A few more random previews to show you guys. What I'm working on right now might seem uninteresting or simple or "easy" to program, but what I'm really doing is building a solid foundation for all these new features I've been talking about. Doing it this way ensures better testing and planning, and honestly it's how I've been programming this game from the very start. Anyway, on to the screenshots!

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The first thing you'll notice is that the height of banner area in the prototype has been reduced by about... 70 pixels? This leaves a lot more room for buttons and text and other content, which was necessary to fit some of the new features into the available screen-space. I know that you can technically scroll areas that are too big for the window, but I like to avoid scrolling as much as possible (it feels clunky in most game-contexts) and code for the lowest-possible screen resolution. It's just more accessible that way, in my opinion. Note that navigating to/from the "home" menu causes the banner to expand/shrink to its previous dimensions - they worked quite well for that tab. Anyway...



The in-game leaderboard has been fleshed out a little bit more and now shows the appropriate colours and avatars. Other changes may or may not be coming to this section depending on if I have time.

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The robot database now shows the robot's home-field. This is mostly just an aesthetic update to the page, but maybe cross-referencing will come in handy at some point.


The robot editor's functionality remains largely unchanged except for two small details - the robot selection area has been expanded and shows larger mugshots (so it's easier to review your teams) and now has a more fleshed-out sort option, allowing you to sort by either number or level, ascending or descending.


And finally, the player editor has been expanded a bit to include Player Items. As you may or may not have noticed, all players pull from the same "pool" or "inventory" of items. If a target robot drops an Extra Life in Dr. Light's game, both Wily and Cossack also have access to that same item and its quantity. This feature will remain unchanged, but the exact items that each player has access to in battle can now be customized. This would have been pointless before as there were exactly 8 items to collect in the game, but now that there's more... :)

Oh, and the "one item before you attack" limit has also been extended to switching. Now you can only switch and/or use an item once before your attack and no more. This should make the larger items a lot more useful and smaller ones... less so. With this in mind, I don't think over-grinding on the first stage will be too much of a problem as the only "useful" item you could get that late in the game are small screws and I think that's a perfectly acceptable strategy.

So... that's all for now. I think. ;)

Lots of changes are coming in this update regarding items and how they are collected. Details are still being finalized, but this is what we have coming up in the new update:

- A player may now use ONE item per turn before they attack (instead of an infinite amount)
- All robot mechas have a 25% change of dropping an item
- All robot masters have a 50% chance of dropping an item
- Disabling any robot with a OHKO will double the chance of it dropping an item
- All robot mechas drop small screws, energy pellets, or weapon pellets
- All robot masters drop large screws, energy capsules, or weapon capsules
- Robots found in fortress and event stages may drop other items like Energy Tanks, Weapon Tanks, and Extra Lives
- Robot masters disabled using super effective attacks have a 66% chance of dropping an Elemental Core

More details incoming later...

The community forum itself has been updated with a few new features as well. Threads and posts will now show the users's battle points as well as the thread and post count underneath (shown as TP and PP respectively). Right now TP and PP are just a representation of how active you are in the community, but maybe one day they'll unlock something of have some other benefit. Not sure... Anyway, the @Reply buttons actually do something now, automatically scrolling to the text area and putting preformatted reply text for you. So if I clicked on my name it would add @ [ Ageman20XX ] { flame } : to the form for you (but without the spaces of course). It's pretty awesome, actually. Also, special users will now have icons by their avatar. Developers (me) will have a Yashichi, and all Contributors (MMX100, MetalMan, Brorman, etc.) will have an Energy Capsule. This will let new users know who they can trust and ask questions in the future.

I haven't finished programming it yet, but I'm also planning on making all contributor accounts also able to act as moderators on the community. This will allow you guys to create stickies, delete comments, lock threads, and all the other fun stuff that I currently have to do on my own. >_> This should make the entire moderation process of the game and website easier as I'm clearly not able to be around all the time and you all have proven yourself to be great players and incredibly helpful, reasonable people. :)

The leaderboard is also getting a slight makeover, and I do mean slight. The data has been rearranged and now each tab loads on a separate page to prevent memory overloads. But you'll also notice extra stats on the main page and a new "likes" feature I'm in the process of programming. The Star Force tab has also been updated so that the stars don't get crammed together and instead separate into pages. They'll also be sorted by the current "top elements" according to your star force chart on the left, so it looks pretty cool going from page to page and seeing all the colours. :P

@MegaBossMan : Thank you for trying to post it. I fixed up your formatting the first post and uploaded the rest of the preview screenshots to the website's preview folder. :P

Now, I'm going to copy/paste some of the stuff I told MegaBossMan about in our email conversation. First off the credits section will now be synced with profile backgrounds and you'll be able to edit your own link and bio!

@TheDoc : At the moment, field multipliers in player battles are completely randomized. This will likely change in the future as there are far more interesting ways it could be decided - I just didn't have time to fully flesh it out during the last updates. Expect something more interesting and maybe even something you can control in some way... ;)

@megaprotobassman : Certain passwords can only be used in demo mode, and certain passwords can only be used while logged in. It will normally say in the description of the password where it works and where it does not. The Shadow Blade and Bubble Bomb passwords, for example, ONLY work when logged in.

As far how it works, it's explained pretty clearly in the thread's first post. Select your character (so that their sprite appears in the top-left of the screen) and then click that character image a bunch of times until a popup appears. Enter the password phrase into that box and hit "OK". The menu will be reloaded and the password will work if it was done correctly.

Awesome idea!

Bass and Treble / Forte and Gospel were originally going to be called Crush and Baroque. And now you know where I got the names for Bass' two level-up abilities! ;)

It's a new personal messaging feature. Go to anyone's leaderboard profile and (as long as you're logged in) you should see a "Send Message" option. This will create a personal discussion between just the two of you that functions exactly like the community but is hidden to everyone else. :)

I'm really interested to hear more about this from all our new users, so I'm bumping this thread. How did YOU hear about the MMRPG? Did one of your friends tell you? Did you find it in a search for something? Did you click a link on another website? Let us know, if you remember the URL please post it - we want to hear what other people are saying about the game. :)

Wow, it's only been four months since that screenshot was posted and so much has changed! The leaderboard looks totally different, we have 10 or more people online pretty frequently, and the Weapon Energy update feels sooooo yesterday. XD My favourite experience playing the MMRPG is honestly reading all these comments - especially the ones where I hear about people discussing my game at school or with other friends. It's pretty amazing. ^_^

I'm closing this thread for obvious reasons. I do like the idea of a thread specifically dedicated to other fangames and their robot masters though, so if somebody wants to create a new, dedicated thread I'd be more than happy about it. ^_^