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[CipherJonathan]

The Matrix Unplugged, the Matrix-themed, text-based MMO which I've been working on for a little while now, has just been publicly released for the first time! Over the past month, I've been working alongside our dedicated beta-testing team in order to get the game up to a reasonable standard before public release, and now I feel that we have achieved enough maturity, stability and security for me to feel comfortable releasing the game to the world. The game is completely free to play, and you can check it out here: http://www.matrixunplugged.co.uk

The majority of the core game is in (Training, Missions and Combat will constitute for most of the player's gameplay), although it is still early days and there's tons of additional content and further features which I still plan on implementing. Here are a few screenshots of the progress so far:

The first image there is of the prototype training system, in which users can train their core stats (combat, coding, hacking and tactics) at the cost of some Focus. I plan to add images and some funky Javascript effects to the training system shortly.
The second image is of the Explore page, where the majority of in-game features can be accessed (all of the other core features can be accessed via the sidebar menu).
The third image is of the selection interface for the in-game organizations system. This system allows you to join one of the in-game organizations, Zion Military, Machine or Merovingian (I also plan on adding other organizations, such as the Cypherites, to the game soon). As part of an organization, you will receive a certain amount of money and a certain number of stat increases per day, depending on your rank (you can increase your rank by reaching a particular level within the organization).
The final image is of the combat system, which, admittedly, I'm not completely satisfied with at the moment. However, right now, this is how combat works in-game (note the cool health bars - they're a relatively new addition).

Anyway, I definitely welcome your suggestions and feedback, and would be honoured if you signed up and tried it out

Have fun - I hope to see you in-game!

[CipherJonathan]

I've finally finished off one of the more community-oriented game features which I've been working on for a couple of days: it's an AJAX-based chat room system which allows for live, real-time communication between players. It should hopefully make the game a little bit more interactive: in addition to the existing Mailbox and Forums systems. I plan on adding multiple chat channels, and the ability for hovercraft crews to create their own chat rooms, but this should suffice for now:

http://i.imgur.com/V8vrt.png

The new feature is definitely becoming quite popular with players. Hope you enjoy it!

[CipherJonathan]

Today I rewrote the game's entire design and layout from scratch, so that it now better utilizes integrated CSS, is less dependent on outdated systems such as HTML tables, is generally more trendy/user-friendly, is easier to read in a dark room, and even supports some cool Javascript effects on the main menu. It's not finished yet, as there are still many modules (such as the training System and the Forums) which still don't quite integrate the way I'd hoped. However, this should be a great start, and the feedback from the community so far has been positive.

This is how the in-game homepage now looks with the updated design: http://i.imgur.com/zkqRT.png

Alongside this major design update, I've also released a new version of the game's back-end (1.3.2) which contains a couple of more subtle updates and features, mainly to compliment the site's updated theme.

The next step will probably be to update the login and registration pages to fit in with all the other changes. Anyway, I hope you like the new design, and I would love to hear any feedback which you might have

[CipherJonathan]

Today I added another method of player interaction into the game! Player profiles have been implemented for a while now - you are able to search for players, bring up their profiles, see their level, their basic information and be presented with options to send them a private message, send them money or to initiate combat. However, today I added a comments box to the bottom of every profile page, which allows players to leave comments on other people's profiles as a more immediate and public method of getting their attention:

http://i.imgur.com/OgavN.png

Coupled with the release of the new chat system, I hope that this makes in-game communication a lot more versatile than it was before. I still need to implement the ability to reply to profile comments, and also add some logs and tools to help moderate them. This is a good first step, though.

Hope you have fun!