DFO Return project

Kimoshu · June 2015

A community undertaking to buy licensing for Darkfall is underway:

[url]https://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?411890-DFO-Return-Project[/url]

Grunty · June 2015

You'll find it easier to buy the company.

F0URTWENTY · June 2015

I really hope something like this happens. With how good the netcode was I always wondered why another company hasn't purchased the engine. I've seen sieges in DF1 during the first few months of launch with 500+ people fighting in the same area and I haven't seen that in any game since.

Unknown · June 2015

Originally posted by Sketch420
I really hope something like this happens. With how good the netcode was I always wondered why another company hasn't purchased the engine. I've seen sieges in DF1 during the first few months of launch with 500+ people fighting in the same area and I haven't seen that in any game since.

Indeed, netcode was very innovative and still unbeatable today, probably i will never see a 500+ siege with action combat again since DF1 times.

Kimoshu · August 2015

Just an update:

We have launched our own website, just a forum for now: HTTP://www.DFOReturn.com

Licensing talks will be continued in a week or two with Aventurine. So far they have been interested in working with us, our correspondence has been very positive. Come join our forums to get involved with this community project to relaunch one of the most impressive games with huge potential in the PvP sandbox genre!

-Andrew
DFO Return Project Leader

jdlamson75 · August 2015

Ah, the old days of 500 mana missiles going off at once; one might have called it a blue screen of "ouch, that smarts". Registered on the forums, and am looking forward to following this as Andrew and team progress forward.

Adam1902 · August 2015

Is this a different, or the same group of people as DarkfallOrigins?

Kimoshu · August 2015

Different. The origins group is making an emulator, reverse engineering the game to launch their own server. We are in talks to acquire the old client and all related server side components to operate the game ourselves and develop it further.

-Andrew

Adam1902 · August 2015

That's really awesome...
Essentially, DFO under new management. How many developers do you have on board? Will you treat this as a full-time livelihood or a pet project? Will you be able to update as fast as / faster than AV?

I remember AV saying their reason for developing a new game (UW) was due to DFO being hard to update due to the engine or something like that. After UW released, I had a hunch that their reasoning was bullshit. Do you have any details on this? I heard the DFO codebase consists of 500k lines of java.

Also, and you're probably not willing to answer this or maybe you don't even know yourselves yet: How much would this be costing? And what would the terms of the license be? A one-time payment granting you ownership of the software, or a yearly contract granting you permission to use it?

Really interested man...

Kimoshu · August 2015

Adam1902 said:

That's really awesome...
Essentially, DFO under new management. How many developers do you have on board? Will you treat this as a full-time livelihood or a pet project? Will you be able to update as fast as / faster than AV?

I remember AV saying their reason for developing a new game (UW) was due to DFO being hard to update due to the engine or something like that. After UW released, I had a hunch that their reasoning was bullshit. Do you have any details on this? I heard the DFO codebase consists of 500k lines of java.

Also, and you're probably not willing to answer this or maybe you don't even know yourselves yet: How much would this be costing? And what would the terms of the license be? A one-time payment granting you ownership of the software, or a yearly contract granting you permission to use it?

Really interested man...

Right now we've got 44 people who have volunteered to help on the project, I gave some details here as to current events: http://dforeturn.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3

About 1/2 are programmers of varying experience from professionals to amateurs. We collectively have experience in c++, java, 3d modelling, database creation/manipulation, networking, web development and IT security to name a few things. I personally am not a programmer, I am an organizer and will be involved in overall design of the game and managing/leading the project.

AV is not going to relaunch DFO because it isn't feasible for them to do as it would require a heavy rewrite of several server side components to integrate it into their current systems that were created for DFUW. It also ran on a different database schema so they would have to relaunch on a brand new server cluster just for the old game which would take away from development of DFUW. For these reasons it's not feasible for them to do it, however for another group to do it it makes business sense because they get potential royalties/licensing income without spending any money on development. The original DF code was about a million lines of code reportedly for the entire game/server, according to their lead game logic developer Ricki.

As for costs we most likely won't be able to release that kind of confidential information, sorry. Thus far I can say we haven't discussed a cost with AV yet as we're awaiting the end of summer vacations for a sit down to discuss licensing in more detail. In the next week or two I hope to finalize a deal but so far they have been keen to work with us and I've gotten some technical information already to start sourcing out hardware needs and whatnot.

There's still much to do and we're at the beginning still but the project is becoming a potential reality and as it is moving in that direction we're starting to publicize it more to gain support and show a strong following to AV. More public pressure can most assuredly only help

.

-Andrew

Adam1902 · August 2015

I just fucking deleted my post and I can't get it back. Fuck. I can't type all that again

lol.
Basically I wished you the best of luck, said I'll likely register on the forum to show my face around there and I'd definitely donate to a Kickstarter.

I'd play an officially lisenced and developed / updated DFO everyday of the week, probably for years to come if it held ~1000 concurrent players.

Renoaku · August 2015

I dropped my Dark Fall subscription all together after the bug that happened lost my Large Villa due to a server glitch which didn't add paid tax logged off came back to pay again it was gone GM's kept giving the run-around that it could have been due to a technical problem and they would replace the deed but everytime I tried to contact a GM no one respond except by support ticket and so it was taken I am done with Dark Fall, and the way their company runs the game, even finding Sky Forge better at the moment than DFUW.

However I like the Original Dark Fall better if it could be brought back by a company who knows what they are doing with better improvements.

Parepin · August 2015

This is the neatest project. Has the ring of an emulator but is a backed-by-AV project if licensing happens. First of its kind on the internet, no doubt.