When I had the opportunity to work on a solo Flash AS3 simulation for one of my programming classes, I immediately came up with the idea of working on something for a MMORPG as this is the area I am most passionate and knowledgeable about. Rather than work on the same things as others might, I completely avoided subjects such as battle systems for example, in order to produce a simulation that no one else would ever have in their portfolio.

Additionally, trade-skills are one of my favorite aspects of MMORPGs and they are also in desperate need of innovation in my opinion. While I have ideas for other trade-skills, I felt mining has a lot of hidden potential.

My goal was simple; to create a fun and innovative mining system that was based on learning and skill rather than luck and time. If you take a look at many of the mining systems available to players, they are nothing more than simple fetch quests based on luck. Players search for ore deposits, click to use a pickaxe, and depending on their luck, they will receive ore.

Now this was fine 10+ years ago when it was first introduced with Ultima Online, but we have not seen any innovation in this area (or most of the other trade-skills for that matter) at all. I had the vision in my mind of what I felt would not only be interesting to players, but also be fun. It’s more about the journey than the reward at the end, and this is what I hope to showcase in my prototype.

What Went Right

1. My concept was easily adaptable to Flash AS3

Although it doesn’t feature a 3D cave environment, characters, or a true MMORPG interface, the system itself was able to be designed and built in Flash relatively quickly, and also function to my exact requirements. I was really impressed with the power of AS3 during my time on this project, and I feel that as long as you allow for some exceptions, you can prototype just about any game system idea you can think of in Flash. In the end, I found out that my idea could work quite well as a social gaming app that works with an existing MMOG, which can potentially bolster my self-marketing efforts as a result.

2. Working with simple code provided me with great results

Being the first time I truly programmed a game with AS3, I worked as simple as possible in order to avoid getting stuck or in over my head. I think this was probably one of the best choices I made, as I was able to do everything I wanted with code that is not very complicated at all.

3. I planned ahead to allow for future versions with completely new features

Planning ahead is extremely important for game design because if you leave some room for additional ideas, you can add in what you want in the future. Many times game developers add in game systems that are not original from the start, and because of this they are essentially stuck with it until they come around to creating an all new system and figure out how to get it to work with the rest of the game.

Rather than create extra work for the entire development team, its better to plan ahead and start off with something you know is both fun and innovative, and definitely allow for future additions that can be added seamlessly (hopefully) to the game engine code.

Thanks to that planning, my second area was much easier to create and implement, and I was able to add all of the additional features I intended to. Having multiple and separate .AS files for each area allows for the same base gameplay, with any new additions you can think of as long as you implement them correctly.