a copy of ajax on my own server if the link is blocked in some regions.

What do you mean that the stomach icon is floating? It should be next to the thirst icon. If it's somewhere else, can you take a screenshot of it?
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gudgeon
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby gudgeon » Thu Jun 15, 2023 8:09 am

The position is all right, but one doesn't usually see a stomach standing alone, that's why to me it looks floating out of the body. It's like a flying polyp. Anyway it's a very minor issue and I'm probably the only one seeing it like this. :)
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SekoETC
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby SekoETC » Sat Jun 17, 2023 5:11 pm

Someone else thought that it was weird that the stomach icon has a face, but personally while in early testing phase, I found it motivating to keep eating and drinking because the face gets so sad when it's hungry that even though it's not possible to die, I wanted to keep the stomach happy.

Not many people are active in the game, although it's possible I'm missing some activity because most actions do not generate an event, so the chat stays relatively quiet. A lot of people have been joining but only 46.5% are outside the tutorial zone, and even some of these characters were created before I made the tutorial, and I didn't want to move the most violent characters there because it might discourage new players if someone beat the stuffing out of their characters straight off the bat.
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SekoETC
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby SekoETC » Wed Jul 26, 2023 7:18 pm

Updates:

I turned off intimidation because the consensus was that it's OP and everyone hates it. I feel a little bit sad for having to let it go because it was supposed to keep people on their toes. Now the world is too safe. But what can you do?

The biggest recent update is that there is now a side menu instead of a navbar at the top and the short-lived bottom icons. In the past, the segments of the Location page had their access in the middle of the Location page, but some testers said they were unsure of where they currently were, so I moved them to the sidebar. Then I thought that it would be easier to have the links on the Location page anyway, so I added them closer to the top, as buttons. But I've never actually used those buttons after adding them, so go figure. I just got used to the side menu.

There are now lost souls that have a destination in mind. They can be lead by anybody. Once you take one to its destination, it gives you some coins and vanishes. There's a trader in Euss Plains who accepts coins in exchange for items and resources. You can also sell her stuff but she doesn't accept most raw resources. The trades happen automatically. While I have access to the trader, it doesn't require me to be online to complete a trade.

On a minor note, it's now possible to name children (the person who was holding it at the moment it grew up gets the right to rename it).

I've recently been working on domesticated animals, and one of the locations has a test cow and chicken that can be harvested for eggs/milk once every 11 hours. Eggs can be used to make pancakes. Milk can be used in cooking to substitute for water. The mechanics for harvesting wool and pork sausages have been coded, but since I haven't added wool yarn and derivatives yet, I'm holding back adding sheep and pigs to the live environment. Horses are not functional yet. They're going to require more coding, so it will likely be some time in August before horses get added. Also, the livestock merchant hasn't been implemented as I haven't yet decided how to implement it. That will also likely appear in August.

I had to take my computer in for repairs because the T and K keys were coming off and it was annoying me to no end. I hope they replace the entire keyboard. But anyway, due to that I can't do programming until I get my laptop back from the shop. Meanwhile I'm writing down observations and making a list of what needs to be fixed.
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Re: Otherworld is back

Postby SekoETC » Thu Nov 09, 2023 8:43 pm

I'm not sure if anybody is following this thread but the game continues to exist. I haven't posted updates here in a long while, so there have been many implementations since I last posted. There is a livestock merchant that allows buying animals. I recently added some menial jobs that allow earning coins. Today I added a couple of cots and the ability to make cheese, which can be used to make various pies when combined with flour. Yesterday I added a search box for the craft menu, which has been on the todo list since May. Locations have a top banner that varies based on location type. They're free photos from unsplash. There's also an avatar editor. If someone doesn't want to register but still wants to try out the avatar editor, it's currently available at otherworld.fi/test.php The url isn't permanent, so eventually it will be replaced by other content. Also, there is the option of trying the game out as a guest, so you can test most of the mechanics without having to register.

I decided to narrow the time period down to 1530 to 1800 AD because a lot of the players were assuming a modern or fantasy setup. There have been about 200 registrations but currently it's pretty dead (no pun intended).

There is a wraith that kidnaps the most inactive person in a location. What triggers it is a secret. So as long as someone else is more inactive, you should be safe. It's not the end of the world if you get taken by the wraith, but so far, no one has ever made it back. There's always a first.
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