Dear Ninjas,It's apparent that due to the lack of updates, some are beginning to lose faith in the project.My presence has also become somewhat of a repetitive cycle of giving short news posts to assure everyone that development is not dead.We have some very exciting news to present to you everyone. Though it may be viewed as bad news by some, it is definitely very good news for us all in the long term.
Development until now
Visual Basic 6While developing Nin Online in Visual Basic (an ancient language that got it's last update in 2003, that's over 10 years to put it into perspective!) we were practically pushing the language to it's limits and we were still unable to create many wonderful features we would have loved to that would allow Nin Online to reach it's full potential.The IDE and Language itself were so ancient in fact, that moving a line of code or making a small change in one function would very easily break something else. As you can imagine, this was frustrating, as the engine broke frequently due to minor changes.The language is also no longer supported by Microsoft and is only running on our newer machines with tons of compatibility issues and fixes everywhere. This problem became even more apparent from our tests late last year where many players encountered issues simply getting the client to run for them.The only reason we were using this for our engine was because it had been our most comfortable tool to create games, since Robin, Eddie, Seth and I had all been working on Visual Basic games, particularly Mirage based engines for years.DirectX8The renderer we were utilizing to bring to you the graphics in the versions thus far has been DIrectX8. Technology from 2000. As a result, our graphical presentation was not as good as we wanted it to be. We were very limited in terms of what we could do, even pushing the renderer to it's limits. We were unable to bring you many advanced modern rendering techniques like blending options.Development time was also severely hindered because we were using many old-school methods of implementing our graphics, such as manually recoloring sprites.First ConclusionUp until now, we have been limited on what we could do, and our development speed was being hindered by old development tools and technologies.
The exciting future
HTML5I have personally always been a supporter of HTML5 technology. Since it's announcement years ago. But back then, the tech was slightly limited by the lack of stable support on different platforms and missing components such as audio, a good renderer etc, real time communication.All of this has of course, been improved over the past 2-3 years, so much so that it is hard to see the limits of this amazing technology anymore. We have cross-platform audio standards, WebGL (an advanced renderer) and WebRTC to settle our multiplayer needs.The most prominent benefit of HTML5 is of course that is is cross-platform across every modern operating system. HTML5 runs on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iOS, Android, Tizen, Wii U and any system with a browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer! All this, with one single code base.Construct 2Arguably the best engine to create HTML5 games, Construct 2 has slowly filled the gap between the reality of creating Nin Online with it's amazing toolkit. With the latest announcement of WebRTC Datachannels support, there is literally nothing holding me back from making this jump to create Nin Online with the engine.The engine is very fast and efficient, it takes barely minutes to make a simple game, and it's only a matter of days to create a game like "Lazy Rocket". Apart from this, it is very expandable with it's Javascript SDK.Me & Seth have been very avid followers of this engine for years, we're comfortable with the tools, and quite certain that we'd easily port over the Nin Online experience back to it's current progress in a matter of weeks. There are also a lot of features we'd like to add to Nin Online to make it an even more wonderful game.WebGLAs modern as a renderer could get, WebGL is an amazing modern renderer with modern capabilities. Check out how capable WebGL is here!Possible news featuresWith all this new tech, we won't need to be held back by the limitations we once had. We will be able to bring Nin Online to it's full potential and all in a fraction of the time it would take to create a game like this in C++ or C#. With that, I'd like to tell you some big and small changes we'll be making to this new version of Nin Online.
- Jumping & Platforming - Jump onto rooftops, jump between them, drop off higher grounds. A whole new dimension to Nin Online! This opens up a lot of potential for combat and travelling.
- 360° Movement & Combat - No more 4 Directional jutsu casting limitations. Shoot your fireballs at any angle. This will make for a dynamic combat experience!
- Pixel-based movement - Right now, our movement system is tile based with 8 directions. Pixel-based movement means that you will be able to move and stop at any point and not in every 32x32 tile.
- WebGL Effects - Imagine a fireball - glowing! or a Genjutsu making your screen do this to your screen.
- More character customization - Hair & eye colors and shades on every spectrum. This is easily possible with HTML5 tech.
- Cross-platform! - Play on your browser or download a client & updater.
- Multiple Resolutions & Fullscreen mode - Our attempts at a good implementation of multiple resolution support and fullscreen support in our Visual Basic 6 engine were failures. But with our new engine, this will a piece of cake in comparison.
- Social integration - This is up for debate, as I'm not a big fan of Facebook games for example. But this isn't out of the question.[/*]
Development speedWith Visual Basic 6, we were very limited to what kind of Jutsus and content we could create, because our system was very rigid and didn't give us the space to create a lot varied content, eg. epic jutsus & cutscenes. With this new engine, we'd be able to add new spells in a matter of minutes.Graphical implementation and coding entirely new systems are both also sped up significantly!
Nin Online ProjectV2
Without further ado, I present a little demo codenamed "ProjectV2", I did in two days to showcase the engine and to show you guys the potential of the world of Nin Online in HTML5. It's very basic, and lacks the most important feature yet, multiplayer tests will be here in the near future!
Version 0.0.1 ALPHA
Controls
Movement/CombatWASD/Arrow Keys - MovementShift - RunLeft Click/Z - PunchRight Click/X - Kick1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 - Hotkeys (Jutsu Selection for now)Middle Click (Scroll wheel pushed down) - Use JutsuScroll wheel - Zoom in/outG - Test deathHair/Eye & Other OptionsH - Hold down to change hair hueY - Hold down to change hair saturationN - Hold down to change hair brightnessJ - Press once to change hair styleE - Hold down to change eye hueF - Toggle FullscreenFinal conclusionHere's to a much brighter future for Nin Online! One that is sustainable in the long term and hopefully more popular!We understand this might feel like a set back, but in actuality, this might be the biggest and best update to ever happen to Nin Online yet, you'll see ;)I hope this restores some faith in Nin Online for you guys! I've been holding back the announcement for a later update, but I've been too eager to announce this myself.Regards,Rory
