[ElvenProgrammer]

Hi there I'm new here but I found this site very interesting and useful. Very good idea =)

Now let's come to "The Mana World"

http://themanaworld.sf.net

The Mana World is a try to create a big MMORPG in the style of old SNES rpgs, mainly inspired over "Secret of Mana". Some features also recall of "Ragnarok Online", especially because we're using eAthena as our server. (eAthena is a RO server emulator with lot of features: guilds, player vs player, pets, npcs, shops, skills, trading system, warps, partys, quests, weddings, weather, and many many many others). In practice we're creating a new client and the development is going on quickly this way since all the features are already implemented by the server. The client actually works on Windows, Linux and MacOS (the MacOS one still have some minor problems).

We have a small but willing development team and a great community of fans that is growing every day: we have more than 130 registerd users in the forum, 200+ users registered in the server, and an average of 150 page views/day.

Here come some screenshots: they're a little outdated, but should give you an idea of what's going on:




We're open to any suggestion! So, what are you waiting for? Come on join us.

Assistance required (We're looking for help) :
- Pixel artists (the main request it's for tilesets)
- Programmers
- Composers
- And obiouvsly players! =)

If you like the prject and are interested or need more infos, feel free to contact me at:

email: eugenio.favalli@aliceposta.it
Forum: http://themanaworld.sourceforge.net/phpBB2
MSN: umperio@users.sourceforge.net
AIM: ElvenProgrammer
ICQ: 274664846
IRC: irc.freenode.net #manaworld (Here you can find a lot of friends who will help you)
Phone number: well I won't give you.

Hope to see you soon ;)

ElvenProgrammer
The Mana World Development Team

[Bjorn]

A very nice project, I hope you won't regret taking me on your programmers team (and of course also the other way around :-)).

I'm helping the guys to switch to SDL and some other libs, away from Allegro. I'll also be helping them with adding support for Tiled. The project is in simple walk-around and chat stage at the moment, but I think it has a good potential.

[ElvenProgrammer]

Check out this new update, The Mana World is now 0.0.11

0.0.11 (3 April 2005)
- Added new maps, tiles and monsters
- Added walking with mouse by clicking where you want to go
- Added diagonal walking with keyboard
- Added a choice dialog of how many items to drop
- Added handling of window close button
- Added config option for GUI opacity (guialpha)
- Added warp between two maps
- Changed chat entry behaviour to focus on enter and defocus on send message
- Upgraded to Guichan 0.3.0
- Chat now appears in a window
- Beings now walk a lot smoother
- Completed support for new map format (collision, compression)
- Fixed problem where players would often turn up with black hair
- Fixed not showing other players dead when they die
- Fixed multiple crashes in being path handling
- Fixed initial starting position for new player characters

And please update your bookmarks to http://themanaworld.org

[Roots]

I'm just curious, why did you guys start with Allegro in the first place, and why did you decide to go through the trouble of migrating to SDL? I'm interested to hear the story. :)
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Hero of Allacrost, a 2D RPG in development

[ElvenProgrammer]

Well I think Bjorn can answer this question better than me, he was the one who proposed the migration.

[Bjorn]

Hmm SDL was preferred because of greater familiarity, availability and portability. It also looks like a more stable library, both in terms of bugs and in terms of API. SDL has much better cooperation with many other libraries, where most Allegro add-on libraries are badly maintained and have a very low availability. Lastly, SDL provides a simple wrapper to start using OpenGL.

[Roots]

Yeah I figured it was something like that. I remember a forum post at GameDev downplaying Allegro for SDL.....here it is. I know SDL pretty well but not Allegro, but even so I think it was a good decision for you guys to switch. I check your site every now and then so keep up the good work. :)
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Hero of Allacrost, a 2D RPG in development