Announcement

[Amy Pond]

What is Afar?

Afar is a free online RPG game with multiplayer elements. It is all about exploration, storyline, and battles.

Released in the last quarter of 2010, Afar has been in production since 2007 but kept falling back. The game was restarted from scratch as a PHP game in it's current state, and was quickly released. Since release it has ammassed 200 players, with a record of 100 online at one time.

The State of Afar

Since the game is constantly (as much as daily) updated, it is hard to keep a project thread organised, and so instead I am writing this semi regular newsletter to place in all my threads around the place.

Where is the game currently?

Last time I spoke, there was no battle system, inventories was a big thing, and we had about 20 players around the world.

Build 2

Build 2 greatly enlarged the screen resolution, specifically with future plans for apps in mind and based on player feedback.

The navigation system and random battles are a new feature. That's right, battles!

We now have a basic turn based battle system. At current all you can do is attack, and the view is head on, but there are some tactics to it all:

- Different equipment has different stats for how much damage will be dealt
- Choosing your profession gives you boosts in certain weapons
- Swords give you melee exp, which makes you harder hitting with a sword
- Bows give you sight exp, making you better with a bow
- Different enemies are weak to different things

This is just a shell however and not representative of the eventual goal for the battle system, which will have animated sprites rather than a front-on view.

The World

As it currently stands, this is our world map:



The marked off regions are not yet created, but are planned.

You navigate the world using the four arrows shown on the screenshot above, but you can also access some key areas via the world map, once you have unlocked travel to them.

You gain gold as you play or by defeating enemies, of which there are currently ten. I am not revealing the algorithms and they are ever changing as I tweak and balance the game. You can at current spend this money on items in shops.

You can also gain gold by referring other players; how to do this is shown in game on the main screen.

Structure

Afar is created using PHP and javascript, with phpBB providing a base for account authentication and forum posting. It uses graphics provided by First Seed Material and others created by myself.

The amount of my own code has risen a lot since last time I spoke to you. The battle system was created entirely from scratch for example, as well as various other systems. Most of the game aspects are my own code, with the phpbb backbone merely serving as a good base for authentication, forums, and moderation as well as the admin cp.


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Quests

Quests are under construction. You can complete most of the first one, but there is no reward yet. The second is in development and they will both be finished around the same time. The current "testquest" storyline revolves around vampires.

System Requirements

You must have javascript enabled for the domains:

vengeance-rpg.com (for now)
afar.ws
jquery.com

jquery is a javascript library, visit the jquery.com website for more information.

Otherwise your gameplay will be severely hindered. I may block users who do not have javascript activated in future because this may cause unfair advantages; it doesn't at the moment (other than making screens such as the inventory just not work).


High Scores

Because of our now large userbase we now have highscores. You are rated on either your gold amount, or your cumulative exp from all stats.

Stat signatures are available which update regularly:



If somebody registers from your sig, you get gold!


Accessing the game

http://www.afar.ws


Inspiration

The Netplay project for getting me into creating MMOs,
VDex for making me realise my old idea of making games using forums could actually work
W3schools for teaching me PHP
Tomas for helping me with javascript and showing me better ways of doing things
Everyone who helped me with Vengeance before <3

[Amy Pond]

Server Migration

Please note that Afar will be inaccessible for between 1 and 24 hours from now, due to necessary moving of servers. I can't give you an estimate because it's due to the DNS configuration, which will take up to 24 hours depending on how many changes are in the queue. That's out of my hands unfortunately.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

After the migration vengeance-rpg.com will not work. The new permanent address is afar.ws. Please update your bookmarks if you haven't already!