Rage of Mages 2 in 2023: the adventures of smg2

Allods 2 (Rage of Mages 2) continues to live on the internet for over 24 years. Come play on my server of this wonderful Russian MMORPG. Here’s a little feedback from a new player.

Author of the tale: smg2

Ugh, describe my impressions in Allods 2 played as an amateur, starting with the first, occasionally racing through the hamachi with a friend. What can I say?

1. hardcore in today’s time. – I love mages, not a second can you relax – the absence of equipment – all only from mobs to drink – died – no one to revive you, start over – full drop in Allods.. I am not that I was not surprised; I would be surprised if it was not there.

2. What seemed inconvenient? Continue reading

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The new MMORPG by igroglaz

My new project is a text-based idle sandbox MMORPG. A couple of dates to start with, just so I don’t forget.

January 5, 2023 – started learning Go language. Before that, I spent a long time studying cs50 and a couple of years coding Tangaria in C.

February 15 – first commit to a new project.

March 11 (almost a month later): I implemented the base – figured out http, sessions, cookies, made alpha  idle gameplay.

Now, after another month (today April 13) – made two testing gameplay models and the map… at the map there are several layers and quite a lot of work. Plus a lot of things I redo, optimize. I constantly have to rename variables, because I don’t fully understand the final product and do everything “on the fly”. As a result code becomes a mess and after implementing another feature I have to straighten it out by string.

Now I am actually finishing the map. It’s ready (already rendered in UI, you can walk around and stuff), but I think to make it more complicated and do it all “straight from scratch”. I hope I do not regret it.

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Hotseat-text-RPG – text-based RPG for two

While I was learning Go, I made a little console game – two players on one keyboard:

https://github.com/igroglaz/Hotseat-text-RPG

Hotseat-text-RPG is a local text-based multiplayer role-playing game for two players. Your goal is to defeat the Dragon.

The game is raw, for now I don’t have time to test it.. but it’s playable… good stuff to play with a wife, for example =) Despite the minimalism, there are some interesting ideas. In fact, this is kinda a text-based “board game” 🙂 Just balance it a bit and you can publish it in a “paper” form.

Now I’ll finally start doing my multiplayer game in the browser. Technology chosen, a little mastered, it’s time to move forward.

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Allods 2 in 2023: The Adventures of Wayngor

Allods 2 continues to live on the internet for over 24 years. Come play on my server of this wonderful Russian MMORPG. Here’s a little feedback from a new player.

Author of the tale: Wayngor (Wayne)

A little feedback from the newbie after 6 hours of sweaty gameplay. First island – about 2-3 hours, mainly delving into the mechanics, kicking squirrels, collecting the first bronze armor set, battling with level boss – necromancer. I’ve met a new friend, also newbie and we decided that the necromancer should rest in peace.. after the first fail and run for bags.. happened the second run. and the realization that without supplies we can’t do nothing, so we bought healing scrolls and finally defeated the culprit. So liked that after the server restart, we did this trick with his ears for the second time, great. Cooperative in this game makes life of inept alloder much easier.

The second island – the map called Muddle or Middle (sorry I don’t remember), we started in the middle of hell, every millimeter of the map is fighting, bats squeal on the skeletons, orcs fighting with people, and the druids generally with everyone who runs nearby. Real bacchanalia! We had to remember who is running around, take the first quests.. respawn of the mobs is very fast! You can’t run away from the center because then it will be very hard to recover items if you die. We almost managed not lose anything, until we met with the necromancer level 2.. Finally we managed to get some items and experience and moved to another map (again, forgot the name) starting in the village where is.. like a guard and even a magician, I think. Well, at least there we will be safe..

WHHAM! 5 seconds later came a bunch of squirrels and almost completely cleared the village – our damned magician threw fireballs which hurt even his own allies… We barely managed to chase the squirrels, but they promised to return. In general, summarizing.. we had a lot of adventures on our backside – at each bush there sits toothy creature and does not give boredom. Interesting experience for 6 hours, it was very interesting. Thanks to everyone who told me what to do.

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[Announce] Roglik – a minimalistic roguelike

Coming… https://github.com/igroglaz/roglik 

	                      *
o-=\\   .--,   ;===\\   |     #   ]  //
|__|    |  |   $        |     #   ],//
| \R    O  |   G  __    L     i   K \\
0  \\   i__i   \\___/   ####  #   ]  \\

I’ve recorded guides to the C language on how to create a roguelike at channels:
https://youtube.com/itPhD (EN)
https://youtube.com/WebPomosh (RU)

In the end it become a minimalistic roguelike game template. It’s a shame to leave it forgotten, so I decided to make this roguelike a bit more playable. Now I’m finishing it up 🙂

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Rage of Mages 2: season 4 (winter 2021 – august 2022)

https://rom2.ru/en/season-4/ – results of 4th season

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Tangaria news (multiplayer roguelike)

I continue to finish all sorts of cool things in Tangaria. We have a lot of updates: the game now has a “permanent” (not disappearing after death) RPG-progress – for reaching levels and defeating bosses you get Account Points, which give nice bonuses – the ability to build larger houses, additional space in the warehouse, etc.

Fresh patchnotes arrived just today (in English).

New classes are also introduced. Recently completed the druid, here is a stream with his demonstration (it’s in Russian language, but still might be interesting):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D-HvqoeT6k

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Choosing an emulator for the Ultima Online server

If you want to run your shard in an UO (Ultima Online), you first need to choose what its server will be running on. Since ancient times, we have taken the Sphere and POL, but now there are other, often even more popular options.

Sphere github.com/SphereServer – written in C language. This beauty is still relevant and actively developing. In 2016, new fork “SphereServer X” appeared.

POL github.com/polserver – C++. POL has a large number of configs and uses its own scripting language (eScript). My favorite free shard Celestial Sphere (it’s gone sadly) was created on POL.

ServUO github.com/ServUO – C#. The ServUO supports the latest version of the protocol. It has quite a lot of new content and it is the most popular emulator nowadays.

RunUO github.com/runuo – C#. RunUO supports ML content and the fresh protocol of the official UO client. Plenty of cool servers powered by it.

UOX3 github.com/UOX3DevTeam – C/C++. UOX3 feature is a wide cross-platform possibilities.

ModernUO github.com/modernuo/ModernUO – C#. Based at RunUO. While RunUO based at .NET 1.1, ModernUO uses .NET Core 3.1.4, got IPv6 support, automatic generic serialization and other performance advantages.

Please write in the comments what other servers you know and what shards you played on 🙂

Posted in GameDev | Tagged | 6 Comments

Lord of the Rings Online 2022

One of the best MMORPGs – LotRO – got 15 years anniversary… Download the game, log in before May 11 and get some gifts.. in honor of the anniversary, the game was freed from p2w quests limitation, making most of the proprietary zones free. The game is good, especially if you like Tolkien.

Posted in MMO-news | Tagged | 2 Comments

Rage of Mages 2 @ Unity: demo

ZZYZX made demo release of RoM2 in Unity game engine. How to run:

  1. Download archive:
    https://github.com/jewalky/UnityAllods/releases/download/alpha/UnityAllods-Win32-alpha.zip
  2. Unpack it to ROM2 game folder (only original CD or GOG version; client from our server won’t work!). If you fail to find it – check this minimum package, it will do (password: allods2)
  3. Run Allods.exe
  4. Choose “Window” mode and click “Play!”
  5. You will see game’s window. Press shift+~, to open console and type there: map kids3; then close console with shift+~
  6. That’s it! Now you can play and test!

Basic multiplayer is already supported! For this, you need to open two instances of the game. In the first one, run two console commands in succession: host then map <map name>. In the second one, open the console and type connect localhost. Note: the host instance does not have the player. Up to 64 clients are supported currently!

Don’t forget to give star to the project https://github.com/jewalky/UnityAllods and welcome to RoM2 discord to say “hi!” or help with development 😉

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Tangaria’s oldschool music pack (unofficial)

Dear Tangarians, you are welcome to download Tangaria’s unofficial musicpack with best fantazy tunes from my favorite games – HoMM2-3, Diablo, Allods 2, Brаvada, M&M4-8 and UO. You may hear it at my streams 😉

Installation:

1) Download .7zip archive: https://mediafire.com/file/kucaov7qfv4dcov/
2) Unpack to Tangaria/lib/music
Archive password – name of roguelike game starting with a small letter

Please leave your suggestions, impressions, ideas :) If you would hear any clipping, distortion or any other glitch/bug – please report it discord!

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Throrn in Dead Mines (WoW adventure story)

I’ve found on my hard-drive stories about my father’s adventures in WoW. Most of them in Russian (to check them – click on the RU flag in menu), but also there is this one in English:

This story happened 2008, 6-th of February (dates are calculated according to human’s calendar)

Trorn was 12-th level (!), the group consisted of 4 (!) members and team mates were mostly very new to instances and Dead Mines particularly… Therefore you wouldn’t be surprised probably when will know more details.

Continue reading

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Glory of Kingdoms GUIDE: tips, secrets, tactics and strategy

Glory of Kingdoms units scheme:

You can find a lot of useful informatio about the game in my GoK video guides

 

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Rage of Mages 2: new item drop system

New change in drop upon player’s death:

– Probability of inventory drop = 33%;
– Probability of drop for equipped items = 0%

Why so? The thing is that getting equipment is extremely hard with our system of progress. Therefore, the loss of the main piece of equipment can make your character completely unplayable. You can just lose the ability to keep playing if you loose important item. At the same time, if you remove the drop altogether, the game becomes insipid and boring. We need some kind of interest, risk. For this, a drop of items from a backpack is ideal – after you loose them – they can be quickly restored by purchasing consumables in the shop (while replacing a dropped weapon or staff can sometimes take several hours). The risk in PvP remains, the reward also; all the more so for experienced PK players’ items are often sent to the trash – they already have everything. But consumables (scrolls, potions) are always needed for battles – and they can be obtained in these particular battles.

As a result, it turns out to be beneficial to everyone. PK players will always have someone to fight with – after a fight with them, players will not have to spend hours recovering their progress due to lost gear .. Because of this, in previous seasons, PKs remained alone on quest maps after depriving regular players of their material base. Now there will be no such problem.

And new players are also good – there will be an opportunity to study in PvP without fear of being left without pants.

Other recent changes: Continue reading

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Blind-friendly roguelike games

Sometime ago I’ve founded Russian MUD (text based multiplayer games) community in discord and there plenty of visually-impaired people. Some was interested to play roguelikes after listening my stream in Tangaria.

I’ve googled this topic a bit and found that actually atm there are 3 blind-friendly roguelike games. Good info about this topic could be found at roguelike radio podcast.

Also there is an option for text output description of objects on game screen in Nethack..

And finally I found a topic about Angband with this quote:

3. Introduce a “blind-friendly” option to Vanilla Angband. Drawback is that those maintaining Angband may not be keen on additional options and, again, that large changes may be awkward to implement / maintain.

Maybe it’s the time to start working on this option in Angband? As now the game went far forward in technical aspects.. What do we need:

the option to output text description of room – so player will be able to get information about surroundings when they change – in text format. For example.. Player got 0,0 coordinates. All objects around him got relative coordinates. So each turn player will get something like this in Message Window:

“Door 5N3W. Goblin 2S1W. Magic Wand 1N2E”

Also using ‘l’ook command player could  understand where walls and other static objects located..

Maybe there are better ways to represent surroundings.. Lets brainstorm!

As we already have ‘target-close’ monster macro which could help to cast spells or use ranged weapons without need to target precisely certain tiles – it’s possible to play even ranged classes.

 

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