Gekkeiju Online

[Suvi]

Hi!
This being my first post here, shows that I've obviously forgotten to mention about this project of mine here. Some may have found it through the wiki or the screenshots section though.

So the project's name is Gekkeiju Online. It's a small scale closed source online rpg made using Irrlicht 1.2. This is the 4th rebuild of the game and the first one using Irrlicht as the engine (previous ones were Genesis3D, Jet3D and Irrlicht NX++). So far I've been working with this game for a bit over 5 years which has taught me a lot about online games (and how not to make them), and I don't see the end coming anytime soon. The project is a hobby and not meant to become anything bigger than what it is already.

The game has been free-to-play since 2003 (thanks to low player count). The online player count has stayed very low (under 50) because of the fact that players need to read and understand lots of text while in the game (and graphics of course are what a programmer can come up with).

The game is of course not ready yet. Lots of content like more areas, quests etc are still missing and constantly being added.

But yeah, enough blabber. Some of the game's screenshots have been posted here:
http://www.gekkeijuonline.com/?page=screens

And the game client can be found at the homepage:
http://www.gekkeijuonline.com/
It's for Windows XP/Vista and DirectX only although some people have been succesfully playing it with wine under Linux. There's some memory leaks and crash issues in the client but those don't happen too often, and I'm working on fixing them.

Also a slight warning, the game should probably be considered R-18 due to some vulgar language and content used. There is also no word filtering in the ingame chat channels.

Special thanks goes to Niko for the great engine and elvman for the great water shader.

I guess that's all for now. Any comments are welcome and appreciated of course... although I do already get quite a lot of hatemail from some ex-players

[MasterGod]

For a programmer you're a very nice artist

[BMF]

That looks really nice! Kudos. =)

[Dark_Kilauea]

I logged on, made an account, and poked around for an hour. It's very nicely done for a small team. The only beef I have is with controlling combat, but that will probably be ironed out.

Nice job!

[FlowPX2]

Oh my god... please change the controlling

I think:
Mouse is to fast!
And Mouse is inverted... up and down!?!?!
please fix this...

I need a control.ini or so, to change the controlling options

else... good work!!!

[Suvi]

Thanks for the replies.

The game in fact has several camera control modes which can be changed from the options-window. The system has been made so that it's very easy to add new camera control modes which means that there'll most likely be a mode resembling some of the most known commercial mmorpgs (just to make the change from game to another easier).

Mouse invert-option should probably be added there as well. Thanks for the idea.

For combat I suggest the usage of Targetting-actions. They make it much easier to target the nearest/next enemy etc.

[vic10us]

I'm just setting out to begin creating an online RPG for my friends and myself to play together, and I have just finished downloading GO and am currently in the process of patching. I have to say from looking at the site, the screenshots, and the forum posts on your site, I am impressed so far, and I have yet to even get into the game to try it out.

I'm sure I'll be adding another positive post here in about half an hour or so, but until then, nice work, keep it up!

[BlindSide]

Lol at the market chat "Buying anything that is red or black!".

Great looking game, just judging from the screenshots it seems you have achieved so much. I'll have to try this out sometime, I like the fact that you have pets etc kinda like WoW.

Are there any specific features which you have had the freedom to implement (Since you are making this yourself) that are different/unique from other mmorpgs out there? I'd like to see a devblog/journal if you have one too, for such a complete project I think it will be an interesting read

[vic10us]

Mayhaps not a half hour as I had planned, but there is more positive. Aside from the free-look camera not rotating back to behind my character upon moving, and the high-speed camera rotation via mouse, the game is quite well put together. I may be popping in for a bit over the next few weeks to see how it's going. Good luck!

[Suvi]

Mayhaps not a half hour as I had planned, but there is more positive. Aside from the free-look camera not rotating back to behind my character upon moving, and the high-speed camera rotation via mouse, the game is quite well put together

The current default camera-mode was implemented like that because the majority of the players wanted it. But, like I mentioned above, it's very possible to add a new mode that indeed returns behind the character when moving. This might be a good addition if enough players want it.

The mouse speed issue might get solved a bit sooner with a speed toggle once I manage to try it out a bit.

Lol at the market chat "Buying anything that is red or black!".

Great looking game, just judging from the screenshots it seems you have achieved so much. I'll have to try this out sometime, I like the fact that you have pets etc kinda like WoW.

The pets are actually very different from WoW... well I haven't played it but as far as I know they only work as mounts(?). In Gekkeiju the pets can also be trained for combat and commanded around in a bit similiar manner as in Ultima Online. Although currently the skill/spell teaching for pets is still missing.

Are there any specific features which you have had the freedom to implement (Since you are making this yourself) that are different/unique from other mmorpgs out there? I'd like to see a devblog/journal if you have one too, for such a complete project I think it will be an interesting read

I think one of the best features of the game is the so called reincarnation-system. I have only seen it implemented in a similiar way in some MUD-games. Basically it allows players to change their race and character class during gameplay with some tax taken from their total experience points. This removes the need to create lots of different characters and have to go through annoying tutorials or hard starts multiple times.

Another feature which I like are the player commandable boats. The feature is still partly under construction as lots of the sea areas are missing from the game. Currently players can only rent boats without cannons and move around with them. Later on it'll be possible to buy boats and mount cannons into them. The cannon support is working for admin created boats and we've already held several boat wars events in the game. In general players have liked those events.

Also one thing that is a bit different is the multiguilding.. basically player will be able to join many different guilds (professions) that belong to the player's character class. So a divine arts player could make a combination of monk, healer and maybe paladin (still in beta) or a warrior could become a barbarian and samurai. This means that there's lots of different character build possibilities.

There is no development blog for the game but all the new features get posted in the game's official forum. There's both development talk and dev news sections there. You can find the forums at http://forum.gekkeijuonline.com/

[BlindSide]

Thanks for your detailed reply, Suvi