Otherworld - sandbox, crafting, persistent browser game

So Ogreman recommended I post in this section to get more visibility for my game.

This is technically the third version of Otherworld. The first version lived from 2016 to 2017, then there was a short-lived chatroom RPG version that never took off the ground, now the current version is a Cantr-style but smaller world simulator with crafting, travel and resource gathering.

The game can be found at Otherworld - PBBG (alpha)

The setting is that this is a limbo between life and death, so you can't die because you're already dead. It's up to you to set your own goals, although there is a set of simple quests meant to familiarize players with the mechanics. The game allows making babies (optional) which grow up to children you can boss around and have them collect resources for you, until they get claimed by a real player or grow into adults and wander off.

If you try out the game, I hope that you try it for more than one day in a row rather than just trying it for 3 minutes and deciding it's not for you. In games like this, a large part of the appeal comes from interacting with other players, but since people are not always online at the same time, usually when I talk to new players in the game, they never come back and read it.

I'm currently preoccupied with planning a camp in real life (I'm the head chef), so I haven't had much time to develop the game, but recently I made the paths in the tutorial region two way instead of one way, so that people don't feel like they're missing out on stuff if they travel to the next location. In the main part of the game, all roads are two-way, the tutorial area just has/had one-way roads to prevent characters from needlessly complicating the areas in a way that would confuse new players. The tutorial zone has very few resources intentionally, the main world has dozens of different resource types that can be gathered, processed, and turned into objects.

Feedback is welcome.

I should really update the screenshots section but you get the gist of it. The order of some of the links have been changed and it shows how many projects and buildings there are. Projects means unfinished crafting, by the way. I'm not sure how confusing the terminology is to people who have never played Cantr. Sometimes I take things for granted.

 

Yes, the plan is to have NPC interactions. I just don't have too many experiences with games that feature NPCs, and one problematic thing I noticed is that since the world has currently 49 locations and is set to grow, if there was an NPC in a certain location, the players wouldn't know about this unless their characters traveled there. (Compare this to Skyrim - there are multiple towns and they have their own NPCs.) Since the game doesn't have a plot, if I had a quest where you lead an NPC from place A to place B, for another player to get the same quest, the NPC would either have to return to place A on their own or pick a new goal.
There are currently lost souls that ask to be lead to a town, then they disappear and are no longer available to other players. When they were first introduced, one player lead like 3 of them in a day. They mostly exist in the tutorial zone to encourage characters to move forward. I should make a mechanic that creates/reactivates them.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by world events. At one point it was envisioned that once the game gets large enough, there would be wildfires that destroy resources if not stopped. But it's a bit mean if there's only one active character in a location, while everyone else is inactive, and everything catches on fire, leaving that one character to deal with it.

I can definitely have character avatars. Just gotta decide on an art style.

There are currently test animals (cow and chicken). The plan in the long run is to have more farm animals. I have the mechanic for leading animals, feeding and watering them, butchering them and harvesting resources from them. You can also customize their color by putting a color name in their description (red, yellow, blue, lime, green, white, gray) the default is brown. In the future it will be possible to attach a cart to at least the larger animals and when you lead them down the road, you can transport more resources. Even further in the future, there will be wagons that are like movable buildings which you can enter and then the horse will pull it to a new location. But I'm not entirely sure how to program the controls for the horse - you can't exactly lead it when you're inside a wagon, you can't even see it because it's outside. So that's a problem.

Cantr actually has pets but it has much less graphics than Otherworld. Originally Otherworld was supposed to be completely text based but people didn't like that idea so I've been gradually adding graphics.

 

I added several new lost souls today. Lost souls are ethereal creatures that are looking for a place but can't get there without help. They can be lead from the People menu, just like PCs. The first round of lost souls were only asking to go to the neighboring location or two roads over, so they were quickly taken to their destinations. The new batch is going to more hard to reach places like islands and swamps.

 

Most recent updates from the last two days:

Domesticated animals can now eat out of a trough. Animals also get more nutrients out of food than people, so effectively they require less food.

When you start leading a person, the success message is displayed on the same page rather than requiring you to click a link to go back.

Bug fix: If two people say the same thing in a row, it no longer stacks in chat. So feel free to say "Hi" without sounding like you are talking to yourself.

Using wicker as firewood for pots and ovens instead of regular wood is now possible.

Quests up to 39 have now been implemented. There are currently no plans for quests after this but it might eventually change.

Yesterday I fixed a long-standing bug that sometimes when you pause traveling, it adds an hour to your travel time every time you pause and resume. At least I certainly hope it's now fixed. It's hard to debug because it didn't happen every time and I can only assume it happens only with longer roads. Currently most roads are 50 seconds to a minute and 10 seconds. The original plan was for traveling to be much slower but one of the early testers suggested it could be faster, so we have been in speed mode ever since.

 

There was another bug that when you don't check traveling instantly after arriving, it hits you with travel thirst and hunger like you had been traveling the whole time even though the actual length of the path was shorter. Now it only adds thirst according to the length of the path and not extra.

I also made it so that the current timer is visible even on the messages (chat) page, so if you were working on something, it will show the results instantly when you log in as opposed to only showing them when you load the location page.

I was camp cooking irl for a week and someone there infected me with the flu, so I'm feeling rather crappy at the moment, but the plan is to add a cron job to delete broken locks by Sunday. Currently there aren't that many locks in game, so it's not critical, but it's something I've wanted to include for a while already.

 

In most recent updates, now it no longer asks how long to gather for resources, instead it automatically sets the max length based on your level. You can still quit early for partial results, if you don't need as many resources. It goes like 1 tick for level 0, then 5*level for the rest. I also rewrote part of the intro text. Recently there's mostly been cosmetic changes. The script that deletes broken locks is also live as of yesterday. It runs once a week.

If someone has ideas as to how to make the game more engaging, I'm listening. By the way, all characters are assumed human. It's ok to rp you have pointy ears or are extra tall or extra short, but it doesn't give you any extra powers. Everybody has the same strength. Your fighting power just depends on your weapon.

 

1. It's now possible to describe locations. This feature is available at level 7 and above. It also works for buildings. Coincidentally, buildings can have a different description for the interior and exterior (since they're stored in different tables). This didn't require additional programming.
2. Now it's no longer possible to make building locks while not in a building. You can still make them on boats. The appearance of the buildings and vehicles page was changed to be in line with the inventory page.
   
3. The craft menu now shows if the resource is available or not and how much is present. It updates the availability when the multiplier is changed. Later this will also be expanded to tools.

 

The biggest addition recently has been horse carts. Since I still haven't gotten around to implementing a livestock merchant, there aren't actually any horses in game yet but I said to people that if someone wants to test out a horse, just let me know and I'll add one to your location.

Craft menu items now unlock based on level instead of being all available from the start. It's still possible to view higher level items but by default, it only shows the stuff you have unlocked so far. Also, craft menu shows if the tools are available or not.

There have been visual changes to paths, inventory and container pages. Also lots of drop shadow effects.

The user menu in the side bar now allows jumping into any one of your characters instead of just clicking an arrow to go to the next character.

 

Javascript: Cooking/baking/firing clay items, as well as traveling on a boat and in a wagon show a timer on screen that updates every second instead of being a static number. Results are displayed without a page reload when the timer is finished.

There are new resting furniture (bed, couch, sofa, chair). They're rather expensive, so I will add a cot later that's more available to low level characters. The resting furniture creates an areal effect that boosts natural healing for everyone in the location. The resting pool is divided by the number of people in the location.

Pickup/store is now disabled if the item is too heavy and it displays the unit weight in that case. You can still view unit weight for stackable items by entering an amount that's too large to pick up and the unit weight will be visible on the error page.

 

Hi guys, I've been away from here for about 3 weeks. I was relieved to notice no one messaged me while I was gone, so I didn't leave anyone hanging. There have been several updates to the game.

Otherworld has had an influx of registrations within the last 3 days, but we'll see if any of them actually end up sticking around. Now we're up to about 190 characters (although some of them are in vacation mode).

The biggest update recently is the travel system. Now the world is divided into zones, and you can jump to any location from anywhere, provided that you have scouted and explored it, and the travel requirements are met. Scouting reveals the travel requirements and then if you meet the requirements, you can explore and that moves you to the target location. After that you can always return there, provided that you don't lose the travel requirements.

Livestock merchant has been introduced, so you can buy domesticated animals with coins. Domesticated animals get assigned a name at random but the owners can rename them freely if they want to. You can get coins by leading lost souls or by selling items to Charlotte.

It's possible to make clothes out of wool.

It's possible to make parchment and papyrus for writing.

Recipes for cooking with mushrooms are now live.

While I have several ideas for how the game could be developed further, they're not fleshed out, so we might be reaching a plateau soon. What I'm still going to do is assign lakes, seas and rivers to limit boat travel, because currently boats can go anywhere, even in the mountains, and that isn't very realistic. But after that, I might not know what to take on next.

My biggest disappointment has been that players don't try to interact with each other and everybody is treating the game like a single-player experience. I don't know how to remedy that.

 

Today I added the lake and sea definitions and the boat travel restrictions. Beyond this, I'm not sure what to work on next. Maybe hunting, as it needs more work. Currently it has gotten quite trivial, as you can just ignore an animal with no penalty. I should have some sort of a time limit after which the encounter is automatically resolved if no action is taken.

 

So I went and added the ability to ensnare animals. Eventually there will be multiple types of snares, including a lasso for large prey, but currently there's just one type of snare. I also added 5 new types of wild animals. There's some sort of a bug that for some reason, animals can show up as defeated even when they have HP left and then they don't drop anything.

Today I added a javascript countdown for AP refreshing. Based on a tester suggestion, currently AP is being refreshed once an hour instead of once every 6 hours, so active players have considerably more than 300 AP to use within a day. It has also made me play more, so I think this might be a keeper, although the amount given per hour might later be reduced.

There's also a guest account system, that allows people to try out the game without having to come up with a name. Guest characters are purged if they haven't been accessed in the last 3 hours, although the tick runs once a day, so it's possible for them to survive closer to 21 hours if they were created after the tick ran.

There's also a wraith that kidnaps inactive characters. What triggers it is currently a secret.

 

Recently I've been mostly concentrating on visuals. I added a grainy background texture to item and animal divs. The color palette for buttons and alerts was changed, and is now more harmonious. Buttons change tint when they're hovered over and move a couple of pixels downwards when clicked. Today's mechanical addition was enabling putting uninstalled locks on a building or a boat, when in the past they could only be put on containers.

 

My friend convinced me to switch to loading main navigational links with Ajax. I had to work 4 hours to get healthbars working after that, but it was worth it because I love the current look of the healthbars.

The craft menu shows if a tool boosts collecting some resource and by how many units/tick.

Animals now have regions, so that it depends on the zone which animals you can run into.

It's possible to turn any kind of meat into sausages using a meat grinder. You can also use flour and grain as filler. You can even make beer sausages!

There is now a new river in game, allowing travel with a boat.

 

After the previous update, I noticed that there were still situations where the healthbar data wasn't loading, so my friend asked me "why are you using canvas and javascript to draw the healthbars? Why not just use divs and css?" I didn't have a valid reason other than "it didn't occur to me to do it otherwise", so I switched to drawing the healthbars as divs and it simplified the code greatly.

In other news, it's now possible to intentionally search for animals instead of just randomly running into them at inconvenient moments.

The locations now have a header image that varies based on location type.

In bigger news, there is now an avatar editor in-game. If you don't want to create an account, you can still test it out of editor at Otherworld - PBBG (Beta) Note that this url is temporary and it won't be available forever, so try it out while you still can.

Starting yesterday, characters level 14 and up can start menial jobs for lower level characters, such as cleaning the latrines or gutting fish. This enables low-level characters to earn some pocket money and buy things from the merchants. Jobs are currently available at Euss, Tchaimmesheang and Jillxaoucks. There's a limited amount of positions, but I will refresh them periodically and increase the number of spots if they start running out repeatedly.
Location page, showing the top banner and textured healthbar.


Avatar editor

 

Recently I've been able to add a lot of new content. I'm happy, because a couple of new players have already stuck around for 3 days, when in the past, most people only stayed for 5 minutes and then never came back.

There are two types of cots, which make getting a resting boost more available to low level characters, since the bed, sofa and bench are quite a high investment.

The wraith can now command people to forage.

People can build a campfire, which is mechanically a mini version of the bonfire. It allows making roasted meat, roasted mushrooms and cooked bird eggs.

The ability to move resources directly from one container to another has been added, simplifying moving things by one step.

The areal boost from furniture also applies to manual resting.

Buildings now have a soft cap on how much weight can be loaded inside. When over-cluttered, they can still be entered but any projects inside suffer a penalty, causing part of the AP spent to go to waste.

Sacks, baskets and such can no longer have container locks. In fact, over half the containers are now unlockable and the ability to install a lock is limited to things that are assumed to have a lid or doors.

 

Still holding steady at 4 daily players. My friend convinced me to switch to loading more content with Ajax, so now all the forms use Ajax to get the results. It took 3 days to change them all. It has resulted in a lot of bugs and oversights, so I have spent the last 3-4 days fixing them. Today I also fixed Javascript timers, because they weren't showing up when the page was loaded through Ajax. I rewrote some code because it was a tangled mess.

I'm starting to understand Ajax and Jquery more as I work on this, becoming more confident with them. In the beginning, I felt angry because I felt like this is pointless, but the game actually works better when it doesn't have to reload the entire page, just a part of it.

I'm even starting to enjoy playing my own game, doing things like cooking and making yarn and cloth. It's also fun to trade with the trader character.

The players have gathered so much resources that a lot of resource deposits in zone 2 have gotten exhausted, and characters are starting to wander onto further zones. My plan is to add mines fairly soon, but I haven't started writing it yet.

 

Since I last updated here, there have been several new additions. I hope people aren't getting bored with all the updates.

Mines can be built in locations that have or previously had at least one stone, iron ore, or coal deposit. It requires building a mine entrance and at least one tunnel. Each tunnel adds a new deposit. The chances of what kind you get are affected by what was previously in the location, but there's a small chance of getting any of the three, even if it never existed previously.

Harvestable icons are randomized icons, which appear on the deposits page and when you click on them, you usually get resources. It's possible to draw a blank if you're unlucky. The possible resources are wood, stone, iron ore, coal, mushrooms, and various berries. The pool depends on the location type.

Baby blanket and wool blanket.

Fishing pole enables unlocking new fish deposits in seaside locations and on boats, at the cost of 1 meat.

There are now apples, but where? It's a surprise. There are also clay plates and bowls.

Salt extraction pool is a new construct for seaside locations, which allows harvesting salt out of seawater.

It's now possible to copy keys, so you can share a storage room or a lockable container with a friend.

Bug fixes: There was a bug in scouting that prevented unlocking more than one location per zone. Another bug caused uninstalled locks to remain in the inventory when being installed on a building, even though a copy appeared attached to the building, theoretically allowing multiple locks opened by the same key. Fortunately nobody exploited this.

 

It's been a while since I last posted here.

Updates since then:

Resource collection uses AP instead of timers. Foraging was removed, as it was too easy to keep yourself fed with berries. It's possible to get all the foraging resources from the harvestable icons (in smaller amounts), which were extended to include sources of bird eggs and water. Characters can claim 1000 bonus AP once a day, as long as they have used the previous day's bonus AP.

Resting was changed to instantaneous instead of using a timer. Resting causes hunger to increase. If your character is starving, they can't rest manually. If your character is at full health, resting generates AP instead of health.

The side panel occasionally refreshes automatically to keep things up to date (mainly syncing AP if the tick had run in the background).

When you click on Ajax links or submit forms, it refreshes the building, project and item counts on the side panel and the collapsible people list on the other panel. Now the Location submenu remains uncollapsed on large screens, so you don't have to manually open it every time when you need it.

Trader characters and the wraith receive special protection in combat. If their hit points drop below 50%, they regenerate health. The wraith deals double damage if it's health drops below 50%. These characters are intended to be invincible on purpose.

Bonus tools - There are 6 extra tools that boost crafting projects if you have them, but the projects can still be created even if you don't have them, so they're optional. The craft menu shows how much the boost is as a percentage of AP.

It's possible to drag piles of resources even if they are too heavy to fit in your inventory or a cart. (It assumes that you make multiple trips.) The AP cost depends on the weight of the pile.

The crazy cook encounter - it counts as an animal and has the same amount of hit points as a human character. When you defeat it, you get a mixing recipe and a steel knife.

The game keeps track of drunkenness when drinking beer and causes slurred speech affected by how drunk the character is.

It's possible to use emoji and more special characters in passwords.

Unresolved animal encounters eat food off the ground when the hunger tick runs. If there's no food, they have a 33% chance of going away.

It's possible to buy a pet rabbit from the livestock merchant.

Bug fix: A couple of quests that had 4 possible options to complete them could only be filled by 3/4 options due to a typo. Now you can use any of the 4 items to finish them.