2.0 - Development Continues

Hello everyone, Valyarok here! I'm sure many of you have been both confused and curious regarding the current state of Mysteria Online. I'm hoping this development log will answer any questions or concerns you may have regarding the server and it's development. As well as explaining my long absence, what work has been done in the last few months, and laying out a development roadmap of MO's future. With you all being at the core of the staff team, and most having been here since Mysteria's inception - I tried to make this log and my explanations as transparent as possible.

Where I've Been

As many of you know, I worked at a hospital network on a very brutal swing-shift schedule. Most nights or mornings I would come home completely drained, both physically and mentally. For a year, I lived in a painful cycle of work, sleep, and repeat. My days off were mostly spent attempting to recover and mentally prepare myself for the next 4 weeks of the scheduled rotation. Early on it felt manageable, and I spent most of my days off doing what work I could on the server. Though as time went on, my energy levels continuously depleted, while my feelings of stress skyrocketed. Support from upper-management was nonexistent, and I felt isolated from a majority of the Systems Analysts who we were expected to rely on due to their abrasive and combative personalities. Our hospital network had so many issues in our systems & procedures that it would drive me and other fellow Microcomputer Associates mad. It was painfully obvious that administration put profits above patient care, and employee retention, which sickened me to my core. Our turnover rate was incredibly high (especially for my position), to the point where they even changed the application requirements of my position from needing a college degree - to only needing a HighSchool diploma. At this point, I knew it was time to finally bite the bullet and leave. The culmination of all these factors led me to realize I was not only now wasting the degree I had painstakingly earned, but also compromising my health and personal values.

Throughout the beginning of 2024, I had many conversations with my girlfriend about the crisis I was gradually undergoing. I knew I needed change, and so did she. I applied and interviewed with various companies while still working, but could unfortunately never make it past the final round of interviews. Ultimately - this led to me making the hard decision to resign from my position in late July. I had decided it would be better to solely focus on job searching and interview prep. Despite it being one of the scariest and most uncertain periods of my life, taking such a huge risk would end up paying off immensely.

I interviewed with multiple companies, and was given 2 offers. The offer I accepted, was as a Systems Analyst - Associate at the largest hospital networks in my state. Though the hospital I will solely be responsible for is small and located in a rural community. I'll be working on a standard 9-5 schedule, with the only stipulation being that I'm on-call and would need to report to the facility in the event of a major IT issue/outage. With a major salary increase from my last position, normal working hours, and still being able to make a positive impact in the healthcare industry - saying I was ecstatic about the offer would be a massive understatement. The colleagues I met during my panel interview, as well as those I met on-site during my health screening were all wonderful and hospitable people. I could already tell that this position would be such a vast improvement from my prior experience. I'm overwhelmingly excited about this opportunity, and will be starting on 10/08/2024.

Now that all that is out of the way, I'd like to start leading into the impact this has on Mysteria Online using the list below:

Personal Health: No more burnout, stress, or lack of sleep from work to impact my passion for this project. I'll now be able to keep development progress steadily moving forward.

Time Management: With a normal work schedule, I'll be able to develop Mysteria much more actively than before. Thus I can now begin to properly utilize my Notion productivity system. As well as our dedicated PMT (Trello Board).

Salary Increase: This will allow me the financial means to secure many new assets, advertising, artists, and so-forth. Overall boosting the quality of our server resources (including staff team compensations).

Recruitment: With development in full swing, we can now begin to ramp up staff team recruitment once again. Gathering talented individuals across the MC community!

What I've Done

Despite my long absence, work has continued on the server whenever I had the energy or time available to do so. There are countless new features, plugins, furnitures, cosmetics, and much more that have been added in the last 6-7 months. You'll notice our new server MOTD is labeled as Dev Version 2.0. We have upgraded from version 1.0, and now have many of the core foundational systems implemented on Mysteria Online. Once again, I've compiled a list below that showcases each feature that has been implemented.

Cosmetics: Spawn building with walk-in wardrobe, and NPC that will link to cosmetic store page on our website.

Auction House: Fully functional AH system, with custom GUI and dedicated building at spawn for easy access.

Custom Fishing: Over 237 unique fish to be caught, and sold. This system includes skills, tournaments, and a wide variety of choices to either gut, sell, weigh, etc. the fish you catch for various rewards or fishing exp.

Jobs: Players can choose one of 13 different jobs. Each offering money, skills, etc. for completing related tasks.

Casino: Players will be able to visit the Casino building at spawn and gamble via various mini-games using casino chips purchasable with in-game currency. This utilizes a fully custom GUI for each game as well! Examples of mini-games are: Minesweeper, Dice, Lottery, Darts, Poker, Roulette, and many more!

Pets: Will eventually allow players to use redeemable pet tokens to unlock new companions! (Note: These tokens will be earnable both in-game through events or boss drops, as well as via our store).

Furniture: Players can visit the furniture store at spawn to purchase new home decor. Purchasable items include custom paintings, graffiti, tables, chairs & couches, carpets, and much more!

Website: As you've already noticed, our website received a massive revamp from it's first iteration. This website was fully coded by me, with a focus on having a clean and minimalistic design. Some sections such as the Guides and Store are still a WIP. With the foundation of the site fully reworked, it will be far easier to expand and improve upon it as time passes.

Custom Survival World + Mobs: Lastly, our custom survival system is at the core of the Mysteria Online player experience. We have countless custom biomes, each having unique structures and terrain generation capabilities. Within all biomes players will be able to discover a wide array of custom mobs. These mobs vary in rarity, spawn conditions, and difficulty. With more challenging enemies offering better rewards for being defeated. Which in turn can be sold at the designated Market Vendor in spawn for the biome the mob was located in. For now, we have mobs split up into 4 types of locations/vendors. Forests, Caves, Arctic, and Desert

Overall, it's worth mentioning that the most important thing is that all features mentioned can and will be improved with each new development release. I still have plans to implement dungeons, bosses, and other unique mini-games and events as time goes on. But for now, I'd like to keep the scope of our project smaller, manageable, and achievable. This way it won't seem as if we're stuck in development limbo - where there's constantly something else we want to add or change before release. Being a solo developer, I've realized that I simply do not yet have the capacity or resources available to achieve certain goals for Mysteria in a timely manner. A great example of this is with our pixel art, where I've had to painstakingly edit and create over 20+ new NPC tags, rank tags, furniture assets, etc. using the Aseprite program myself. As we launch the server, and our team recruitment goes up beforehand - we can start looking into allocating resources and time towards these larger-scale features. But for now, I'd like to keep things simple - and spend time achieving small goals rather than large unattainable ones. This way, in the future we will be able to deliver smaller yet higher quality development releases for our community to enjoy. Which improve upon systems we already had set in place. While in the background, still being able to grind away at larger impacting, less frequent development releases.

I believe this approach to development will keep us all more motivated in the long run. As we can actively gather community feedback, and make necessary changes where they're needed in a timely manner.

What The Future Holds

I'll try my best to wrap this last section up as succinctly as possible. I'm sure the future of Mysteria will hold many challenges, roadblocks, and adversities to overcome. Though I hope it becomes a rewarding and exciting experience for all of us who are part of the staff team. Now that I have a fresh and healthy work-life balance, I know the impact it will have on Mysteria's overall success will be immensely positive. As mentioned earlier, I will soon begin re-opening and ramping up our recruitment efforts for the staff team. While also keeping our Trello board active on a daily basis. This way, all of you can actively see the status of what's being worked on, what's been completed, or what we still have yet to do. I will primarily be looking out for Developers, Builders, Moderators, and Artists. So if you have any friends or know anyone who would be a good fit for our team, please feel free to send them our way!

As I've said countless times before, I do not expect a certain level of necessary activity out of anyone here. I'm sure that my first week of work in my new position will be filled with disarray as I get my bearings. Despite this, I'll do my best to continue these daily dev logs, and encourage you all to track our dev progress on the Trello board. If any of you have any questions for me, please don't hesitate to reach out!