fro
Haha none of this is true.
The fro Project (Or Drm Project if you prefer, or D'Arem, or one of the other various names it has fallen under over time) is an ongoing project to create both an online 2D game and a "home" for several close friends. Avoiding common design practices, fro is an attempt to change the way online gaming is viewed.
Highlights of the current version of fro:
- Custom design your ingame appearance by using any application that can output PNG images and uploading your "avatar" to your own webhost. This allows absolute freedom in what a player looks like, whether it is a mockup of a Final Fantasy character, or a giant penis with tentacle legs. Freedom is yours.
- Chat-oriented. No longer must people deal with horribly designed chat boxes created by some korean developers who only wanted to make a buck. Clickable URLs in the chatbox, custom defined colors for your text, clean logging of past conversations, and more. A heavy focus on an easy to use environment that will keep people from obtaining headaches.
- Relies upon IRC networks for communication. We've taken IRC to a new level, replacing the simple text-based chatrooms with an actual room in which players can walk around and interact. Using a network system optimized to work under IRC's text-based protocol, we are capable of easily sending any sort of game-related data between clients. Players are also given network freedom, allowing them to use any IRC networks to access the same worlds (But of course, not the same people on those worlds).
- Easy map design. Create maps and objects with your favorite image editor in various formats (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc) and place them in your world using easy XML instructions (At least until a WYSIWYG editor is created).
- Freedom. Relaxed moderation, no annoying word filters that activate when you try to say "assimilate". The freedom to do and say as you wish.1
Highlights of future versions of fro:
- Easier map design. No more XML, but a simple click and drag interface to place objects in a world and basic property sheets to edit object info.
- Dungeon Instancing. Battle side-by-side with your friends to the depths of randomly generated dungeons and worlds.
- Monster Capture. Capture creatures known as Lunem and use their power to help you achieve victory over your enemies.
- Personal Rooms. Easily collect objects and floorplans to build your own maps to share with friends, no art skills required!
- Avatar Creator. For those with little to no art skills, custom build an avatar using pre-existing parts and tools.
- Skill-Based Combat. Take down your enemies using a collection of abilities, each unique in its own way. Your abilities, not levels, define who are you as a player. Collect more, delete some, and create deadly combos.
- Interactive Environments. Move objects, flip switches, solve puzzles, destroy entire towns, do more than just talk to NPCs back and forth all day.
- Unique, story based questing. No more "Collect X of Y" or "Kill X amount of Y" masked in pages of text. Instead, feel as though you are actually part of the story, and capable of making real decisions, rather than simply a creature-killing errand boy.
- Abstract Worlds. A world structure unlike the common online rpg. A world where everything you knew about reality no longer applies. After all, who wants an average world in an game?
- Cross-Platform. Future plans are to port the client to both Linux and Mac.
1 This, of course, excludes any actions that are deemed harmful to the clients of other players. Such as exploiting bugs to cause channel crashes. Events such as these are not tolerated and can result in rarely-used full network bans.