I actually found the source code to this game. Evidently I sent the source code to Recon (creator of the Pokemon X web comic) a while back because he wanted to redo a lot of the tiles which were objectively bad even for back then. (All of the sprite work was objectively bad.)
I was cleaning out my email and found it in my sent folder. I don't plan on returning or resuming work on it anytime soon because there are far better engines out there and I'm straying away from 2D and working with 3D.
Maybe a unreal engine remake is in IALO's future? Who knows. I thought it was neat to look at my old unorganized code and bad game design and see how much I grew over the years. IALO was fun but there was a lot wrong with it. Balancing was crap, cars were OP, the economy was trash, and the AI was poop. I could do better.
Anywho -
If I ever make another game I'll drop information on it in this thread.
damn, havn't heard Recon Dye in many moons, wonder if he is still around...
but yea, you do have a point.. IALO was a bit of a janky mess, an incredibly fun and innovative mess, but a mess none the less.
I believe much of the jank came from the Zeta elements? such as having to do a finishing move when you knock down an enemy in order for them to die.
Hopefully I am still around to witness the eventual Unreal remake of IALO, because it truly was an innovative game with features that still aren't included in open world games to this day.
Good luck, and please keep the source safe, as this is a piece of byond history that belongs in an archive or museum of sorts.
Believe it or not, IALO was not a zeta rip. The younger me had zero idea how to make a proper combat system so I used references from Zeta. It may have had zeta's combat system but it was all coded from scratch. My "child brain" at the time just assumed that was the combat standard for BYOND so I just rolled with it.
Recon and I are friends on facebook so he's still around. It's not really my place to say what he's up to but I can say that he's living the good life.
As for me I'm teaming up with a small dev team. I don't know what we're making yet but I've been pitching a sequel or remake for IALO on Unreal. They weren't showing all that much interest in it because they want to do something original. IALO was pretty niche but I think it'd do pretty well if done correctly - especially knowing what I know now.
It's too early to say what we're going to do but I'll keep this thread posted.