MCRPG

Screenshot from the MCRPG. Version was during Sofox's development and the dialog box was cleaned, moved and made alpha for the next release version. The picture is good for showing the popular coffee machine behind the logo injoke.

(Not Multiplayable Character Role Playing Game which seems to have become very popular since the events that spawned this)

The MCRPG was an attempt to make a online RPG for the Moogle Cavern community. It reached a somewhat playable state with the functionality of a graphical chat room in addition to full movement but fell by the wayside over time.

History

It all started when an MCer (who?) asked for a free MMORPG he could play. They were suggestions thrown at him, but most were either not that good or didn't meet his taste. In frustration, he declared that the only thing left to do was for the community to make one. The idea caught the imagination of the community and was discussed on the thread and forum about the idea of making Moogle Cavern themed online RPG. It was around this time that the original MCer said that he had actually been thinking of a normal MMORPG, not a Moogle Cavern one, but admitted that it was out of his hands and there was not much he could do to add to it anyway, so he bowed out of most of the remaining events.
It was Elliotro who made the first focused effort to create the MMORPG. Buoyed up by the initial enthusiasm of the community, he spent a school break and a lot of hours in developing the first version of the MCRPG in C++ using Allegro for graphics and other games functionality and libNET for network functionality. The coding was largely a sole effort; Elliotro had some offers of help but nothing much came of them. One MCer outright refused any help due to already having helped Ellitro on a platform engine (Bluecup) that Elliot had abandoned at an early stage. However, despite initially programming alone, from the beginning many other MCers involved themselves in it and helped out in other areas. A few MCers contributed sprite sets such as for Blues, SonKnuck, and the character Zeh which was created by Keith Stack, giving a variety of controllable characters. A starting level was created by Sofox that had a MC Cobalt colour scheme and contained computers, vending machines, a bar, a few doors, stairs and a pool with a Kulock fountain. (The fountain later inspired a piece of scenery in one of Kulock's MC Dash strips. Also, this level may have come at a later stage as Sofox used a level editor that Elliotro may have released only at or after the first game release).
The first version was a playable demo where you could move around on the scrolling screen, others could join you, see you walk around, and chat. It had an intro screen (Ellitro had actually released an early version of the title screen) that included some nice transition effects, a character select screen (using the community created avatars) and played music from a Sonic Advance game. There were a few bugs in the gameplay and sometime the network stuttered, but it was a good basis and Elliotro intended to bring it further, removing bugs, improving things, adding minigames, etc. There was even a SAGE (Sonic Amature Games Expo) page put up for the game hosted by Kulock on mooglecavern.com in which some details of the game were put up and Elliotro made some unavoidable nose jokes on it.
It was around here that Sofox was interested in becoming involved. Having already created a level and looked at the Bluecup source code which Elliotro had posted on the message board, he contacted Elliotro and obtained the source code, for the game, server and level editor. Irritated by some of the minor bugs, Sofox first wanted to just fix a bug where you couldn't turn to face a wall you were standing beside. He fixed it, sent the required code changes to Elliotro, and began working on more changes. This would be the start of many changes, fixes and additions that included cleaner animation and the ability to change levels. He also added improved collision detection and an editor to automatically add it to the level. He also made another editor that would allow users to add descriptions and dialog boxes to pieces of static scenery that would pop up when someone faced them and pressed the action button.
With the level switching ability, Sofox was able to add levels from other MCers including Ruby and have the characters switch between them. However, this was all implemented on the client, and Sofox needed to work on the server before he was ready to really release the changes. He also noticed that libNET was a problem as it used UDP which (as Sofox learned) made it unreliable for data transfer and was the reason behind some chat strings getting missed.
Despite talking with him a lot, Sofox realised that even the first set of changes he sent Elliotro had never been implemented in his version of the source code and Elliotro seemed to not be making any changes himself. Finally, Elliotro admitted to Sofox that he'd lost interest and had stopped working the the MCRPG.
Sofox wanted to continue it, and claimed on the board that the idea was too cool to die. He made one or two releases of his version himself. The idea was to expand it, improve it, and add levels and minigames such as multiplayer Connect 4 and the Excite QTE game Ellitro had worked on and also given Sofox the source code for. In working on it, he decided to create is own multithreaded TCP/IP network library to support the MCRPG but despite working hard and developing it, when it failed to work properly, Sofox had a big problem trying to debug a multithreaded application and lost motivation (much further on he discovered it was a rather simple fix). Sofox also decided at one point to remake the MCRPG in SDL, making it more stable and include an integrated level editor instead of several separate ones, but that unfortunately did not come to much. To date, there has been not much activity on the MCRPG, and with the end of the Moogle Cavern, the site and backdrop that provided much of the inspiration and setting to the game has been lost and another blow struck against its development.

When it WAS up

The MCRPG client program required a server to be run on someone's computer so it could connect to it. Since people have a tenancy to turn off their computer, the service was inherently unreliable with long gaps though Ellitro used a free dns service (access of which he also gave to Sofox) to ensure he didn't have to send out a new version every time the server location changed. At first Ellitro was responsible for having someone run the server (such as during SAGE), but later Sofox took this job by default and wanting the game to be played more, he would often would just look at the AIM list to see who had been on their computer the longest and ask them to run it. Scott (???) was one of the people who agreed.
When it was up, there were some amusing times. A fun event involved Sofox and Wizard Moogle just messing about and having fun, walking around the room and pretending to interact with various aspects of the room such as getting drunk at the bar or messing with the vending machines. At one stage, Wizard role played pulling out the electrical cable on one of the computers and ironically was disconnected from the game at the same time. Due to a bug, on reconnection he found a copy of himself still where he had been by the computer. A whacky adventure involving clones and multiple instances of the game running on the same computer ensued. Eventually, Chibigoku joined and and through all the interaction, we pretended to offer him a hamburger. Things continued for a while before eventually being wrapped up.
The aftermath of this event involved Chibi making a post on the forum demanding a hamburger, a reference which only two other people on the board would have gotten (still a good number for a MC/SER topic), and an attempt on the behalf of Sofox to chronical the event in comic form[1].