ID:1460986
 
So, I feel like doing something else. For the time being, Manacept is in a finished state. I have no ideas left for it, no resources to keep adding new things, I'm running out of steam and no one plays it anyway.
But other than lacking some graphics and maybe bugs, it's a finished game. It doesn't need much else adding to it.

So it's time to start something new, but I can't decide what. And I have limited it to 3 things.



1. Remake War of Heroes again.

Pros:
It's probably the quickest and easiest of the 3 ideas I have to make and finish.
The old version got like a million players even though it was a horrible game.
It's insanely easy to monetize.
I've actually started it but opted to put more effort into Manacept. I even have a demo here http://files.byondhome.com/TheMagicMan/WoH%203.zip (it's incredibly rough however, WASD to move, 12345 to use abilities, left click to attack, right click to use the selected ability)

Cons:
Man I hate working on these kind of games.
Graphics are an issue. I have no patience for them and I opted to make this game look decent so every single thing has like 900 frames and drawing is such a pain.


2. An unnamed survival game.

Idea is simple. You get stuck in a world, you survive in it. Think Minecraft with less lego, and more surviving.

Pros:
I've always wanted to make something like this so my motivation to finish would be high.
It'd be ace if I finished it.

Cons:
From a technical stand point, it'd be the hardest of the 3 to make. By far, to the point BYOND may not be suitable to make it.
This is the least finished of all 3 ideas and would take the longest time to finish.
It's almost certainly going to need a very good (and costly) server to keep it running if it's ever finished.


3. A roguelike.

The idea was simple, it's a roguelike. The dungeon has 7 floors, each floor has a random crystal on it. Each crystal is a colour of the rainbow. While that crystal is on that floor, everything on that floor is that colour of the rainbow. If you take the crystal the floor becomes grey. The colour the floor is represents how things act on it (if a floor has dragons on if, and you put an orange crystal on the floor, they are fire dragons, a blue dragon makes them ice dragons and so on) Your objective is to get all 7 crystals, and arrange them in the proper colour of the rainbow.

Pros:
Easy to make and I've started on it.
I've always wanted to make a roguelike and am likely to finish it.
I'll have to do graphics myself, but they can look ugly because it's a roguelike.

Cons:
Designing it to be fun and challenging without being cheap will be a difficult task.
No one plays roguelikes anymore.


So, which one should I do?
Advertise Manacept?
In response to Kaiochao
If I knew how I would.
In response to The Magic Man
SilkWizard did it with NEStalgia. I'm sure you can do it too.
In response to Kaiochao
I'll say it again.

If I knew how I would.
have you act the more technical people for help with advertising.

WoH demo looks great! my votes on that or the survival game.

I think the best way to advertise a game is to make it into a standalone (contact us if you don't have credentials), make it available via a website, and use various social networks to promote it. You could send emails or tweets out to different gaming review sites etc. to get some press, and if the game is any good, you should get people advertising it on their own (you could also give in-game incentives for viral marketing).

From our POV, we'd love it if you integrated some form of payment (such as the new credit system) since that is the only way a standalone really benefits us, but since we have so few games using this system we're not going to hold you to it (just seeing a handful of successful off-site BYOND games would make me happy).
I actually downloaded one of them before and i didn't know how to use it and since i didn't know any programming for CSS i couldn't do anything with it. So i couldn't advertise my game to my website.
We should probably have a better tutorial (there is included documentation), but you can always appeal for help here. I know a few users are pretty familiar with the setup and have used it to create standalones for a few games.
In response to Tom
I've managed to wrangle up a workable standalone for Eternia, but that wasn't after hours, maybe even days of fiddling with it and pleading for help here on the forums ;)

This isn't to say the system is bad, it's just not very documented at all.
Also i can't seem to find it in the download section anymore.
In response to Royal Cookie
Royal Cookie wrote:
Also i can't seem to find it in the download section anymore.

Here you go.
In response to Doohl
Doohl wrote:
I've managed to wrangle up a workable standalone for Eternia, but that wasn't after hours, maybe even days of fiddling with it and pleading for help here on the forums ;)

This isn't to say the system is bad, it's just not very documented at all.

In the latest releases, we fixed a major problem where the default configuration wasn't working. It also now spits out errors. I think thse small changes would have saved you a lot of aggravation. My apologies! Do let us know if it is still confusing.
In response to Tom
The plan was to release the game on BYOND, scrounge up enough money for a stand alone game, then release it into the wild while keeping the subscribe option available (once it's in a stable release I'll be changing subscribe to the credit system).

The plan didn't go as well as I was expecting.


For now I'll look around the internet and see how others advertise their games. But I'm no marketing guru. In the meantime I'll work on something else.
I really like elementsthegame.com, to bad there is no way you couldn't make a personal website and let the game run through flash or something.