Nate

You don't have to actually have an NPC as far as the code goes. Simply have the illusion to the user that an interactive NPC. Im at work at the moment, but I'll put up more detail once I get home.

UPDATE: I'm going to post an update thread every few days. The first one is now available here

Hi all, The mainstream staff-roles on a virtual pet site are: - Artists - Writers - Moderators - and Admins On the previous 2 pet sites I developed/owned, I usually had the various other staff members (artists, mods etc) testing new features and functionality when they were available. Now, my main day-job is that I lead a team of Testers, and our entire job is to test/break/quality control all developments my company does, so i know how important "real" testing is. So, I was wondering is "QA Tester" a valid role that has the potential to be filled in the VPS world? Since my project is taking full steam, I'm considering that it would be really helpful to have someone that works with me to try and "break" my new developments to ensure there are no glitches and that it works as expected. Furthermore, historically the only staff members that have been paid real money is Artists. Do you think this is a role that would be acceptable to pay onsite currency, or do you think they would need to be paid using real money? Thoughts?

Hi @Rat and welcome!

Well done everyone!

Well done everyone! You deserve it for helping this forum grow!

@Digital - if i could "like" your post, I would, however since that is disabled, I fully agree with everything you say - especially about not having many people who would play it for long term.

I good alternative way to do this, would be to have it so that the users are actually lending their money to NPCs. You could pay to level up your bank, the higher your level, the more money you are allowed to invest. You could then set an interest rate, and manually approve each NPC's loan. They then pay you back over a fixed period of time.

Pop!

Hi @SingSong , thanks for the valuable input! These posts are getting longer and longer haha! I'll respond to some of the more detailed points; The Kickstarter/Indegogo; I'm against it personally, but I'm always willing to open up to ideas that are different to my own. I'll certainly take your input into consideration when talking to my friend about this. He seems to think it is a great idea, however I'm currently 75% certain I open without doing it. I'll keep you updated. The Monthly subscriptions: I understand your input, and I agree that it has the potential to bring in less income. It currently isnt coded, so there is alot to take into consideration. The logic behind that method is that it makes the "premium" account seem more "value for money" and is different to other game subscription models. Taking your netflix example, I've had netflix for countless years (I virtually have Death Note and Attack On Titan on repeat lol), however sometimes there is weeks where I wont touch netflix. If a Netflix competitor was to offer something like this, where I pay the same price, but it only takes time off when I login, I would certainly consider using that service. This is also true for games I play.. I login to Runescape once every few months to see what is new.. If premium accounts did that.. I would have one most definately. Most people that pay for premium accounts are likely to be users who will login to their favourite sites almost daily. I'm not able to provide analytical evidence on this, since I no longer have it, however when I used to run IcePets, this was one of the things I noticed - Gold Account members usually visit every day, if not 90% of the week. Your input is definitely food for thought, and perhaps once I decide to introduce this, it could be a conversation to have with the users of the game, and perhaps trial run both of them to see what happens.. Pre-free early access content Correct. Technically there is no real benefit other than having access to it early. The flipside is that once the content drops into the "free pool", what this means is that it is then available through normal means. It still might be extremely difficult to obtain those specific items (for example, you may have to reach level 50 in a specific quest before the quest can start randomly rewarding it etc). Content Packs The reason for this is because following the path you suggest has a horrible effect on the economy where users who pay real money for these items sell for millions of onsite currency and are then "instantly rich". I would probably add exclusive content packs periodically for real-money, but i dont want that to be the main focus of the game. The above monetizations are geared towards upkeep and paying for staff for the website, and I'm happy to change and tweak once they are added. Overall, my goal is to make an enriching user experience but also make a product that can support and sustain itself. I'm not expecting to make any money from it, so I'll likely re-invest anything made into hardware and art purchasing

Thanks @SingSong for the words of wisdom. I've been programming this for a few years, and over the time have acquired bits and pieces of art from here and there. As far as opening, I'm planning for a bare-bones approach to going public, with a plan to continuously develop new content as time progresses. I've actually contact artists I've worked with in the past, who are usually quite quick to turn around requests. To start with, I'm only going to have a basic world with a number of things to interact with, with an approach to adding more as time goes on. I've been building the world for a very long time, detailing how the past and the present interact with each other is intensive but also amazing. I have some writer friends who helped me put the initial idea together as far as storylines go, and closer to the time I'll hire someone to help me implement it, and flesh out speech or interactions. For now I'll be happy to open with just 1 or 2 stories available. The way I have developed it means we can "change" lore using additional stories. One example of this: To the north of the world are cliffs and a single passage blocked by a boulder. At the moment I dont have anything beyond that boulder planned in detail. Once I decide to expand the world beyond the boulder, a new story can be made available that will send the user back X years where their actions in that time period allows the NPCs to move the boulder. This in turn means when the user returns to the present day, that boulder isnt there any more, and the user can then travel past it. I've got many different things like this which all link together to make the story actually unique to each user depending on your actions in the past, or the order in which you complete the stories (but ultimately keeping the world somewhat similar to each other). For a startup, I have a friend who has been involved in successful kickstarters/indiegogo projects in the past. At the moment I dont think that would be neccessary, however he is putting together a Case Study to demonstrate the pros and cons of this approach. For continuous monetization, once the site is up and open, and there is enough content on there, eventually I would like to offer 3 different methods for users to support the game running costs: - Weekly/Monthly subscription/"premium account". Which provide perks and benefits with additional features and content. The difference however will be that a user will only pay for what they use. If they purchase a week subscription, they get 7 days of usage. Days a user is not active are not counted towards these days used. This means if you have 5 days of premium left and you visit today, and then you dont login for 2 weeks, when you come back, you would still have 4 days remaining. I'm currently deciding what counts as "active" - most likely if you do anything that changes your gold balance/item count/forum posts. This reason for this is: you might have the game set as your homepage and it opens when you open your browser, but then you navigate away to do something else -- this would not count as being active, and therefore wouldnt reduce your days left. The user then actually gets what they pay for. - Pre-free early access content I'll likely also have items/beasts created which are available for purchase with real money using a premium currency. I'll have the game set so that these items eventually drop into the free pool and are then available to everyone. It just means those that are able to support the website will be able to get the special content earlier, while those that arent able to support will still eventually get access to the same content. - Content Packs Content packs are an idea I had from the early days of developing my game which have evolved over time. First I need to give an explanation on how they work: ------ The below isnt how it sounds. This unlocks content, not awards it. How a content pack works: Let's take Christmas for example. I could have 5 items and 2 beasts created for Christmas, which are allocated to "Christmas 2017 Content Pack". These 5 items are then placed to restock in the "General Store" and the 2 beasts are set to appear in the Wildlands of the game for battle/capture. If a user visits the store before activating the Content Pack, they would not see those items restock, and they would not be able to find the 2 beasts in the wild. The Content Pack is a physical item within the game, and during December 2017, perhaps every user is given one, or the user has to jump through a few hoops to get multiples of them etc. Once a user has it, and they "activate" it via their Backpack (inventory), this CP is then permanently unlocked on that user's account. Activating does NOT give the user any of the items/beasts etc. It just means that now they are capable of seeing them in the shops/wilderness etc. The user would then be able to turn this content pack on or off whenever they like - the christmas items would stock in the shop forever. This opens a brand new reason to go back in time - we could have exclusive content packs that the user can only get by changing their world to be a certain configuration. ------ With that in mind, on the topic of monetization, I think it would be good to provide content packs that can be purchased to add additional items to the game. They would likely be purchasable using real money or in game currency. This allows people who arent able to support the game the opportunity to still get their hands on the content pack. ------ As for overall development and management of the game, I used to own IcePets.com, so I know that 5 months for a release is a bold statement - one that will be tough but is realistic enough to achieve. Ultimately, even if we open in September into an open Beta status and just having some of the main features available, I would be happy

Great news, thanks for the update!

So I finally decided to choose "The Lost Fable" for the name for my game I'm developing. I'm hoping for a release no later than September 2017. I've added it to the TGL Games List and created it's basic online presence: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheLostFable/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LostFableGame I have also created some temporary forums today, however obviously there is hardly anything on there at the moment: http://www.thelostfable.com Any username registered on the temp forums will also transfer over to the game itself once it goes live, so it is also a good opportunity to 'reserve' your username - even if you don't actually visit the temp forums between now and when the game opens. - Retracted statement. Registration on the temp forums disabled for now,

Definately. Could even look at Club vs Club competitions or something

Haha yep! Kinda uber off topic, but nice avatar btw! Did you draw that yourself?

I've just added a similar "tax" system to what ive been coding all this week - Trading. Essentially it works something like this (although these values are subject to change). When gold (the main currency) is received through the trade system, the trader is taxed 10% of it, so 10% is removed from the economy. For just 500 gold, they can upgrade their tax level to level 2, reducing this value to 9%, 1,000 gold to upgrade to level 3 etc. This goes all the way up to level 10 and changes their tax % to 0.001% (rounded up). The total cost for all 10 upgrades is 2 million gold. There is also an avatar unlock to reach level 10. This means that 2 types of people will do these upgrades: - Serious traders who want the big discount - and Avatar collectors. Not sure if this helps you?

Yep! And it makes you feel even MORE motivated to work on it! (Although I've been programming on it every day this week 5pm-2am every day.. so im letting myself have a wind-down day today haha) Wild Howlz is a really good name!

Thanks. It took aaaaaages to come up with it haha. Tables, excel sheets, whiteboards, trello and more to narrow it down to meet my criteria

^ This. Since i joined the discord I'm permanently logged in via my computer/tablet/phone, however I still consider the forums to be the primary means of communications (also we dont earn power on discord ;) ). However, discord is nice to have a chat via my phone if im not at my computer/laptop.

Thanks everyone for your help with this. Ive decided to go with "The Lost Fable" and registered the domain "thelostfable.com" Hopefully you'll hear more from me about this once I find an Artist or 2 :-)

A great read, and very helpful! Thank you! ??

I tend to feel quite motivated and positive from March until late September, then I generally feel down and lethargic October - Feb. My conclusion is that my body doesnt like Winter. On a conscious level however, I must say that I think Autumn is the most beautiful Season.

Great game! Looking forward to your additional games too!

Me too! haha

jQuery would be the main one. As others have stated, jQuery isnt a "pretty" language to work with, however when I started my project, I could really find anything else I was comfortable with, so decided to stick with it, and I havent found anything I'm not happy with yet (and my project is so far gone I wouldnt want to consider changing haha). I've also found momentJS very useful too!