So, I didn’t mean to spend the whole day bashing around with #RealmLike, but enough potential players told me they wanted in but didn’t want to have to mess around with downloading an external program that I moved making it web-accessible up a few notches on the priority table. I was due a free web domain from my host, so I snagged RealmLike.com and threw it up.

A couple of caveats: the “off-the-shelf” web interface ignores a lot of my in-game text formatting, so a lot of things look clunky and weird (and not in the deliberate style of the game). It also includes a lot of extraneous bits (like sound controls). The next iteration of the browser interface will not have those, but I’m running into a few tricky issues with building it. The [T] to Talk command does not function in the browser; you have to manually click the cursor into the chat box. I really want to fix that because it is my intention that this game be 100% playable with keyboard.

So the game is in early development, and the browser interface is in even earlier development. It is, however, playable. Upsides: making the game compatible with it also involved streamlining the training menus, and since I was redoing them anyway, I went ahead and added some things I’d wanted to. Now when you choose something, it gives you a description of what you’ve selected and asks for confirmation, and loops back to the main training menu if you still have selections to make.

Basically, every day the game gets a little more intuitive in response to player feedback.

Caveat: single player only so far. The dungeon dimensions and other parameters that will eventually be customizable from within the game are currently hard coded in; during this early phase of testing, I’d like to limit the amount of x-factors involved when I can’t see what’s happening, in order to keep the testing useful.

Downloading the game requires a BYOND account (still free!) and a $5 purchase of RealmLike through BYOND. It’s called a subscription because that’s what the platform uses as its model, but it’s lifetime. Think of it as similar to buying a game on an Early Access model. Your one-time purchase nets you any and all future updates, and you will get notifications through BYOND when a new version is uploaded.

As an added cherry, subscribers get more character slots on the public test server and may occasionally have access to a separate private test server where newer things are being tested out. Future character classes and races will likely see the light of day there first.

The stable build that’s up for download now includes all the innovations added as a result of today and yesterday’s testing, including:

• Longer period before scarring sets in from vicious wounds and burns.
• Consumable items to remove vicious wounds, burns, and scars (bandages, aloe salve, and miracle cream).
• Consumable items for navigating the dungeon.
• Some basic color signposting and random cosmetic dungeon features to help you navigate from a level entrance to a level exit.

There is also a vastly improved communication/social system, though it’s a bit superfluous in the offline only version of the game.

Well, a few intrepid souls have logged on and tried RealmLike out during the day. These folks will have made things a little easier for everyone who tries it out tonight, as through their feedback and my own observations I have identified a few troublesome areas that didn’t give me any problems but which weren’t exactly intuitive to outside eyes.

Stairs were previously labeled “v stairs v” and “^ stairs ^”, to indicate directions. Since the first stairs you encounter are pointing downward, this means the first thing you see is stairs surrounded by a letter v. Two of the three people I witnessed playing the game did the logical thing and pressed V to use the stairs. This is doubly confusing, as the Climb command (Z) is the only one whose key shortcut is not directly derived from its name. I’ve now relabeled the stairs as “Stairs [Up/Down] Press Z”.

The trainer in town is currently separate from the training menu you can bring up by pressing +. This is because the trainer can teach you new classes, but as this was the only intended function of the trainer when I implemented it, talking to one while you’re not ready to gain a level gave a message saying to come back when you were ready to train, even if you had other training to do. I’ve now adjusted the trainer to bring up the normal training interface when you’re not leveling. Long-term, I’ll merge the two interfaces and just give you the extra options when you access it through a trainer.

These two things created a potentially frustrating ping-pong experience for players, as you could spend precious new game energy time trying to figure out the arcane secrets of the stairs only to be told to finish your training, and then go talk to the trainer and be told you’re not ready to train. I’ve now ironed out those wrinkles.

I also made secret passages show up more distinctly; the subtle color shift when your perception is high enough to notice them wasn’t really very noticeable, and since there’s an internal “perception check” being made, a real-life one isn’t called for.

A couple of more vicious monsters had their levels labeled incorrectly so were spawning too frequently on the first level. This has been fixed.

Finally, I made a sort of “initiative roll”/delay when a monster moves adjacent to you so that it doesn’t immediately attack the same tick if its attack is cooled down. There’s no visible wind-up, but if you have auto defend on (it is on by default), your character may score the first strike, depending on their attack speed and reflexes.

So you all know I dabble in game design at an almost constant background level.

Computer. Tabletop. Whatever.

I do it most often when I’m overwhelmed by anxiety or can’t sleep in the middle of the night. It’s like meditating on an orderly world, and it somehow uses fewer processing cycles at its most intricate than creative writing or almost anything else does.

So I started a game design experiment the night before flying out to WorldCon, a bit over a month ago. And then I ignored it, only to pick it back up and poke at it during the last few of the long nights we were visiting the hospital. And then during the week after that or so that I was bombed out of my mind on cough syrup and allergy meds, I really threw myself into it.

And so now I have created RealmLike, a retro-dungeon crawler and minimally multiplayer online RPG. The name “RealmLike” derives from RLML, for “Rogue-Like/MUD-Like”, naming its two most immediate influences. It’s a functional game engine that is capable of generating a dungeon 250-some tiles across and 255 levels deep in a matter of seconds (though it’s currently set to a slightly more reasonable size, five levels deep), which can then be explored in classic dungeon-crawl style with some modern sensibilities (like skill trees, multiclass, and hotkeys for spells and abilities).

This kind of game is the sort of thing I’m always tinkering with. My projects usually stall out or fall apart because even working in a retro palette with low resolution pixel graphics, my needs fast outstrip my abilities. RealmLike gets around this by fully embracing the abstraction embodied by its oldest progenitors, though with a 21st century twist enabled by higher screen resolution:

21st century text-based graphics don’t have to stick with “d” for “dog” and “g” for goblin. We have enough space to spell things out.

Game has been coming along well, I’d like to bring it along further, but it could really use more hands and eyeballs on it to make sure everything in it works as well as I think it does. If you’re interested in checking it out, I am going to be leaving a server running.

This game is made with the BYOND programming suite and currently requires BYOND’s client program to connect to it and play. You can download and install the suite here (it’s free!), after which you will be able to join the game from its hub page.

Controls are entirely keyboard based: arrow keys to move, keyboard keys are single-letter commands such as U for Use or G for Get. There’s a help page that is displayed when you first login (F1 can bring it up again) that lists all of them. Character options are a bit limited right now; four character class and four fantasy races (if you automatically and immediately know what those four are, you are probably right in the target audience) and they are capped at level 5 for the non-spellcasters and 3 for the spellcasters. But there’s some variety within them, with a minimum of two skill sets/sub-classes for each and some additional customization options for Clerics.

The game is online, so if you join the server, you may theoretically be playing with other people. You can even form a party with ‘P’ and share experience (automatically) and other resources (voluntarily). Feel free to drag your friends along. There is no PvP right now, and while permadeath is an option, it’s currently turned off.

I plan on including a full level progression, more character classes, more environments (and more details for the existing one), magic items, crafting, all the wells and bhistles, save for graphics more sophisticated than stick-on labels. But one woman can’t playtest a game herself, particularly a multiplayer one. Think of this as open alpha testing, like a Steam early access game.

You can leave feedback on the game’s hub forum, or by using the GM Chat (hit F10). I’ll be “AFK” from the game most of the day but messages sent there are logged.