I was reading their forums about their skills and one of the developers that some of the skills which probably be "fluff".
I have a feeling that their skill based system is going to be a gimmick in the end. I hope that the game doesn't devolve into "heres the best combat setup".
You don't make a game with 50 skills just to have 50 skills even though the game doesn't support 40 of them in any meaningful way. You also don't make a game that has 10 character attributes unless you have about 100 skills that each take a combination of 2-3 attributes as a bonus to them. It's like y ou are building the game in reverse.
If I can play a "Scholar" in your game, it needs to be AS POWERFUL as a Fighter because there are just as many scholarly quests that are just as epic and take just as much time and give just as much XP and the Warrior quests or mage quests.
If you make a "Play Instrument" skill that I dump 10 points into, it had better be JUST AS WORTHWHILE as putting 10 points into my weapon skill. It doesn't mean I kill people with it, it means I can make just as much money, get past just as many encounters, get just as much XP being a "Musician" as I warrior. The play style is different, the quests aren't the same for sure, but it's just as worthwhile for the time spent.
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
And there goes my support, not because of the PVP but because it shows he can't be trusted.
" None of us on the team has ever designed an MMORPG before. In fact, most of us have never even worked on an actual title before. "
"Heading down into a dungeon that will take you a couple months or more to explore, across multiple game sessions, and your success/failure depends entirely upon how well-supplied your group is, how self-reliant they are, how relevant and talented are the members of your party"
and sub-required ....
Good luck to the developers. Indeed it won't be a game for me .. but hey, i have tons of other stuff to play
You forgot to mention that donators will get very powerful premium weapons aka p2win
And he made clear that clearing a dungeon takes months because.. you have to grind your ass off in there to proceed. To back up the epicness of that dungeon experience he posted 2 screenshots: A long narrow path with generic roots A long narrow path with generic columns
Epic experiences brought to you by reliable people.
" None of us on the team has ever designed an MMORPG before. In fact, most of us have never even worked on an actual title before. "
"Heading down into a dungeon that will take you a couple months or more to explore, across multiple game sessions, and your success/failure depends entirely upon how well-supplied your group is, how self-reliant they are, how relevant and talented are the members of your party"
and sub-required ....
Good luck to the developers. Indeed it won't be a game for me .. but hey, i have tons of other stuff to play
You forgot to mention that donators will get very powerful premium weapons aka p2win
And he made clear that clearing a dungeon takes months because.. you have to grind your ass off in there to proceed. To back up the epicness of that dungeon experience he posted 2 screenshots: A long narrow path with generic roots A long narrow path with generic columns
Epic experiences brought to you by reliable people.
wow p2w *and* takes months to finish a dungeon?
I guess they really need some good luck on the game (more about long dungeons than p2w though ... since p2w pretty much works out great for many f2p games).
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
And there goes my support, not because of the PVP but because it shows he can't be trusted.
I could have been, you know, a joke... then again maybe not... mysteries abound!
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
Just lost all interest. I was excited for this and Pantheon so it looks like i have one less option.
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
And there goes my support, not because of the PVP but because it shows he can't be trusted.
Ahhhh man, you guys just made our weekend
It also goes to prove that you didn't actually watch the video, since at the 1:26 minute mark into the video it very cleary states that it was an unintended bug that cropped up which allowed players to attack each other, and that we are indeed still a 100% PVE title, and the whole video was a tongue-in-cheek joke that very clearly worked as intended!
As far as assumptions about our networking code go, folks are also mistaken, which they would know if they actually spent any time over at our forums or hung out with our developers. The sync issues visible in the videos are purely related to animations and us not having fine-tuned how many times the character position is being updated; right now it's four times per second. Burch has done some work to it, but it's a low priority issue for us since we have other things that are more important than polish. Once we get around to optimizing this, the sync "look" will disappear.
Similarly, there are still graphical lag issues, because, again, we haven't done any optimization yet. We released our first build up to the public in September, pushed another out in October, and this most recent in November, and now we're moving into an optimization section over the holidays. Our World, Our Way; again, as we have clearly stated, this is an early alpha process, and things are FULLY EXPECTED to be buggy, glitchy, and NOT POLISHED.
As far as network stability go, we have zero disconnections, zoning is in (just this past weekend we ran our latest build, the last for 2015) between the tavern and the starter dungeon, we have basic combat fully functional, added in a boss mob, all of our various chat channels and groupability, and from here we're optimizing everything before we head into the next stage of alpha, which is when we start adding in things like AI, pathing, the full stat system, skill system, and beyond, fleshing things out to the full MMORPG experience.
For those interested, we posted the first of our most recent videos up at our YouTube channel on Saturday afternoon, from the boss mob test that we did. We'll have some more videos coming up over December showing our zoning functionality, and as always, the various streams from community members will be showing up in the next Q&A or Dev Journal we do here at MMORPG.com, coming soon!
For everyone out there, we appreciate your support It's been an amazing journey over the past 20 months, and it's an amazing opportunity to be able to look back and see how far we've come since it was just six of us, to where we are today with 19 passionate people working on the game.
It's been great being able to come as far as we've come, despite none of us having ever worked on a title before. A true testament to the team as they spend all day, every day, learning through application, and building this up out of passion.
We look forward to continuing to share our progress, in all its unpolished, gritty glory, as we work through the next couple of years towards our publishing date in December of 2017.
Weekend? You made that "joke" 22 days ago. You left it there and now you are mocking people for believing the spokesperson of a company?
In the same post was a video that confirmed it was only sarcasm. So he really only laughed at people that always jump to conclusion without checking all facts.
By the way Rainfail, personally I am giving you the benefit of the doubt for now, but I will say to you what I said to Brad Mcquaid. You should start showing some original content and features before asking for players support . I know you are not actually asking (I am aware of your policy), but still I suggest you stop using the Unity default (or asset store) assets before you show some other videos. Anyone can make a Demo with Unity even with zero coding involved, that's the beauty of Unity.
Weekend? You made that "joke" 22 days ago. You left it there and now you are mocking people for believing the spokesperson of a company?
In the same post was a video that confirmed it was only sarcasm. So he really only laughed at people that always jump to conclusion without checking all facts.
By the way Rainfail, personally I am giving you the benefit of the doubt for now, but I will say to you what I said to Brad Mcquaid. You should start showing some original content and features before asking for players support . I know you are not actually asking (I am aware of your policy), but still I suggest you stop using the Unity default (or asset store) assets before you show some other videos. Anyone can make a Demo with Unity even with zero coding involved, that's the beauty of Unity.
Given the fact that our Early Access server is for building and testing features and mechanics, and not actual game content, you will be unlikely to ever see much more than store-bought assets there. It's a testing ground where we test our code and mechanics, which we then take and implement into our game server.
The Early Access program doesn't have an NDA because we aren't placing any actual game content into that area. The test server, on the other hand, has our actual game content, and is invite-only, from people who are hand-picked from our Early Access program as we find people who have proven they are there for the long haul, who are passionate about the project, and who we know we can trust as far as an NDA is concerned.
We've shared a couple of screenshots of the "good stuff", but you won't see much of original content until mid/late 2016, as we're keeping it under wraps. And even then, it's going to be minimal compared to what we'll be publicly sharing, which is our Early Access content, where there is no NDA and we are using as a documentation grounds more than anything.
So every time we do a public test weekend like this, it's for the purposes of our community helping us test features and mechanics, not flash and polish for marketing purposes
Our marketing campaign won't kick into gear until late 2016 at the earliest. We've still got another year before we're worried about showing the good stuff.
Meanwhile, those who are interested in the progress of our team are more than welcome to continue following along. For more information, interested readers should check out our last Q&A here at mmorpg.com .
I would not call this "went well". This is as good as out of the box Unity net code. It's horrible. You need to get out the big guns and start optimizing. From my experience seeing this you have at least 2 years of optimization to do writing your network infrastructure based on your 3 coders. If you are still using C# then you might as well just scrap this right now. It's not going to work.
I agree with you, but since other programmers might read this I just want to elaborate the why behind "If you are still using C# then you might as well just scrap this right now" from my perspective:
To be fair C# does not produce bad netcode, bad netcoders produce bad netcode. C# is a dangerous tool in that regard because - depending on your knowledge of the language - may incentivise bad coding.
C# on the client side should be no problem and is acceptable if your application is already running in C# and you dont want to mix it with another C++ network library as it can reduce the maintenance of your code. C# for an actual server with 2000+ clients? You better have years of experience with networking AND C#. Personally I'd rather spare myself the trouble and simply go with C++. So many pitfalls and anti-patterns on C#'s-side that can catch you off guard at any time in developement while C++ will be "unforgiving nice" to point them out to you at any time. Easy-to-use libraries for C# like "lidgren" will not save you. They are not inherently the problem.
Networking in C# is easily done in a few lines. But that simplicity comes at a price and more often than not that price is performance. It works astronomically well in some minor programs with a client/server-architecture and it even works well in some corporate software if well done. C#-networking is meant for fast developement and deployment. But MMOs are another story. The servers for an mmo need to be optimized to great extend - something that is sometimes very hard to do in a high-level language because... well... to solve some essential issues you have to be on the low level.
A problem I once faced was C#'s inbuilt Garbage-Collector - while very neat for normal applications - can be a huge bottleneck in bigger programs if not accounted for early in developement. In C++ you are always wary of memory leaks - in C# it is usually too late when you notice you're bloating up memory and the Garbage-Collector is already sweating all over itself. Theese kinds of things are often overlooked because in normal developement you never encounter them. Sure, you can just deactivate the Garbage-Collector.. but why wouldn't you just go with C++ then?
As there could be pages to talk about and this answer might not be cohesive enough for some and the Garbage-Collector example might not be the best... please be sure to point out more XD
Post edited by Cellarkid88 on
Winning a discussion is not what it's about. If you could pass insight to someone or learn something from it in return - noone can really loose, can they?
By the way Rainfail, personally I am giving you the benefit of the doubt for now, but I will say to you what I said to Brad Mcquaid. You should start showing some original content and features before asking for players support . I know you are not actually asking (I am aware of your policy), but still I suggest you stop using the Unity default (or asset store) assets before you show some other videos. Anyone can make a Demo with Unity even with zero coding involved, that's the beauty of Unity.
I dont think you've ever worked with Unity before. Because, to get as far as they have, takes far more than you imply. No, not "anyone can make a demo with unity". It does require alot of devoted hours. People like you spew this shit to make yourself feel better for doing little more than spending a life farting into your computer chair. The only ambition you can muster is to play Mr.Downer on videogame forums. Well atleast you have somewhere to feel powerful.
I probably wont be playing this game but nobody is forcing me - or anyone to support it. Their developers have clearly been transparent. So let consumers make their own decisions on games they want to support and you can get back to pondering what youre ordering from the mcdonalds menu
By the way Rainfail, personally I am giving you the benefit of the doubt for now, but I will say to you what I said to Brad Mcquaid. You should start showing some original content and features before asking for players support . I know you are not actually asking (I am aware of your policy), but still I suggest you stop using the Unity default (or asset store) assets before you show some other videos. Anyone can make a Demo with Unity even with zero coding involved, that's the beauty of Unity.
I dont think you've ever worked with Unity before. Because, to get as far as they have, takes far more than you imply. No, not "anyone can make a demo with unity". It does require alot of devoted hours. People like you spew this shit to make yourself feel better for doing little more than spending a life farting into your computer chair. The only ambition you can muster is to play Mr.Downer on videogame forums. Well atleast you have somewhere to feel powerful.
Do you feel better now? You should get a cup of chamomile to calm down dude, not good for your blood pressure.
It doesn't take much to make a Demo in Unity, it doesn't matter how you spin it. I just pointed out the obvious, I wasn't trying to bitch or getting into an argument with anyone, just trying to understand what is the Company take on that. That Demo was made with lots of Unity Assets, that is a fact. Rainfail gave a reasonable explanation and though I appreciate what he is saying, and I understand that the game is pretty much still on paper, I do not understand the need to show something that is not there yet. But it is not up to me to decide a Company strategy.
Another one for Rainfail. Since you mentioned that the Demo is just there to show some of the mechanics implemented by you, can you point out the mechanics that are not part of the Unity database? Again just curious not trying to diss anyone, if you are genuine you'd agree that's a reasonable question to ask.
Another one for Rainfail. Since you mentioned that the Demo is just there to show some of the mechanics implemented by you, can you point out the mechanics that are not part of the Unity database? Again just curious not trying to diss anyone, if you are genuine you'd agree that's a reasonable question to ask.
You should do some digging into Unity.
Unity does NOT provide ANY of the actual code base for things such as networking, combat, animations, or the like. It all has to be coded from scratch to get it into a working MMORPG format, as opposed to a single-player demo.
What they provide is an engine, and assets that you can use to plug into the engine. However, the act of taking those assets and getting them to a working, functioning point, as well as having a stable network code, login server, chat server, account management system, payment system, and etc., are all complex features.
Which is why we have a coder team of eight super talented guys working their butts off outside of their day jobs (as coders) making this all function and work.
2015 has been all about getting our basic framework in place. We've been in public alpha with our Early Access folks for about three months now, and now we're turning around and doing an optimization phase for the holidays and early 2016. Once that's done, we'll be working on adding more features and mechanics on top of what we've already got, and continually, always, tweaking things as we go along.
That's right probably I should do some more digging.
But then again it is better to ask some devs about it, it is faster and probably more easy to understand, that's what's forums are about, not just for arguing. That's the kind of answer I was looking for, when someone has a genuine and reasonable explanation to any of their potential customers concern at least he deserves some credits. So good luck and keep up with the hard work, as I mentioned many times I am interested in your game and I hope you will succeed. And don't be too defensive some people are just a bit skeptical and ask questions, and that's understandable, since the MMO market has became a jungle, but not everyone that do so are trying to put your work under a bad light.
That's right probably I should do some more digging.
But then again it is better to ask some devs about it, it is faster and probably more easy to understand, that's what's forums are about, not just for arguing. That's the kind of answer I was looking for, when someone has a genuine and reasonable explanation to any of their potential customers concern at least he deserves some credits. So good luck and keep up with the hard work, as I mentioned many times I am interested in your game and I hope you will succeed. And don't be too defensive some people are just a bit skeptical and ask questions, and that's understandable, since the MMO market has became a jungle, but not everyone that do so are trying to put your work under a bad light.
Ok I re-watched the 'sarcasm' PVP video, and a statement about still being only a PVE title flashes across the screen for half a second at the end of the video. Not particularly well-done sarcasm, or humorous at all for that matter, and also potentially confusing for anyone browsing the forums in the morning drinking coffee.
Ok I re-watched the 'sarcasm' PVP video, and a statement about still being only a PVE title flashes across the screen for half a second at the end of the video. Not particularly well-done sarcasm, or humorous at all for that matter, and also potentially confusing for anyone browsing the forums in the morning drinking coffee.
You mean the six second text overlay that runs from 1:26 to 1:32 that offers the viewer an AMPLE time to read and understand that it was a joke?
I will be honest I did not read the entire thread nor did I read everything on the website. I read the FAQ and the camps & caravans. I did notice one thing, and wanted to know if you have an answer for it. Everything I have read seems like it is step 4-10. I don't see steps 1-3.
So I am a new player. I buy the game. What puts me in contact with other people. How do get to a caravan that has left by myself. How do I actively engage in content that randomly brings me in contact with other people.
This game feels like one that you have to join with a large group of people. This almost sounds like you are trying to create a tabletop format into a video game. The problem with that is tabletop gaming allows for a great deal of manipulation. I don't see that in your design. Here is what I mean.
"For example, guild x discovers a map with the location of a distant
dungeon filled with treasure. The dungeon lies beyond many dangerous
regions which are too perilous to cross without a well provisioned
party."
So how do I know what skills I need to complete it. If a group of 8 people plan for multiple sessions and then arrive only to find out they are missing a required skill what can they do? Go back to the beginning to find someone with that skill? Grind to get that skill? Also what happens when someone from a well defined groups leaves the game. is that group screwed? I mean that would have to find another person who has that skill set and is also available to devote everything to them.
Honestly, I don't see how you think this can work. Why would anyone pay a monthly fee to a game they can reasonably only play once or twice a week and are locked into a set of content for months at a time.
I would really like to know how you expect people to become well geared and guilded in the first place. How the game is going to deal with attrition. How you will fold new players into the game. If you can't solve those problems the game has no change. How are well geared people going to get geared in the first place.
This game seems incredibly backwards to me. In MMOs that force grouping the goal should be to make grouping as easy as possible. The content being hard is where the challenge is. Your design pushes players off in small siloed groups that are completely dependent on everyone in that group. Additionally, the people in the group are tied to that group and cannot act outside of it.
Please help me understand how you will address this. Also can you send me a response an in email, in case I forget to check back.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
In fact, things went so well during the last test that we decided to go ahead and add PVP into the mix and have now backtracked on our original plans: we are no longer only a PVE title! Saga of Lucimia will now have open PVP with full looting!
@Renfail This is a huge design change from the original plans of SoL. In some of your interviews you were fairly adamant about not doing a PVP game, what led to this change? Open world full loot PVP is a very divisive issue on these forums, you are bound to have all sorts of mixed reactions to the decision.
And there goes my support, not because of the PVP but because it shows he can't be trusted.
Ahhhh man, you guys just made our weekend
It also goes to prove that you didn't actually watch the video, since at the 1:26 minute mark into the video it very cleary states that it was an unintended bug that cropped up which allowed players to attack each other, and that we are indeed still a 100% PVE title, and the whole video was a tongue-in-cheek joke that very clearly worked as intended!
As far as assumptions about our networking code go, folks are also mistaken, which they would know if they actually spent any time over at our forums or hung out with our developers. The sync issues visible in the videos are purely related to animations and us not having fine-tuned how many times the character position is being updated; right now it's four times per second. Burch has done some work to it, but it's a low priority issue for us since we have other things that are more important than polish. Once we get around to optimizing this, the sync "look" will disappear.
Similarly, there are still graphical lag issues, because, again, we haven't done any optimization yet. We released our first build up to the public in September, pushed another out in October, and this most recent in November, and now we're moving into an optimization section over the holidays. Our World, Our Way; again, as we have clearly stated, this is an early alpha process, and things are FULLY EXPECTED to be buggy, glitchy, and NOT POLISHED.
As far as network stability go, we have zero disconnections, zoning is in (just this past weekend we ran our latest build, the last for 2015) between the tavern and the starter dungeon, we have basic combat fully functional, added in a boss mob, all of our various chat channels and groupability, and from here we're optimizing everything before we head into the next stage of alpha, which is when we start adding in things like AI, pathing, the full stat system, skill system, and beyond, fleshing things out to the full MMORPG experience.
For those interested, we posted the first of our most recent videos up at our YouTube channel on Saturday afternoon, from the boss mob test that we did. We'll have some more videos coming up over December showing our zoning functionality, and as always, the various streams from community members will be showing up in the next Q&A or Dev Journal we do here at MMORPG.com, coming soon!
For everyone out there, we appreciate your support It's been an amazing journey over the past 20 months, and it's an amazing opportunity to be able to look back and see how far we've come since it was just six of us, to where we are today with 19 passionate people working on the game.
It's been great being able to come as far as we've come, despite none of us having ever worked on a title before. A true testament to the team as they spend all day, every day, learning through application, and building this up out of passion.
We look forward to continuing to share our progress, in all its unpolished, gritty glory, as we work through the next couple of years towards our publishing date in December of 2017.
I don't know man.. Maybe because this is your baby you can't see how bad it looks. Seriously does it look good to you?
Comments
I was reading their forums about their skills and one of the developers that some of the skills which probably be "fluff".
I have a feeling that their skill based system is going to be a gimmick in the end. I hope that the game doesn't devolve into "heres the best combat setup".
You don't make a game with 50 skills just to have 50 skills even though the game doesn't support 40 of them in any meaningful way. You also don't make a game that has 10 character attributes unless you have about 100 skills that each take a combination of 2-3 attributes as a bonus to them. It's like y ou are building the game in reverse.
If I can play a "Scholar" in your game, it needs to be AS POWERFUL as a Fighter because there are just as many scholarly quests that are just as epic and take just as much time and give just as much XP and the Warrior quests or mage quests.
If you make a "Play Instrument" skill that I dump 10 points into, it had better be JUST AS WORTHWHILE as putting 10 points into my weapon skill. It doesn't mean I kill people with it, it means I can make just as much money, get past just as many encounters, get just as much XP being a "Musician" as I warrior. The play style is different, the quests aren't the same for sure, but it's just as worthwhile for the time spent.
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!
And he made clear that clearing a dungeon takes months because.. you have to grind your ass off in there to proceed.
To back up the epicness of that dungeon experience he posted 2 screenshots:
A long narrow path with generic roots
A long narrow path with generic columns
Epic experiences brought to you by reliable people.
I guess they really need some good luck on the game (more about long dungeons than p2w though ... since p2w pretty much works out great for many f2p games).
Here is the bottom line;
Saga of Lucimia is still a long way off.
This and Pantheon is our only hope for a REAL mmo.
It's best to put both on the back burner, forget about them for now.
As a private investor, it's simply not a good idea to invest in a kickstarter early !
Everything will change ten times over before release.
Corruption may set in at any point in development ( play to win / cash shops ).
People posting on message sites will twist wards around.
It also goes to prove that you didn't actually watch the video, since at the 1:26 minute mark into the video it very cleary states that it was an unintended bug that cropped up which allowed players to attack each other, and that we are indeed still a 100% PVE title, and the whole video was a tongue-in-cheek joke that very clearly worked as intended!
As far as assumptions about our networking code go, folks are also mistaken, which they would know if they actually spent any time over at our forums or hung out with our developers. The sync issues visible in the videos are purely related to animations and us not having fine-tuned how many times the character position is being updated; right now it's four times per second. Burch has done some work to it, but it's a low priority issue for us since we have other things that are more important than polish. Once we get around to optimizing this, the sync "look" will disappear.
Similarly, there are still graphical lag issues, because, again, we haven't done any optimization yet. We released our first build up to the public in September, pushed another out in October, and this most recent in November, and now we're moving into an optimization section over the holidays. Our World, Our Way; again, as we have clearly stated, this is an early alpha process, and things are FULLY EXPECTED to be buggy, glitchy, and NOT POLISHED.
As far as network stability go, we have zero disconnections, zoning is in (just this past weekend we ran our latest build, the last for 2015) between the tavern and the starter dungeon, we have basic combat fully functional, added in a boss mob, all of our various chat channels and groupability, and from here we're optimizing everything before we head into the next stage of alpha, which is when we start adding in things like AI, pathing, the full stat system, skill system, and beyond, fleshing things out to the full MMORPG experience.
For those interested, we posted the first of our most recent videos up at our YouTube channel on Saturday afternoon, from the boss mob test that we did. We'll have some more videos coming up over December showing our zoning functionality, and as always, the various streams from community members will be showing up in the next Q&A or Dev Journal we do here at MMORPG.com, coming soon!
For everyone out there, we appreciate your support
It's been great being able to come as far as we've come, despite none of us having ever worked on a title before. A true testament to the team as they spend all day, every day, learning through application, and building this up out of passion.
We look forward to continuing to share our progress, in all its unpolished, gritty glory, as we work through the next couple of years towards our publishing date in December of 2017.
You should start showing some original content and features before asking for players support .
I know you are not actually asking (I am aware of your policy), but still I suggest you stop using the Unity default (or asset store) assets before you show some other videos.
Anyone can make a Demo with Unity even with zero coding involved, that's the beauty of Unity.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19581
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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The Early Access program doesn't have an NDA because we aren't placing any actual game content into that area. The test server, on the other hand, has our actual game content, and is invite-only, from people who are hand-picked from our Early Access program as we find people who have proven they are there for the long haul, who are passionate about the project, and who we know we can trust as far as an NDA is concerned.
We've shared a couple of screenshots of the "good stuff", but you won't see much of original content until mid/late 2016, as we're keeping it under wraps. And even then, it's going to be minimal compared to what we'll be publicly sharing, which is our Early Access content, where there is no NDA and we are using as a documentation grounds more than anything.
So every time we do a public test weekend like this, it's for the purposes of our community helping us test features and mechanics, not flash and polish for marketing purposes
Our marketing campaign won't kick into gear until late 2016 at the earliest. We've still got another year before we're worried about showing the good stuff.
Meanwhile, those who are interested in the progress of our team are more than welcome to continue following along. For more information, interested readers should check out our last Q&A here at mmorpg.com .
To be fair C# does not produce bad netcode, bad netcoders produce bad netcode. C# is a dangerous tool in that regard because - depending on your knowledge of the language - may incentivise bad coding.
C# on the client side should be no problem and is acceptable if your application is already running in C# and you dont want to mix it with another C++ network library as it can reduce the maintenance of your code. C# for an actual server with 2000+ clients? You better have years of experience with networking AND C#. Personally I'd rather spare myself the trouble and simply go with C++. So many pitfalls and anti-patterns on C#'s-side that can catch you off guard at any time in developement while C++ will be "unforgiving nice" to point them out to you at any time. Easy-to-use libraries for C# like "lidgren" will not save you. They are not inherently the problem.
Networking in C# is easily done in a few lines. But that simplicity comes at a price and more often than not that price is performance. It works astronomically well in some minor programs with a client/server-architecture and it even works well in some corporate software if well done. C#-networking is meant for fast developement and deployment. But MMOs are another story. The servers for an mmo need to be optimized to great extend - something that is sometimes very hard to do in a high-level language because... well... to solve some essential issues you have to be on the low level.
A problem I once faced was C#'s inbuilt Garbage-Collector - while very neat for normal applications - can be a huge bottleneck in bigger programs if not accounted for early in developement. In C++ you are always wary of memory leaks - in C# it is usually too late when you notice you're bloating up memory and the Garbage-Collector is already sweating all over itself. Theese kinds of things are often overlooked because in normal developement you never encounter them. Sure, you can just deactivate the Garbage-Collector.. but why wouldn't you just go with C++ then?
As there could be pages to talk about and this answer might not be cohesive enough for some and the Garbage-Collector example might not be the best... please be sure to point out more XD
Winning a discussion is not what it's about. If you could pass insight to someone or learn something from it in return - noone can really loose, can they?
I probably wont be playing this game but nobody is forcing me - or anyone to support it. Their developers have clearly been transparent. So let consumers make their own decisions on games they want to support and you can get back to pondering what youre ordering from the mcdonalds menu
You should get a cup of chamomile to calm down dude, not good for your blood pressure.
It doesn't take much to make a Demo in Unity, it doesn't matter how you spin it.
I just pointed out the obvious, I wasn't trying to bitch or getting into an argument with anyone, just trying to understand what is the Company take on that.
That Demo was made with lots of Unity Assets, that is a fact.
Rainfail gave a reasonable explanation and though I appreciate what he is saying, and I understand that the game is pretty much still on paper, I do not understand the need to show something that is not there yet.
But it is not up to me to decide a Company strategy.
Another one for Rainfail.
Since you mentioned that the Demo is just there to show some of the mechanics implemented by you, can you point out the mechanics that are not part of the Unity database?
Again just curious not trying to diss anyone, if you are genuine you'd agree that's a reasonable question to ask.
You should do some digging into Unity.
Unity does NOT provide ANY of the actual code base for things such as networking, combat, animations, or the like. It all has to be coded from scratch to get it into a working MMORPG format, as opposed to a single-player demo.
What they provide is an engine, and assets that you can use to plug into the engine. However, the act of taking those assets and getting them to a working, functioning point, as well as having a stable network code, login server, chat server, account management system, payment system, and etc., are all complex features.
Which is why we have a coder team of eight super talented guys working their butts off outside of their day jobs (as coders) making this all function and work.
2015 has been all about getting our basic framework in place. We've been in public alpha with our Early Access folks for about three months now, and now we're turning around and doing an optimization phase for the holidays and early 2016. Once that's done, we'll be working on adding more features and mechanics on top of what we've already got, and continually, always, tweaking things as we go along.
But then again it is better to ask some devs about it, it is faster and probably more easy to understand, that's what's forums are about, not just for arguing.
That's the kind of answer I was looking for, when someone has a genuine and reasonable explanation to any of their potential customers concern at least he deserves some credits.
So good luck and keep up with the hard work, as I mentioned many times I am interested in your game and I hope you will succeed.
And don't be too defensive some people are just a bit skeptical and ask questions, and that's understandable, since the MMO market has became a jungle, but not everyone that do so are trying to put your work under a bad light.
Cheers
Clearly "half a second".
So I am a new player. I buy the game. What puts me in contact with other people. How do get to a caravan that has left by myself. How do I actively engage in content that randomly brings me in contact with other people.
This game feels like one that you have to join with a large group of people. This almost sounds like you are trying to create a tabletop format into a video game. The problem with that is tabletop gaming allows for a great deal of manipulation. I don't see that in your design. Here is what I mean.
"For example, guild x discovers a map with the location of a distant dungeon filled with treasure. The dungeon lies beyond many dangerous regions which are too perilous to cross without a well provisioned party."
So how do I know what skills I need to complete it. If a group of 8 people plan for multiple sessions and then arrive only to find out they are missing a required skill what can they do? Go back to the beginning to find someone with that skill? Grind to get that skill? Also what happens when someone from a well defined groups leaves the game. is that group screwed? I mean that would have to find another person who has that skill set and is also available to devote everything to them.
Honestly, I don't see how you think this can work. Why would anyone pay a monthly fee to a game they can reasonably only play once or twice a week and are locked into a set of content for months at a time.
I would really like to know how you expect people to become well geared and guilded in the first place. How the game is going to deal with attrition. How you will fold new players into the game. If you can't solve those problems the game has no change. How are well geared people going to get geared in the first place.
This game seems incredibly backwards to me. In MMOs that force grouping the goal should be to make grouping as easy as possible. The content being hard is where the challenge is. Your design pushes players off in small siloed groups that are completely dependent on everyone in that group. Additionally, the people in the group are tied to that group and cannot act outside of it.
Please help me understand how you will address this. Also can you send me a response an in email, in case I forget to check back.
--John Ruskin