Happy New Year!!! First log on of 2015

Happy belated New Year from here too!

And as always, thanks to Super_merlin and Steve for updating the copyright notice... lol

Here's a great show about game design:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCPcn-Q5nKE&list=PLB9B0CA00461BB187&index=34

cool video - this is definitely one area that MR has room for improvement

Megaman4ever: Not a problem :)

I'm now a senior in high school, desperately waiting for April to tell me where I'll be going to college. I hope everyone's doing well.

I just tried reading this thread from the top. I was definitely twelve years old, lol.

I last attempted such a thing around a year ago... Truly a trial for one's sanity.

Okay...

It's so cool to hear how the twelve year olds who played this game are now going to college. When I made the games I was 26-29 I think. I didn't actually intend them to be for "kids" I thought they would appeal to other people like me who were bored at work and wanted effectively an Amiga game in a browser. I guess they actually DID appeal to people like me just younger versions. I'Be just turned 40 this year, got a young family and a career that seems to be progressing nicely. But this site is always on the list to "return to when I get a chance".

Back when sites like Bonus, sess and ArcadeTown were around, and Random Thoughts was still a big deal, the young "gaming generation" didn't have much of a choice on the internet, while at the same time the amount of games was often overwhelming. However, most free online games lacked quality or polish, and in such an enviroment MR1 really stood out in being novel and most importantly fun.

At least, that's the kind of impression I have. It's also very highly likely that I just didn't know where to look, but as I recall, back then homepages were all the rage and most of the current big communities were just starting out.

That's my memory too. There was no Facebook or even MySpace back then. Online games tended to be quite limited and I reme thinking I wanted to make a "proper" game. However things have moved on a lot since then and the quality of modern online games is staggering to me.

Especially with the advent of HTML5 and Unity, some really amazing things have been coming forth in the realm of online gaming, huh. The extent to which social gaming has grown into is also very commendable, even though they generally copy each other and often lack depth.

I recently checked out Ludum Dare, and was kinda surprised to find that many games are made using Game Maker. I recall that Yo Yo Games bought it, but looks like there's a possibility to compile Game Maker games into HTML5 now... Sounds pretty nifty. Sure, there are a bunch of game development libraries for traditional programming as well, but GM always astonished me with how powerful and quick to use its simple drag-and-drop design is.

If I remember right, I was actually nine when I first stumbled on MR on Bonus. I failed miserably at the first one, but MR2 was absolutely fantastic. I waited until I got an email account when I entered sixth grade to make an account, but before then, I was always super excited to get to a computer after school each Friday to see the Big Friday Update.

It's Fun to remember such times as those which have passed so quickly.

> It's so cool to hear how the twelve year olds who played this game are now going to college


Graduating, actually!

... and I think I'm going to graduate twice this year, once from mechanical engineering for a BEng in june, then again in November with a BSc in Computer Science :)

Fantastic!! Congratulations!!

So there's actually been a bit of an update since then. I found out Wednesday that I've been advertised into none other than Harvard University, which is absolutely completely insane. I can definitely say that The Metal Box was really instrumental in exposing me to new ideas when I was that awkward little middle schooler. It was always a place to have fun but great conversations with fantastic people. I really do love this site.

That's amazing! I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors!

Also... Hey everyone!

Hi.

Omg !! That is just astounding! Brilliant! Amazing! Well done and congratulations!

Let us all know how it goes, what its like, when we can all come visit etc :)

Although things are much more quiet these days, it still amazes me that the membership system and Suggestions DB have been around since 2004!

Yes the time has flown. 11 years!

Even now, it feels like a fairly modern system, the UI is clear and having plenty of features for managing the suggestions... I was always wondering what you used to create the SDB and the scaled-size "most popular" -icons on the front page? Parts of it seem to be php, at least.

Wow! the comments though... March to June to July...

I tend to check back almost daily, though! :)

I check by at least monthly

Yeah Sounds about right.

I check whenever I can. It's been a while. Thanks for compliments on the UI (or "UX" as they're calling it these days).

Everything is done in PHP, html and css. There is not much javascript as it was to-be-avoided during most of the period this site was being made. lol seems funny to think that now.

So yes the scaling icons are done in php based on how many views each page has.

Just upgraded to windows 10. Seems good so far anyone have any thoughts on it?

After Windows 8 happened I haven't had any thoughts regarding Windows apart from "don't upgrade from seven" - what do you feel like are the major upsides?

...And I wonder whatever happened to Windows 9.

I liked 8, and 10 seems fine.

The changes are all to things I dont really notice, considering I mostly am using my computer through a command line, sublime text, or chrome.

I wouldn't say there are major upsides. It's just that the messiness of windows 8 feeling like two operating systems in conflict is gone. In other words it's more like windows 7 lol.

I still prefer Linux mint though. :)

Through the past few years, I've sort of switched back to using Windows. I do miss Linux quite a bit, but the convenience of Windows became too tempting as I got busy. Also, my Surface Pro 3 is seriously the best college computer I can imagine. It's fantastic having a digitizer and stylus so that I can write and draw, while also having a keyboard to type.

Hey everyone! It's been awhile.

I'm an Uncle now, and it's amazing! My older brother and sister-in-law had a little girl this August. They both work so I've been helping them take care of her for about a month now, it's so much fun!!

Anyway, I thought I'd pop in share that, and see how everyone else is doing.

The cycle of life indeed is very amazing, to say the least!

Well, I've recently contracted some lovely pneumonia. It's been less than pleasant, but on the plus side, it is making me miss my physics midterm. No complaints about that!

pneumonia Hope you get past that soon.

And Whoa An Uncle you say Hobbes Cool!

Oh windows 10, I shall await the day I finally decide to download you (which will probably be the day before it starts to cost something). I see you are all in rather deep discussions, so pardon me simply dropping in unannounced. University tends to make me forget to say hello to the old chaps over here.

It still blows my mind how a bunch of elementary school kids are suddenly all in universities or jobs. Or both.

I mean I was like 12 or 13 when I first joined this community.

Ah those were the days. Getting into fights with firestorm.

"like i said i blocked up the hole to hell so im not in it and i made one underneath u so ur in spam hell and i closed it up"

- The master of wizards, 2009



Yeah those were the days.

And like, who the heck goes along with a lame username like "megaman4ever", anyway?? :D

Yea, good ol twisted logic that didn't make any sense if you understood any actual logic.

Congratulations on becoming an Uncle, Hobbes!

Thinking about getting an Apple Watch - any thoughts?

Far too expensive for too little gain in terms of long-lasting happiness is my opinion regarding most Apple products. In five years, there will be all sorts of knock-offs anyway, and the price will be cut in roughly half.

Well, I'd say that being content or even thrilled about consumer tech that's considered outdated is much better in a lot of ways than purchasing every new widget that comes out.

Well at least those google glasses are not half bad.

Not that I am ever going to buy them unless required.

That's the exact same stance I had toward Facebook back in 2011, but look at me now, checking my messages at least twice per day!


Maybe one day I'll even be supportive of Apple in terms of investing in their products. The notion feels laughable now, but I guess you never know.

I think that it's a pretty awesome idea, but the implementations are still too young. We don't really know the best way to integrate wearable tech into our lives, and battery life is still a massive issue for phones, let alone a watch. I'm definitely excited to see where smartwatches go, but I'll pass for now.

And looking back, yeah, wow. I was in fifth grade when I joined this site. This community really had a huge impact on my life back in the day. It's pretty awesome that a few of us are still around, even if only intermittently.

Well I got the watch. I am delighted with it especially the heart rate monitor. I used to think Apple products were a waste of money as well but having kids is what changed my mind :)

Oh? I'd like to hear more about that, since it's most likely inevitable that one of these days a peer of mine will announce that he's getting married and the next thing you know they have kids. At that point, it might not be too far-off an idea for myself either :)

It comes down to time vs money. When I had more time to be interested in tech I liked Android - it was more flexible and I could play with it more. Not to mention that you can get decent android phones pretty cheap.

However, once the kids came along I suddenly found I had no time whatsoever for anything. So if the phone needed some attention, it just stayed like that. I also found that my particular phone was very slow getting into the camera which meant I missed shot after shot of the kids doing cute things. So I got iphone and haven't looked back.

Now, some of this is negated by the latest round of high end Android phones which may be even slicker and faster than an iphone. But I still think the iphone gives a more consistent experience, mine always stays responsive.

iphones are expensive, and when you look at the specs you wonder where the money is going but I think Apple focuses on the user experience rather than the pure specs. There may be a time when I move back to Android, but right now I'm happy with the Apple stuff I've got and I wouldn't mind a bit more :)

First, merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everyone!

Young developers always seem to dislike SAD, requirements engineering and documentation, and turn up their nose at concepts like domain modellin or TDD. Even though these methods ultimately are there to help define the user experience.

Based on your description, looks like courses such as Software Design and Engineering will literally pay off!

Now that school is on break, there's finally time to tinker with my own projects! Perhaps a neural network design tool... I have a base ready for the logic, but unfortunately the package structure is not working quite as intended. The code compiles and runs, but Eclipse has problems figuring out the visibility quirks. If you're interested, check it out on GitHub!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Today was a very proud day for me. My daughter (aged 3.5) played one of my games for the first time. She's into the Disney princesses so of course the game of choice was Rapunzel's Escape. To my amazement she actually liked it and we had a great time with it. She even got her actual Rapunzel doll up to the screen, willing it to grow it's hair like the character in the game. Hard to believe it's getting on for 11 years ago that I wrote that game.

Wow, that's awesome!

I wonder if in ten or twenty years someone will play the games I made as a wee lad back in 2002-2006... It still blows my mind that Steam actually has a bunch of games made with Game Maker nowadays.

That's incredibly awesome, steve! It makes me want to play it again when I'm on a computer that supports it next... it was maybe even more fun than Merlin's Revenge, at least when my gaming skills were less pro and beating the MRs required brute force and repetition.

It's really weird to post here, so much has changed and I think this might be the first forum I ever frequented. (can't remember the password for my original mr#) I still want to be a game developer, though.

By the way, this difficulty can be beaten:



I wonder, can you figure the strategy out? ;)

Another thing that I'm wondering about is that this is actually a Flash game, as well as is Lemony Snicket. How come?

And yes, I systematically tried different combinations to find the most difficult setting that is still possible to win at. This could be quite interesting as a two-player game, hm.

Silent as a ghost town.

...Well, a quick update on how life is going at my end:

Third year of CS studies behind me, I'm starting to feel more and more like an adult. Taking a more professional approach in my networking, I managed to land a summer job at a company producing high-speed database solutions for the food industries.

I've finally had the opportunity to study interesting courses and my motivation was through the roof all year long. Some of the things I did include software architecture design, computer graphics (rendering), business related things, working on some projects, sharpening my English and Japanese skills, etc. Having a bunch of programming experience behind me and a decent grasp on the basics, I thought that it was about time for more advanced subjects. :)

I'm also astonished at the great strides of AlphaGo and the AI community as a whole. Many players were saying that it will take 5-10 years before computers beat humans in Go, and it just suddenly happened. Will this be the case with when we cross the boundary of AGI as well? Dangerous but interesting times ahead, perhaps.

Finally, I also went through with the decision of quitting competitive gaming. My hands have hurt from sessions of excessive gameplay recently, and overall the feelings I get from tournaments these days are nostalgic rather than exciting. When faced with the choice of becoming #1 in whatever hot game of the year, or becoming #1 in developing applications that border the boundaries of human development, I think that it's clear that some sort of change was needed. I still enjoy board games though, especially in the play-by-mail format.

I would think that this is a fairly common transitional phase to go through for young adults in the modern age. Therefore, if the folks here have any comments, I'd be more than happy to hear them. :)

Guess that's it for now.

Signing off,
megaman4ever/mmKALLL

Well, if anyone stumbles around here, feel free to tell what you've been up to lately!

A quintuple post (or comment?), and nobody can stop me from doing it!

Went thought my old suggestions to see if I could find some of the old projects online; no dice, considering I used expiring links since they were alphas.

On a side note, I did stumble on a comment reminiscing the old good days. It's a thing of the past by now, but back in the day of 2010 we had that brief month of over 1000 comments each week (along with roughly a dozen suggestions)! It was insane, and of course I and many more read every single one. It still blows my mind when I think about that.

I wonder how things were in 2006 and 2007 when the SDB was new and fancy? Not that it still isn't one of my favourite web systems. :)

Anyone still around here? I got caught up with work and whatnot. Which apparently kept me away since before Christmas (Yikes).

How is everyone?

My oh my, I'm glad this site is still up. Merlin's revenge was one of my favorite games, still is. Made a new account just to say hello :) Seems the site has been a little more inactive as of late.

There was a crazy time a few years back when we had over a hundred new comments per day! A few things happened and gradually the influx of comments and suggestions became lower due to the development coming to a halt. There have been a few new cool things, such as Merlin Evolution and Merlin Created, though - be sure to check them out if you have the time!

The series is as great as ever :)

Hey guys! I've got my first year of college down, and for the summer I'll be teaching a bunch of ten and eleven year olds in low-income neighborhoods of Boston. I'm a bit terrified because children are terrifying, but as long as they survive, it should be good! It's kind of funny, as they're the same age that I was when I discovered MR. It's really crazy how quickly the time has gone.

Whoa, nice!

Hey! Nice to have old folks chime in every now and then :)

What are you studying / teaching?

I haven't formally declared, but I think I'm going to do a joint concentration in Computer Science and Linguistics. I remember this site actually inspiring to learn Python way back when I was twelve or so, and I'm happy to say that that passion hasn't died since. The summer camp I'm teaching it is mainly designed to combat summer learning loss, so I'm mostly teaching math and English, with some social studies and science on the side and a few games every now and then. Thankfully, none of my kids have died yet, so I'm calling it a success, haha.

Linguistics? That's an interesting combination to go with CS - although I've considered it myself as well!

Help! I can't play any games on this website. It just makes me download a .dcr file while i put into a browser and it just redownloads it again and doesn't work. HELP!!!

♪ ninja edit: omg, i haven't made a ninja edit in ages

Hi everybody!

I'm really glad you're all still around here; my exciting news is that I just moved to seattle, and am a week and a bit into working as a software engineer at Amazon!

I've also been biking and camping like crazy,which is incredibly fun.

CoolCharles207, I'm sorry to hear that you've been having problems. Unfortunately, the Adobe Shockwave plugin support has been made unavailable for Chrome and some other browsers.

There are several options; downloading Adobe's Shockwave site, downloading the game's .dcr, and then running it locally might be your best bet. Using Merlin Open to play custom maps (found from the Downloads page) is another option; it comes with all you need.

Unfortunately games like MR Evolution and Created most likely won't work like that, as they need to access the website.


♪, wow, it's been like, a year???!!??!?
Congratulations, being able to work at Amazon sounds awesome! Seems like you landed a big one. :)


As for myself, I came back from a month-long vacation in Japan. The trip was so fantastic that my current feelings regarding the same old Finland are quite mixed. I'll try to get some photos online at some point, but this week I'm loaded with both work and studies; it's going to be pretty busy, to say the least.

Everyone, if you still enjoy games, go play Undertale. It's overrated and overhyped, and many people have many opinions about it, yet it feels underrated and is an incredible game under the hood.

Being back to this site brings such memories :). I spent a decent amount of my youth here, and it is nice to see that people are still here, including a few names I recognize. I am even more glad that new games are on the site. It has been around 8 years since I logged on!

However, if we will recommend games, then I must recommend Dominions 4. It is a very detailed strategy game and has enough content to keep one entertained for many hours. It also includes multiplayer.

I also recommend not believing my review and seeing for yourself if you like it because the game is not cheap.

Looks like the game has very positive reviews on Steam, and it looks interesting based on the videos!

However, that price tag is definitely a bit high. I think I'll stick to the loads and loads of fantastic free games (like MR??!?) until they run out :)

Great to see all the comments and updates. Amazing to see people at university now and Super_merlin teaching in difficult areas. I take it you make the kids call you Mr. Super_merlin? :)

My second and final child is now 2 years old so we are "out of the baby zone". This is the first chance I've had to look at the site since he was born, the last time I did any work on the site was 2 years ago.

I am hoping (and for now it's only a hope, not a plan) that I will gradually start to able to do some things here again. It will never be fully back to the good old days because I have a full time job and family etc etc. But I am hoping to be able to do something...

It's time to drop shockwave. Actually it was time in 2002 but it's really definitely absolutely time now so any new games from me will be developed in JavaScript. So, I won't be looking to make any significant changes to Merlin's Revenge but rather start something new in js. JavaScript gives the best coverage without having to export or do anything fancy. If it runs on Firefox on Windows it will run anywhere. (No doubt that statement will be dis-proved over and over again lol.)

I am just curious, do either of you happen to have steam? I have it, but I am not certain how to link to my account without a risk of tearing down the flood gates that hold back an ocean of spam.

Just the other day, I was like "wow steve hasn't visited in over four months", and were already preparing a final referendum to rule them all:


Should http://themetalbox.com/ leave or stay in the Internet?

Those in favour of the exit often worry about other possible immigration problems. What would we do if there is a sudden abundancy in video game enthusiasts wishing to enter The Metal Box in order to play Merlin's Revenge?


In all seriousness, good to hear from you! Guess the baby zone is some serious business. :)

If you end up developing an open-source game in anything else than Lingo, let me know. I would love to join as a contributor and sharpen up my JS skills! Not to mention building up the contribution chart on GitHub! One can see the timing of my winter and summer vacations quite clearly from here, lol: https://github.com/mmKALLL/

As for Steam, I technically do have it, but very seldom play any games through it these days. Feel free to add me there; the nickname is "mmKALLL".

lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

I sent you an invite on steam, megaman4ever.

Got it, thanks! :)

Oh... Oh dear...




Looks like I opened some sort of Pandora's box here, folks.



Behold, my very own game website in image form, painstakingly handcrafted with the newest of new HTML1:





Well, that's pretty cool.

There are several points of interest here, I think. Considering that the website was made in 2006 at the age of 12, perhaps a few years after the homepage boom, it's pretty cool.

First off, these days I would rather use Game Maker than C++ for creating games. It seems like a very popular choice for building simple JS-based things recently - most likely the transpiling would not be able to handle anything of MR's scale, but maybe in a year or two even that might be feasible with some optimization. Either way, I'm glad to have actually made a lot of cool games (and learnt Java, and later a dozen of languages) than have spent years figuring out C++. :)


Grab the demo, except it's actually fuller than the full version? Pay what you want? Successful advertising much?


MR Fangame Kit was great. I played the old-but-surprisingly-not-terrible summoning spell fangame and woah, it was actually pretty decent. I wonder what my game-making buddy back from elementary school is doing these days; maybe I'll send the guy a message.


As for Chase Game, I wish all of my projects would be quickly done because of no uncovered bugs... ;)


Unfortunately my promise of weekly updates did not last for long, but making games back then was definitely a blast.

Guess this reminded me of why I enjoy programming in the first place? That it might not matter what it is that I'm developing, as long as it's really awesome to do it?

Steve, thanks for the inspiration and numerous kind words to the whole community along the years. Hopefully my next webpage will be as full of enthusiasm as this one. :)


By the way, turns out that there is now a tool to make old Game Maker 6.1 games work on 64-bit Windows machines: http://help.yoyogames.com/attachments/token/lsj0pmbzqeu64hf/?name=GM_Convert_Game.zip

I wonder if Hobbes had known if this was going to be the most popular suggestion in this site when he posted this.

Probably not.

*emerges from two-yearly check of whatever-happened-to-the-metal-box to actually say something for once*

My days is it weird to return to a childhood favourite and remember that everybody else's lives have moved on too...

Steve, congrats on kids! (perhaps slightly belated there)

It kind of seems like everybody's gone on to study techie things? Well, no exception here.

To join in with the update-fest: I'm not so focused on games and coding as I was back in the days when this place inspired me so much, but I've def carried on in the same kind of direction. Really enjoyed finally learning some programming while studying Engineering at uni (C++ - the teacher said that if we could learn that off the bat then we should get the knack of learning other languages as we need them). Just this summer graduated my masters degree in Information & Computer Engineering.

...and right now I'm kind of floating, having (for various complicated reasons) needed to take some time out. But applying for jobs in control engineering, so who knows I might have more to say in a while :P

Anyway that's me. Really cool to see some people still keeping this place active!

Hey everyone!
Just figured I'd drop in and see how everyone was doing.

I'm doing pretty much the same thing as the last time I popped in, working when I can and helping take care of my niece when I can't.

Also, for the record NeyBar, I had no clue.

Yo darren! if you instead want to do some seng/ml stuff; we're wanting to hire lots of folks

Yo ♪!
Suggestion v much appreciated - though I have, in fact, now found myself a job. From the autumn I'll be a (graduate) 'mechatronics' engineer - helping to build/write software for big fancy maintenance robots that fix radioactive/superhot/otherwise dangerous scientific machines.
So, uh, woop woop!

congrats! both really hot electronics and radiation are pretty cool. It's fun designing for situations where you know all the solder will melt:P

That actually sounds a lot like the geophysics mechatronics job I did for my family as coops -- it once included making gamma detectors to put down a 200C pipe.


How's doing a grad program? I think I'd like to do one in computer vision in a few years

As a control engineer, I think (perhaps fortunately) I'm not gonna have to be the main one to worry about the solder. But it'll def be interesting to learn how they tackle the challenges. They seem to be the UK centre for this area so I guess some of it will be rather sophisticated :P

(When you say grad program - do you mean grad degree at uni kind of thing?)

Great to hear the latest news - congratulations on the job Darren, sounds really interesting!

The website was down for a few days due to my expired credit card.

Not sure how much longer I can keep this site up for. It really needs to go https: but I don't have the time to look at it.

What is the difference between an https website and this?

https:// at the beginning of a url as opposed to http:// signifies that site transmits information to and from your browser encrypted. I've just been looking into it and it will cost me an extra $150 per year to do this but I don't see it as optional in today's environment if the site us to keep going in some form.

Speaking of which, the kids are not babies any more so I'm starting to think i might be able to find some time to put into the site. I'm thinking of radically simplifying it and removing the old shockwave games. That technology has really run it's course by now. I'll work on a new JavaScript/php based game and I think its really important to establish a revenue stream up front this time, without that it's impossible to sustain the commitment of effort for myself and other contributors.

The game and site will need to be mobile and desktop friendly. I'm thinking of something based in the merlins revenge world but playable on a phone. I wont say too much more about that now. I'm still a long way from starting, just thinking for now but it's good to be doing that much at least :)