For several reasons I discontinued it (you can skip this if you really want to):
Excuses, excuses
For one the art was pretty inconsistent, and horrible. Not to mention, instead of scaling everything up by 2 to give it a pixelly feel I scaled it up via the map (which made it so that many users couldn't view the game properly, it would be fuzzy, or too big for their screens).
It litterally takes about 10 minutes to compile and run the old version of the game. Kind of annoying when you're bug hunting.
The game didn't have a real storyline, nor should it really, in my opinion. It's an MMORPG, it shouldn't have a linear storyline, I think there should be multiple places you can go, dungeons, weekly, monthly, yearly bosses etc...
The fact that I tried giving it a linear storyline without there even being a story wasn't very good. Not to mention most of the time players were able to just skip through what NPC's were saying and go kill, kill, kill so basically it was nothing more than grinding.
Which I can understand this makes up a large percentage of many RPG's but there was nothing to redeem you from grinding, grinding, grinding.
The programming was messy. I tried going back to the project but it took me at least 20-30 seconds to find out where some variables were, even though there was a file called "Mob - Variables.dm" mob vars were in every single file. which made it very annoying.
None of it was very modular, so removing something like on-screen text broke the whole game (even if i replaced them with input(), which they were supposed to be able to do)
But most of all:
I got bored
I got bored and for some reason, the internet got unusually interesting, as it always does when there's something better you could be doing with your time. I started hacking most of the games I had for fun, and I downloaded a ton of NES/SNES/oldschool games/etc... onto my wii and played them pretty much all day.
A brief foreword
I can't exactly say for sure that this project will get finished. But I will say this, and quote me if you plan on heckling me about finishing this later, which many people did:
Tinsdalia was 50% complete at least when I quit, I'm pretty certain that if it didn't take 10 minutes at a time to run and compile I could've finished it within a month (or at least an initial release of it).
In fact, it was completely playable, with very few bugs, most of them very minor. The only thing it didn't have was all of the planned content. But it had about 20 hours of gameplay, so yeah.
The Legacy of Tinsdalia
I plan on keeping most of the enemies, because lets face it, it just wouldn't be the same game without some of the enemies.
Almost every enemy provided a unique experience, and a different challenge.
I plan on keeping most of the classes except the subscriber classes will be changed, and the Ranger class (technically I'm not changing it, but I'm the only one who saw the latest version of Rangers in Tinsdalia, because I never let anyone test it before it broke the game).
The Chronicles of Tinsdal
I plan on using all new art, all new programming, and an all new map. So basically starting from scratch. I'm going to keep the music, because my brother did work pretty hard on it, and I like it.
Separate interfaces for different screen resolutions... Yeah, I had a lot of people unable to play the game because the interface was too big.
As I stated before non-linear gameplay will be in.
PvP may be possible in the future. As of yet, I have it so that the battleHandler has a proc called beginBattleWithAI(), so I guess I've already subconsciously told myself that there will be a beginPvPBattle().
And with that, possibly guilds.
In-game accounts, probably. I was going to do this with Tinsdalia, but never got around to it.
Conclusion
I would apologize for shutting down Tinsdalia, because to be honest, that choice didn't only affect me, it affected many. However, the only thing I can do is try to finish the project, because sorry didn't do it to them, I guess.
I guess first and foremost I can say that the game is now devoted to:
The testers who invested hours of time into testing the gameplay out.
My brother for making the music and sounds.
CalusCoRPS, because he bought my membership solely so I could publish a hub for the game (or something about the hub... I forgot... something with the site changes, whatever).
Everyone looking forward to the project. Lots of people were disappointed when I stopped working on Tinsdalia.
I guess it's time to stop acting like I'm subject to my own "lack of motivation" to get things done and do it.
Preview image!
It's not much so far, it's just me attacking a viper. Pretty much it's the same as the first preview image I released for Tinsdalia:
A Soldier attacking a Viper.
