Status

[Wrentia]

Just curious if we can have some kind of basic status report on where development is. Obviously with the available screenshots, the 3D engine is working. Can you answers things like how much landscape area is there presently? Any cities yet? Any of the networking stuff working yet or is it basically a single player engine right now? Some form of player creation yet? Etc...you know us, we're all nosy and wanna know....:)

-Wrentia

[Lordosis]

Yes, the 3D engine is working, but the one in the screenshots is a bit dated. We're working hard right now on sprucing up the engine to where it needs to be. I don't want to post screenshots until it's all done, though. Maybe we'll even post movies captured from in the game when it's done.

There's not a whole lot in terms of world actually done. The landscape that is in the game right now is a prototype, just so we can test things while we program. So if we feel like putting a mountain somewhere for some reason, we just do it, regardless of whether the game/map design calls for a mountain. But the area is about... hmmm... let me open up the windows calcluator here.. 64 acres. Which isn't much in terms of the finished world. But's it's big enough that it takes a few minutes to walk across.

Yes networking is there. It's been a multiplayer gmae since day one. I figured if we were going to make a MMORPG, the first thing was to make sure I could write network code. So if multiple people log in and walk to the same area, they will see each other walking around.

Yes, you can log in with your account and create characters, then log in to the game with the character you want to use. Well, YOU can't yet... but WE can. hehe.

Oh yeah, don't forget that the hardest part of a writing MMORPG is really the servers. The program that players download is really just a pretty interface with fancy graphics, etc. But it's nothing without the servers.

[Edited by Rich on 09-23-2000 at 01:24 PM]

[Wrentia]

Woot! thanks Rich, now that is a response no other developers would ever give....thanks much.

Now a couple more questions. Will each "server" consist of the same "starting world". Obviously with the way things work, things will become different across the servers depending on how players play....So on one server there could be a Orc Keep in one location while on another server there is only a small goblin outpost in that location.

Hmmm, slightly off topic.....Is it possible to have one server that everyone logs onto? Granted, this one server would be ALOT of equipment and would have to be almost exponentially expandable but is it possible? The actual land masses would have to be huge of course, but since Arcanity is taking place on an Earth of the future after the Cataclysim spell, it would be easy enough to use all that governmental geographic surveys to recreate the continents digitally.....Just a thought....

-Wrentia

[Lordosis]

Are there 2 Earth's? I mean, is there another Earth that is the same as this one except different people live on it?? And some people live on both Earth's but not at the same time??? Not last time I checked!!

Well, if there is only one Earth now, then there can only be one Novus in the future. Here at Brick House, we may not agree with most laws forced upon us by the goverment, but we sure as hell don't argue with the laws of physics!! Therefore, it's not our place to go creating multiple copies of Novus all over the place. All I'm trying to say is that there is only one "server", or one copy of the world in Arcanity. That's it. No PvP server, no PvP teams server, no role playing server, no care bear server, JUST ONE SERVER.

I guess that answers both of your questions :) And YES that means we'll potentially need a humungous world if we get lots of players. But we're willing to deal with that to create a more realistic game world. If we have in the neigborhood of a one to five thousand players, then the world would be roughly the size of EQ or AC's world.