Robin

UAC and Windows 8 file 'protection' makes modifying files in old languages a nightmare. .NET has a bunch of libraries which will allow us to better support these new technologies.

If I play the game I'll buy it myself. I liked his post so that it'd get a bit more attention so someone can collect their prize. It sounds interesting. I might give it a try sometime over the winter break.

How's the actual gameplay? I've had a few friends get insanely in to it, but I'm not sure if I have time to do daily grinding in an MMO now-a-days. I do like the idea of being able to level multiple classes on the same character, though. I was actually thinking of stealing that idea for Crystalshire to allow people to create balanced parties without having to cut out certain people due to their class. I might get Jessica to come level up a character with me. I think we'll have some time over Christmas to play something.

^ Make the auth server two-way and push some game data in to the forum profiles on login. Voted for #4 because that's the closest to this idea.

I wrote the game engine with Jacob over a period of a few months. At the time he was working full time, commuting for 2 hours each day whilst buying a house with his wife and two kids. I was caring for my disabled father, juggling work and college as well as commuting for 3 hours a day. I think everyone here is far too used to having 8 hours of free time a day and don't want to spend that doing anything other than jacking off to Naruto fanfic and playing BYOND games. x)

The networking system has been open-source for close to 5 years now. You see packet spoofing on fully obfuscated code as far back as the original Runescape. I think you'll be surprised just how clever people can get with reverse engineering. Of course, if people clever enough to do this kind of thing actually care about a title like Nin is something else entirely.

I don't think you read my post properly. Values like HP are completely secure on the server. You cannot change them at all. Please don't offer suggestions if you're not sure how the code works.

There will always be problems, but they aren't really 'cheats/hacks'. Bots will happen. People will write programs to play the game for them. They'll hack the graphics engine so they can see behind trees. They'll spoof packets to try and break our networking. In the simplest terms, the engine should be able to cope with things like this. It's up to the programmers to write the systems properly and keep all the sensitive stuff server-side, out of reach of the naughty people. I'm not sure how things have changed since I retired, but the game engine I released was pretty damn solid when it came to this, and we've had 100s of successful games released on the platform. When it comes to things like people removing the tree graphics, it's generally up to the content developers to balance gameplay so these things don't give a huge advantage. Being invisible probably isn't going to be a problem without breaking an ingame event or something, in which case all we can really promise is a very community-driven development where we'll actively stamp out system abuse as and when we find it.

Crunch time is the development period that comes just before a large release, so no it's not. xD

Yeah, it's called having a game engine programmed by someone who isn't an idiot. Big titles like Maple Story can be easily broken because their developers were on a budget with a deadline. They have limited time and money to do a job some of them won't even have the training to do. I developed the client to be a dumb terminal. You send commands to the server and the server verifies everything and handles all data manipulation before sending off updated information to everyone else. The "anti-cheat" system you refer to is only required in games which use things like lag compensation and loosely linked server/client relationships. VAC is a good example. It'll be as solid as titles like Runescape. You can use a memory editor to modify stuff in the client, but it's just a remote view for a centralised, inaccessible controller. Having your health set to 10,000 on the client means nothing if the server knows you only have 150.

"Rocks have chakra" - Rory 2013

I got in to programming and game development so I could share the stories that I created. Before I pursued a career in software design I actually had a very strong background in English and creative writing in general. I'll personally be going over every line of content added by the new developers. As the development tools are simple input/output I'll probably be getting them to write any dialogue in a program like Microsoft Word set with a International (British) dictionary. We take content very seriously, and I've got an eye for detail which borders on obsessive. Just ask Rory about his spelling or pixel alignment. xD If we get any problems with possessives, Oxford commas or semi-colons etc. then I'll set up a list of writing standards on the development board.

Oh yeah. I think I've sung his praises a lot as well. Abhi was definitely a beneficial pickup, though. It's been a long time since I've worked with anyone outside of our group of You, Me, Seb and Jacob. It's nice to have people who are more interested in business logic, especially with how little time I have at the moment.

Really just wanting to point out to everyone how lucky they are to have someone like Abhi on the team. I'm not sure how many of you know about the history of Nin's game engine, but I actually ran it as an open-source project between 2008 and 2011. Only a handful of people ever surpassed the templates set out by Rory, Jacob and I, but Abhi is turning out to be one of the most proficient programmers to come out of that community. Nin Online has a pretty bright future with such a talented group of developers working together on it. I talked to Abhi about removing those. It's separate from the login system, but still something we're wanting to remove. It's a pretty dirty hang-over from the early Origins days of '07/'08 and should never have been brought over in to a serious project. It was my fault for not stepping in earlier and implementing all of the improvements made to the engine for the 2011 release of Crystalshire.

Nin Online: Creepy Stalker Simulator 2013.

Let's be honest here, Origins is waaay more powerful than BYOND. That's not an insult, that's not arrogant pride, it's fact. Comparing a custom-built, performance conscious, open-source application to a user-friendly scripting engine is like comparing apples and oranges. Each one serves a different purpose. BYOND's tech is there to make it as easy as possible for people new to computers to make any kind of game. Origins was developed precisely because applications like that are inherently wasteful and slow. If you look in the code, especially in terms of the networking system, you'll see that anything we do will be miles ahead of anything from the competition. Is it perfect? God no. In fact compared to our newest stuff it's pretty damn shoddy. However the people who've worked on it have put everything they had in to it and made something used by hundreds of not thousands of people around the world. Both systems serve their own purpose and both have their advantages and disadvantages. Starting an argument over which one is 'better' is subjective and just plain childish.

I feel like I should put a lock on that album.

Regarding the login screen you have to understand that technically good design is something which looks and functions well for the end-user, and is also easy to maintain and expand for the developers. Early on in our careers, Rory's designs looked nice, but were a bitch to program in. His new stuff is waay better, and I feel the new image also matches the clean, cartoony look of the spritework as well.

I've been framed. I'm innocent.

I removed the images from your post. Please don't quote huge posts like that, thanks.

Back then no one in our development community had a graphics engine like ours. I was showing off the shadows. x)