The Mana World Forums

meko wrote:

OK NOW I UNDERSTAND, tmw is not a game anymore, thx you to be clear on this point.

TMW is merely a game implementing the TMWA game engine. The main focus is currently on the engine. This means we don't change the game unless the engine requires it or there's a bug. Once we have a solid engine we can start working once again on TMW but we will likely drop TMW and work on the TNMW project instead so that we can burn everything and start over with fresh content.

From here.
Maybe it should be publicly stated that the current tmw devs don't actually plan to extend the current game anymore, some players still think that there're still some stuff going on.

This is very sad. If it's true, the devs aren't planning on developing, exctending, improving the game, but instead possibly even trashing it, won't it be throwing out all the years that all players invested into the game, and spitting into their face?
I tried to understant, despite of the many cool improvements (like the ferry system and the crypt), why do people keep leaving the game? Maybe it's just because the developers don't play the game themselves and don't see the little problems that actually spoil the game? For example, making the snake-pit a non-danger zone, or removing zombies, fallens and jacko from GY. Or not fixing pvp balance, when pvp is such an important part of a MMO game. if it's true, then a message should be shown to all players when logging in "YOU ARE PLAYING A DEAD GAME."

Sorry, developers, I might sound like I don't appreciate your work, but I do. Still, if all players are just a horde of beta testers for the game engine, and not citizens of a beautiful world that you created, then why are we wasting our time in it? Developers, do you hate Manaworld?

The current focus is on developing a better game engine. Once we have the new TMNW hopefully with it's bugs resolved we will have new items and quests which would be more easy to implement. The current code of TMWA is messy and doesn't have much documentation. So it's important to have a better engine and afterwards definitely new quests and weapons.

Preface: I'm the dev that added or approved the majority of the content changes in the past 3 years. (this includes ferry, crypt, towels, annual repeating holiday events, etc.)

Any game or world requires an engine to run. The better the engine the better the game. Currently TMWA still lacks a number of items to maintain the sanity of the few developers who are currently working on it and people who want to help. The main reason we want to focus on the engine part is due to the amount of effort to create new content and the limitation we currently have with creating content.

Whether old or new content it's always been limited by what TMWA could do and by how hard it was to learn. Prior TMW staff to us removed features or added them improperly or hastily or there now exists a better method.We plan to spend our time fixing these backend issues and returning features sought out by new players and the community. This is why TMWA now has a quest log & @pvp. This is why we are trying to reduce the number of custom content scripting languages required to learn and add native guild support back. Then we wish to work on more features one finds (and M+ supports) in a modern MMO.

We have tried all sorts of things in the past 5 years to keep from hemorrhaging players but the market has drastically changed. There are many free-to-play or cheap enough games better than ours on the market that run on all platforms. Search "2D MMORPG free to play" on steam or a app store to see that. These games are often Freemium and have money to pay for developers/artists to work on content. Whereas all the current services (Hosting, Advertising, Development, etc.) for TMW are funded out of the developers pockets or time.

As a developer I play and played the game. I have alts and mains of different levels. I've played TMW a number of times and had characters get purged throughout the various incarnations of TMW. TMW has been drastically changed a number of times and not just during my tenure here. There are plenty of Screen Shots to show it. Examples: Snake pit used to be the hatmaker cave, The path to Nivalis was via a npc near a cave by the woodland wedding, Illia is fairly new, and crypts area is new as well. As much as we all like the game, we all know there is much to be improved to be able to compete.

As bad as some parts of TMW are we are not going to throw TMW in the trash and call it a day. Too many of us and people we know spent too much time playing and developing TMW. We've been a doing deep salvage operation to polish the game as it was written over a course of years and years with many different people using many different coding styles. Applying different rules, restrictions and formatting to content, code and scripts. They also all followed various different incarnations of the overall game story that was supposed to be going on as some of the content is from entirely other servers like Auldsbel. Making TMW's content a patchwork of plot holes, contrary statements or seemingly out of place.

Whats TMNW? All plans to switch to manaserv cancelled?

That's a relief.

I agree, a new engine is really needed... Why not create a new server from scratch? Why not call it manaserv?

Regards,
Ablu

The thing is, when will the new "engine" be ready? If TMW stays too long (and developing an engine is long) without new content, it could suppose the death for TMW. The last months I was wondering why the lack of information about new content, and now it seems we won't have new content for a long, long time.

@matt & @ablu Manaserv/Manasource abandoned TMW. Had anyone migrated the server (The communities primary concern) we wouldn't be having this conversation.

TMWA doesn't need that much of a rewrite anymore. o11c did do a bunch of templating and code changes to make it far less full of kludge code. Mekolat and I are planning to merge magic script into TMW script. Magic v3 That completely duplicates what magic does. It also offers us a way to dynamically create a NPC on the fly on any map. This should help with content development tremendously as it provides a way to place the NPCs on a map without having to include the entire script into the map. We've got TMWA running on the recent gcc versions as well.

As for taking awhile to get new content created. Chances are yes, it will be a bit before new content shows up, but that is mainly because of the limited number of people currently actively working on the server is 4. 2 of which who are still learning. With the focus being on fixing and converting old script into the new styles to allow for quest log and to move where the NPC is easier. So while nothing major will make it's way into the game, expect numerous fixes to quests and possibly some changes to make them easier or duplicating things people already do (see Cindy Mule thread)

Also on that note, We are an Open Source project and the devs are very patient and good at teaching people TMW anyone with a good quest idea can go ahead and make one and submit it. As we never said we would stop content, just that with the limited resources at hand we've decided making the engine easier to work with would bring us more longer term gains.

Would you still accept content contributions from people who are not yet involved in development?

@crush yerp.

It appears to me that some people misunderstood this which is why some "drama" came up recently.

Of course TMW will work on new content, just not right *now*.
The Devs are working on the server code, which is more or less the basis on top of which content is created.
So why do the Devs work on it? Of course to be able to create nice content one day
Otherwise there would be no point in working on the server code, right?

So for example currently the whole magic system is being changed.
I think it's clear why: to be able to make nice spells.

So please don't think the Devs won't create new content, that's just not true

wushin wrote:@crush yerp.

+1

pateame wrote:

TNMW.jpg

In fact, you need ambitions to do something cool. Without ambitions you wouldn't get far and all results doomed to be crap.

Look, these guys definitely had ambitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czy0pXRRZcs

It also seems their "chairs" perform much better in the skies. That's probably explains why their faces far more happy than on your pic