Nowhere Else and Beyond

[a_bertrand]

First of all a warning: this game is not a downloadable game but instead a web (browser) game which uses a charas images.

Url of the game
http://www.nowhere-else.org

Start without registering
Nowhere Else and Beyond (NEaB) is a unique completly FREE web game in many ways. The first difference you will see is that it doesn’t require the traditional account creation. You just click “Start new adventure” and after agreeing to the rules, you are directly transported into the game. Now how do you choose your username and password? Simple: talk to the first NPC and answer his questions. After this, you will have a little (optional but important) introduction quest to train you on the different main activities in the game.

Unique 2D interactive map
NEaB is also unique in the fact that most of the game is played on a unique 2D interactive map. The map (coded in Javascript which means runs basically every where, without the need of any plugin), is extremely fast, and let you interact directly with other players, see them, and chat/trade more directly.

But what is NEaB?
NEaB is a medieval fantasy game, where most of the quests are written by the players themselves. There are quite a few “official” quests on the main island, but there are lots more (more than 500) quests written by the players. Virtually everybody is allowed to claim a new part of the realm and write his own stories / quests, draw his own maps and even customize his own monsters.

Rich virtual world
Without counting the quests, NEaB offers a rich virtual world, with tons of activities to do, from fishing to collecting and playing cards online and in real-time with other players. Some activities can be repeated every day, like the mythical “Daily Dungeon” or may be done only once per year like for example the holidays quests.

Constantly evolving
NEaB also is a constantly evolving game, which has been developed since Jan 2005 and is public since March 2005. Some players still play since the beginning, which means you will certainly find something to do and this for some time.

Why a web game
We decided at the begining to make it running using purely a browser, not even requiring any kind of plugins, as we do want to make it avaialable anywhere from working locations to internet cafee, also offering it as a web application allows us to push updates without the fear that some people still use old versions of the code and this even while they are playing.

Characters description and plot
As this game is mainly player driven we don't have main characters nor an unique plot beside for the official quests, found on the main island. For the main official quests you will find a fight between two fractions (earth gluers and island levitators) which are fighting to change the world with a different vision.

What's behind
We didn't used any pre-made engine, and instead coded all by ourself. So no game maker, rpg maker or whatever else here. All is written in PHP, JS, HTML and MySQL. We do use a bit of C# for the silverlight application (comics drawing) as well as an optional use of flash for the sound effects. Also don't expect complex 2D effects like spells or nice animations, remeber we are running inside a browser with basically just Javascript helping us.

Main features include (but are not limited to):

• Full multi player RPG
• On map, locations or standalone chat
• Private online and offline messages
• Online / offline PvP fights (in the arena)
• Player managed markets
• Multiple non linear quests
• High quality inventory system
• Graphical interactive 2D map (like other normal top view RPG)
• Progressive monster difficulty (as your level up, harder and new monsters appears)
• Player managed islands (create your quests, NPC, locations and much more)
• A special pet system which let you talk in with your own words to your pets.
• Unique collectible cards and unique simple to play card game (PvP).
• Unique strategic multi-player combat systems
• In game casino (slot machine, roulette, and card game)
• Alchemy and cooking potions and other
• Crafting object
• Fixed and random map (depending of the location)
• Medals to reward players
• Automatic player journal
• Player managed, fully designed and owned dungeons
• Player designed objects (stats and description)
• Thieves and pickpockets actions can be performed
• Player clans (let share objects for example)
• 40 Mb of free webspace (no banners)

The interactive 2D map


NPC interractions


World atlas


In game comics drawing


The inventory


The chat

[fruckert]

It's an interesting idea, but I would really work on the grid size, right now it feels as if you are REALLY tiny.

[a_bertrand]

Well depends on the settings, you may play in zoomed mode where all is double as big. Also as the game resizes to fill up all the browser size (normally unless you decide otherwise) we do show a lot of the map. This was done on player request so we don't plan to change it any time soon as it seems the more you see the more happy the players are.

[fruckert]

Well, it seems as if it's rather well put together atm, but I'd go look for a dedicated artist for graphics, because charas...doesn't really look that professional.

And about the grid size, I'm talking mainly about the actual movement, it seems like there's so much that you aren't reaching, and as such, the mapping gets to seem rather empty.
That might be because you're using RPGMaker graphics, which are a base 16 map style, unlike the grid size which you are using.

Anyways, as I said, it seems rather well put together.
I like a lot of the gameplay concepts you have right now, and quite a few of them are implemented well.

[a_bertrand]

Indeed it would be really wonderful to find a game artist. However so far, even if we offered payed jobs, we didn't found people willing to invest the time for the project.

Now I understand the grid size, basically you mean that the space between your player and the things around it. I would say you are completly right. Another problem I do have is the lack of freedom you have to place items where you exactly want on the map (if you want you can check our demo of the map editor here: http://www.nowhere-else.org/demo_mapeditor.php). This is due to how we coded the maps on a pure cell based system. All that is partially due to the limitations of the technology and how we coded it initially. Changing it now would be... a mess.

Graphics are partially based on RPG Maker, when I say based is because most if not all have been redrawn using as template some resources found on internet. We do use 64x64 tiles where indeed RPG maker templates use smaller sized tiles. Again bigger tiles means less images which means faster drawing for those slugish browsers.

Anyhow thanks for your comments, as it may help us improving things, even if not all will be possible without creating a new game and dropping all the content.

[Prpl_Mage]

This looks and sounds interesting y'know.
It's just too bad that I don't have the time to try it out.

Some advice though. Try to match the different graphic and sprite styles. At the moment you have a pretty low saturated terrain with colourful sprites.
A program like Irfanview can be used to decrease the saturation of pictures to make it more "mature" as people like to say these days. Just a tip though.

[Zerlina]

Looks great dude. I'll have to try it after exams.

[a_bertrand]

Thanks for the nice comments. Buildings and others will maybe redrawn at some point, either if we find an artist or if I will ever have the time to make then in 3D and render them. In the mean time we generally come with a big / small update every week and therefore the game improves constantly. We don't have a final goal however as we prefer to think about it as an ever growing world.

[zuhane]

Very impressive, my friend!

[SaiKar]

This is pretty nifty.

[Muraiko]

It's pretty fun. I also like how it's not too level grindy, as what most MMOs seem to be like. (Or at least from what I've played so far.)