I was delighted to be able to join another Metaplace stress test last night — these are open to everyone, so if you ever thought you might like to make or play sophisticated multiplayer Flash games, it’s worth keeping an eye on what Areae is up to here.
Uberspace, an arcade-y space-y maze-y shooter in the vein of SOE’s free-to-play Cosmic Rift, isn’t remarkable so much for its gameplay, but for the technologies it tests, and the way players play.
Though there were over 70 players either playing the game or chatting in the lobby, the game was still fairly responsive. The ships would flicker a little, but usually they stayed where you expected them to be, without the sort of lagging you usually see when a game just can’t keep up.
But the players — they were the best. HTML injection attacks in the lobby chat; PKs, PKKs and campers stalking the game; I can just imagine the Areae crew frantically jotting down notes. This is pure testing gold.
Casual Flash games are the hot topic these days, with sites like Kongregate, MySpace, and soon Areae giving budding game developers easy ways to get their games and other virtual spaces out in the public eye.
Soon, all you’ll need to make your game a reality is a browser and a good idea.
I want to make a game about killing innocent trees, looking at Obama’s views on certain issues, fighting off Scary Spiders, kicking Vampires in the crotch, running from mailboxes, sailing the high seas, questing to retrieve my lost eyelids, riding on colorful waves of pure music, pie-loving midgets, and amazing adventures in exploration.
I’m thinking of calling it: “West Karana”
Rated ‘T’ for ‘Tipa’.
lol… I’d play it 😛
Wait a second — I already AM!!!!
I think my favorite part about this entry is the screen shot you took. You always take the bestest screenshots, but in this one you’ve really outdone yourself.
I don’t think you could have possibly done a better job of making this game look as utterly boring as you did. The blankness of space combined with the abysmally saddening chat in the box below makes me chuckle heartilly.
Hi. My cat also likes cat food.
Um, that’s the game. I don’t think it’s meant to be a real game 😛 If I could have made it more exciting, I would have, I guess, but I was just trying to see how Metaplace handles crowds, room assignments and such. SOE has a slightly more exciting version of this game free to play called Cosmic Rift, but you have a maze, black space, and spaceships shooting each other while bouncing from walls.
It does bring up something interesting about Metaplace; all I have seen from their tests are kinda pedestrian Flash games, and the chat and stuff seem to have the same difficulties with lag and such that I have noticed in other multiuser Flash games. I’m not convinced (and never have been) that Flash is the best foundation for massively multiplayer games. Largely because you *cannot* optimize it for your game; Flash players are entirely out of your control. With no control over the platform, all of its problems become YOUR problems.
Oh I understood that it’s the game – there was no sarcasm in my post -I wasn’t complaining because “you took a bad screenshot”.
Quite the opposite – I am laughing at the game with you, not..at you…or something like that.