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[Sensei]

With right clicks in Java, you make a listener for clicks on the window, and that gives you an event object to work with- just X and Y coordinates I think. In the event method you'd create a menu object originating from the point of the right click, and use the coordinates to determine what object was clicked and therefore what the menu should contain.

[squeakyReaper]

I meant Javascript, which is (confusingly enough) a different thing.  More or less completely unrelated...  kinda irritating to reference them.  xD  Simple enough in java, yeah.

[Sensei]

Well in that case, I wouldn't know. I' probably know more about game design than code anyway.

[squeakyReaper]

I hardly know either, so the notes are very appreciated.  My "idol", Squidi, has started taking a liking to Javascript; didn't know the difference until a few weeks ago.  Thanks for the feed back if I sound hostile, by the way.  Don't want to sound like a jerk, text just makes people seem angry some times.  xD

The note about "how does that benefit from multiplayer" brings up a thought.  How "multiplayer" should it be?  Towns are obviously a multiplayer thingy- trading, wars, commanding units (Perhaps squads of adventurers in small, tactical skirmishes?) and just showing off wealth.  But Adventurers?  Sure you can party with other people, but a lot of battle styles don't lend themselves to multiplayer experiences.  A Roguelike adventure, or Ultima (first person dungeon), or even XCom-y in a way...  Or should it be tailored to partying it up with other people?  Dunno, what do you guys think?

[freeformschooler]

squeaky you are about the least hostile newer dev I've seen. Anyway, for multiplayer, the game time you're wanting sounds like it would be better if players were distanced from each other -- as in, they didn't play directly with each other but rather helped each other out or interacted with each other in an abstracted yet meaningful way. Especially for a Javascript game.

But then, I don't really know. TomeNET did alright as a multiplayer roguelike.

[squeakyReaper]

Chatting, forums and whatnot are good places to interact directly...  but it's kind of awkward to sync up everyone for adventuring.  "Hey guys, want to raid?"  "Okay, but can you do it at 2 in the morning?  I'm busy all day."  Want to avoid that sort of thing, eheh.  I'll look up TomeNET, but I think I can get the jist of it by just the name (Tales of Middle Earth that has more than one player, waiting for other people- sounds cool so I'll try downloading it after a google search).

[freeformschooler]

That's actually one of the downsides, to me. You don't wait for other people -- the game is turn based but turns happen when you're interactive or not. Making key macros is basically the only way to survive later dungeon levels. It's like ToME the MMO. Mind you it's nothing like the completely amazing ToME of today, but like the last ToME, which I did enjoy a whole lot.

[Sensei]

I like the Haven and Hearth style, where players wander and can group together informally if they so choose, or not. What I don't like about HnH is, like Travian (I think, I haven't played Travian), everybody is out to get you (mostly steal from you in HnH).

I really like building games like HnH or Wyrm, but they often tend to be unholy grindy.

There's also a setting I'd been considering for some time (although it lends itself better to a full 3D MMO than anything you pop up in your browser):

It's circa 1920, and the world has never been circumvented- the pacific ocean having never been crossed. A new continent is discovered, by way of travel west of America, which is wholly unwalked by man except for savages, and has rumors abound of gems, gold, oil and treasures from ancient civilizations. The countries of Europe and America scramble for control of the new continent, bringing with them renewed hostilities from the recently-ended great war, turning the continent into a new wild west. Aside from brigands and military foes, players are likely to face every threat that a movie has ever attributed to a mysterious deserted island- dangerous animals, dinosaurs (or other fantastic ancient creatures), cannibals, hostile flora, floods, volcanoes, booby traps, unspoken horrors and of course, fellow profit-seekers. Also Japan, which remains with closed borders to the west, is rumored to have a hold on the continent's enigmatic west coast. Most equipment comes from the east by dirigible or boat and there is enormous profit to be made in establishing mines and factories, which will produce goods far cheaper than having them shipped through America.

Players would enter the game on the east coast of the continent, as a soldier, mercenary, college professor, entrepreneur or desperado. They would be able to explore and take work from NPCs who are either from America/Europe or natives. A player's ability to get to the more dangerous and rewarding parts (farther from the shore) of the continent is dependent on their access to vehicles, and eventually on establishing camps (either as a guild or "alone" with an NPC nation/corporation) to refuel them, and to be returned to when the player is "killed" (or rather, knocked out). For clans, it is profitable to build mines or other establishments in the wilderness, but they must be able to defend them.

[squeakyReaper]

Going to strum up some thoughts in the spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• I do like the setting very much Sensei.  "A new world was discovered" is a good way to get at it, especially with my preferred punk settings.  Good show old chap, even.  I might go either alternative history, or alternative world that has a lot of similarities to Earth instead of straight historical fiction.  After all, if we could have built strange freakish contraptions, we would have by now...  unless the new country thing has some sort of Green Rocks that lets it happen?  That could be a good reason for the whole world chasing the west, actually.
• I do like wilderness in the survival sort of way, but I like communication.  I felt a strong bond to the others when I played Haven and Hearth, but only to those I was actually in a village with...  the community as a whole only really interacted on a cutthroat basis.
• Forming a town on the frontier could follow a process along the lines of this:  Survey area, find reason to found location, get investors to back you (Player investors, NPC frontier investors or ones back from Europe/Americas), hire NPCs to build upon it.  From there, adventure around or fight off early enemies to hold the location.
• "Bang! Howdy", a game by the makers of "Puzzle Pirates", had a system I'd describe as "fast paced xcom" for their battles.  Maybe I could do something like that?  Go check out a video, I can't provide a link at the moment sadly.
• Co-operation is suggested by pushing into the frontier.  When the game is young, there's a cap on how far west you go.  As I update the game, the cap raises...  but very dangerous creatures and people lurk in the new found areas.  People have to co-operate to throw up stations and forts in order to stake their early claims in to the new world.
• Competition is pushed by wanting to be the first to get up in the new world.  New resources have your name on it, but you need to be there to grab it.  Also, if the market on copper is staked by everyone equally, there's not much profit...  but if you hire some people to trouble some supply lines, you can get a good foot hold on that market.
• Contraptions could be fun to build and whatnot.  Perhaps you could have your owned town/s build a "mad science lab", and influence your local spark to whip up some new stuff.  Or even be your own mad scientist, mandate the collection of some materials, and build a new fancy lightning gun or mechanical servant with the things!

[Sensei]

The 'into the west' setting, as I described it at least, would have radios. If you're going steampunk, it would be fair to have a more elaborate telegraph setup than ever existed in real life.

With the earlier idea (everyone explores a wilderness that either resets when it's full or is procedurally generated) you could, for example, allow people to build spacecraft once Earth is full, or have separate continents be separate servers and give the option to start a new one from scratch (perhaps with some qualities of your choosing) as a reward for the best player(s) on the previous continent.

[squeakyReaper]

Sometimes the time period escapes me, eheh.  To be honest, most of your communications can just be "You message your contact in New Asland.  He responds with {stuff}".  As long as there's some form of decent ranged communication.  Imma start small on the whole continent and generating world thing.  I have no problem with great ambition, and great things come from it...  but I'll work my way from the bottom instead of from the top.

[Sensei]

Your first objective (I think) should be to establish the basic camera and user interface- be it scrolling, top-down, isometric or 3d, and how characters will move/exist in the world if the camera is going to be tied to them. But it turn those are based on the sort of experience you want to give the player!

Maybe it should be isometric, and let the player zoom in for walking/fighting/interacting and out for building, if you want city-scale building.

[squeakyReaper]

Isometric views are always fun.  I'd say that the big decisions, especially town related, would be in javascript and clickable menus though.  The adventuring would be what's graphical.  Getting interface stuff thrown up though is an important first step for actively developing the thing, yeah.  I'll try and scribble some ideas later, then start to...  actually learn java.  I know flash, though right click context options are too important to stick with flash.  xD

[Sensei]

Ooh! I know Java!

(Although to be honest, I've only done mouse-able menus in C#. Shouldn't be TOO hard to learn though, and I can help with large other swaths of the game that are done in Java too. If you'd like.)

[squeakyReaper]

Hehe, well I know C#.  I've heard a lot of jokes about it being Microsoft's attempt at Java, but I don't know if they're carbon copies.  I'm more interested in the server things anyways, getting the PHP and SQL to work right.  I actually have fun fiddling with tables...  there must be something wrong with me.  xD

I now have 60$ to work with, so I'm going to start headhunting for a nice looking server thing.  Before that, though, I'll try to get something simple on my desktop using XAMPP.  Thanks to the people of Bay12Prog who told me about it, btw.  Forgot specific names, but it's been a really nice tool.