Harmonia Classic v0.1rc2 is now available for download! :D

Here's the link!

• Harmonia Classic - Play online via Java, or download! (Windows only right now)

This link will connect you online via the Java Telnet Application. Honestly, though, it's not the best option for compatibility, so if I were you, I would download PuTTY and connect manually to the address listed below the applet. If you'd like to play the game single player, you might prefer downloading it and running your own server.

This build is far from finished, hence the v0.1, so consider this the first of many work-in-progress public builds before the "finished" version :) However, now that this is finally out publicly, we're anxious to get back to working on "real" Harmonia, so don't expect much Harmonia Classic news for a while!

Anybody who has the interest is welcome to play around with the script files located in the "scripts" folder. You are of course welcome to host your own server, as well - if you do, please send me a link ;)

Enjoy! :D
-- Simon (Synival) - simon@baroque-creations.com

That's a wrap! ...enough. Party of five fighting against some slimes

As a tiny game development studio - essentially two people - it's always a relief when we can mark something as *DONE* and cross it off our gargantuan TO-DO list. If I were to accumulate a list of daily tasks off the top of my head, it would be: coding, play-testing, designing artwork, blogging, website development, social media stuff (Twitter, Facebook, etc), network administration, and probably a lot more I'm forgetting. This is a massive workload, so having Harmonia Classic off our minds will be a huge relief.

The problem with Harmonia Classic is that it's a project that can never truly be completed. By design, it needs to be regularly maintained and actively staffed. It needs an overwhelming amount of content, much more than we can produce in addition to our current game development routine. It needs a forum, with moderators, and community managers. So we're more than comfortable with sending it out into the wild for other people to play around with :)

Where can I play it?

We've got some exciting news on the "Downloads" and "When can I play this %*#@(&$ game" front which we're very happy to announce :) First up is what the user-end experience will be regarding the Server/Client stuff. There's some small news about platforms and compatibility, and finally, some BIG news regarding the old MUD version of Harmonia. So here we go:

Playin' the Game, Runnin' a Server

Harmonia will NOT be an "always online" game. Although originally conceived as a light-weight MMO (or just MO?), the nonsense with Diablo 3 and Sim City's "always online" policy has convinced us to add a single player, offline mode. Harmonia will come bundled with both the client AND the server. In single player mode, the server will run quietly in the background, similar to Quake, Minecraft, and... well, everything else :P

Just to be clear, Harmonia is still a multiplayer game at heart, and there are no plans to create an extensive single-player only campaign. Players will still be able to host their own online servers, register them with our master server list so other players can find them online, and tinker around with the game's scripts however they see fit. We hope that opening up the game's assets and scripts will encourage modding, which should make playing on 3rd-party servers a very worthwhile experience.

Multiple Platforms / Compatibility

I finally have a new laptop that isn't falling apart, which gives me a 64-bit Windows 8 environment on which to test, as well as a shiny new NVidia card to play around with. After a lot of hackery, the Windows build is now very stable, and graphics card compatibility is on the rise :) The Linux build is still working great in both 32- and 64-bit environments. The only other card I've personally tested so far is my ancient Intel Integrated Graphics card, which still runs surprisingly well. Hopefully we can get some more brands tested sooner rather than later.

Harmonia Classic

Big news - We're splitting the current form of Harmonia away from its MUD origins, which will soon be available for download as "Harmonia Classic". Ideally, this game will be maintained alongside the latest Harmonia server, as they share the same source code, but the technical details haven't been sorted out yet. Harmonia Classic will be free to download, its many scripts will be free to edit, and it will very likely be open-source. We're looking forward to giving old MUD hackers the opportunity to play around with the engine, make a zone or two, and give us feedback on the shortcomings of our scripting environment. We're also hoping we'll see some pretty cool mods/upgrades come out of this :) And, of course, we want people to play ours games while we continue work on Harmonia!

Harmonia Classic will not have many of the features present in the Harmonia server - most significantly, you won't be able to use the client. This will be a text-based only game and will be Telnet- or MUD Client-only for quite a while. However, because Harmonia Classic and the Harmonia server share so much code, their scripts should be compatible, and updates should apply to both if we can pull this off the way we want to.

When can I get it?

We're already experimenting with running the MUD on our soon-to-be-released company website, and the code is almost organized enough to be split into separate branches. Licensing is an issue if we want it GPL'ed, so that's something we'll need to look over very, very carefully. There could also be some potential downsides to open-sourcing a lot of our server code, which we really need to consider before diving in. My gut feeling says this will take several weeks, not months, but I won't many any promises just yet ;)

That's it for now. Time for a break! :D

Focus this week has been on developing the official company website, and filling in the blanks for client<->server functionality. The website won't be done until it's done, but it's coming along nicely! Regarding the game, here's progress for the week:

Server / Client Features Controlling a Magician and Warrior at the same time.

You can play with multiple characters at a time now! For the time being, you can switch between players manually using the 'character' command. I have some sketches at home for a new UI component that shows all your characters so you can click through them, or select them by left-clicking on the map.

The server now sends over ALL the entity/object data to the client, which includes Max HP/MP, current condition, terrain costs, and a million other things. The irrelevant stuff has yet to be filtered out (we don't need Max MP for items), but it's still relatively cheap on bandwidth. Now that the client has this info, it can show us loads of useful information, which means another round of UI improvements should be coming up.

Key Bindings

Now that key bindings work, we need a proper key configuration window. Until that's ready, keys are stored in a "keys.txt" file which looks like this:

f fly ` character space use_map enter attack 1 skill_1 2 skill_2 3 skill_3 4 skill_4 ...etc

Creating the key configuration window implies a big change to the way options are stored, so this will be a ways off ;) There's plenty of more exciting work to do right now.

More User-Interface Tools

This game won't be only keyboard-driven. Now that the client can send every command to the server, it's time to make a few windows and tools to make those commands more intuitive and mouse-driven.

For example, to attack a target, right now you have to enter the command 'attack <target_hotkey>' manually. Eventually, you'll have these options available:

1. Right-click and hold on a target and release over the 'attack' icon. This is a standard 'move to our target and attack' command.
2. Hit 'a' and left-click the target. This will also move to the target and attack.
3. Right-click and hold on a map location, release over the 'attack' icon, then left-click your target. This will make your character hold position at the location and attack the target whenever possible.

The other big UI project will be for a fancy inventory screen to handle the 'use', 'give', 'equip', 'drop', 'remove', and 'put' commands. And then... well, everything else :( That will take a while.

For several months now, May 1st has been circled in my mental calendar as the day to crawl out of my e-cave and resume this blog. A severe drought of Internet connectivity at home has thrown off that schedule, but that's resolved now! Well, sort of - it's basically being held together by duct tape and a lot of hope.

Regardless, there's a lot of new stuff to talk about, so here's what comes to mind right now:

Programming Stuff

It's a pretty exciting phase of development right now. For a long time, work has been client-side only - the UI, graphics engine upgrades, camera stuff, etc. A lot of that is done now, so the work has shifted back to the server, which is progressing a lot quicker than expected :) Most of the infrastructure is in place, which means we can start focusing on cool stuff like fancy combat effects, more music, more sprites, nice-looking inventory menus... Real game stuff!

Here's the latest video, showing some basic connectivity with the server. We've improved things quite a lot since this video, which will be posted here as soon as it's nice and polished :)

We've also been playing around with a lot of gameplay concepts. Here's an RTS-style combat interface:

Important Stuff

We're starting a lot of website development and drafting some long-term plans and budgets for Harmonia. I can't say much right now, but we have some exciting plans for late Summer and early Fall.

That's it for now. More later! :)

-- Synival