17/06/02 Holiday Post-Mortem
I just got back from my much needed 1 week holiday. Its my first
real holiday for like 2 years, so I really enjoyed it.
The coming days I will be working with Ricki on our dreaded game
logic system. This system is so big and complex that I am having
regular nightmares about it. I cant wait till we got it up and
running.
I will also continue working with interface design, but the
System of Ultimate Evil is priority 1 right now.
04/06/02 Interface Design
Designing the Darkfall interface is mainly what I am doing these
days. Its great fun, and brings out Le Artistè in me. But damn,
we have ALOT of menus in Darkfall.
I am done with the autopatcher and login design. Pretty straight
forward windows layout. I am also done with the menus for starting
a new Clan, and I am now doing the setup/options menus, and plan to
do the skills & spells windows next.
All in all we have about 60+ different menus in Darkfall, so if I can
keep this speed up, I should be done in a week or so.
Other news? I am playing Soldier of Fortune II multiplayer in my
"research breaks" and I totally own everyone :p
Currently listening to Kings of Convenience. RUN and buy their CD if
you dont already have it. Its perfect background music for me. Kinda
like a modern version of Simon & Garfunkel, just better :)
07/05/02 Me = Happy
We reached a major milestone today. Darkfall now has grass on the
ground, and it is swaying in the wind! The framerate is excellent,
even on a GeForce 1 card. That card is pushing so many polygons, its
just amazing. Kjetil is a programming god!
I want to add some screenshots of this stuff real bad, but we are
having some issues with the new player character models, and we want
to wait till they are ready and working before we start uploading more
screenies.
I guess you screenshot junkies have to wait a few more days, but trust
me, it is well worth the wait! :)
Ah this is a good day indeed.
07/04/02 Clan Madness Again
I am currently working with Ricki on implementing all our Clan stuff
into the game. Clan Leaders will have almost total freedom when
setting up their Clans and running them. It is going to be bloody
hard for other MMORPGS to compete with us on Clan control ;)
We are also implementing skills and spells properly into Darkfall. The
stuff we have in there now, has been hardcoded, and as everything in
Darkfall, we want to keep skills and spells as open ended as possible.
This will make balancing and bug hunting so much easier.
04/03/02 Getting ready for the next step
We are about done with all the bug hunting in the Pre-Alpha, and both
the client and the server are now pretty much clean from crash bugs.
Our main focus now is adding more game content, and I am working with
Ricki on implementing our design system into the game.
The Darkfall interface has also gotten a bit of attention lately, and
we have totally scrapped the interface seen in the Pre-Alpha
screenshots. The new interface is kinda boring, but extremely
functional and doesnt steal as much of the screen as the old one. We
are pretty happy with the way it is shaping up.
The next big eyecandy thing, for all you screenshot junkies, is grass
on the ground. It is going to look alot better than now when we get
that grass in there. All games today seem a little flat and fake, with
textures painted green to resemble grass. We realised that this just
wasnt good enough, and hopefully we can take the realism a few steps
further with our real grass swaying in the wind thing. I dunno about
you, but I am pretty excited about it :)
The boards are really alive these days, and it is hard to keep up. I
make a point out of reading everything posted on our boards, and try
to reply to as many threads as possible. I am amazed by the quality of
the posts, and I find myself taking notes of good ideas and comments
several times every day. The input we get from our boards is extremely
valuable, and helps us get things just right from day one.
Keep posting! It really helps! :)
21/01/02 HARRO I R DESIGNER!
I really need to work on my l33t speak.
The pre-alpha has been up and running for 3 weeks or so now, and it looks
quite stable. We are now busy adding more features to the technology and
the game. The next set of screenshots should feature some of our user
interface.
An autopatcher should be ready soon too, and this is a really vital
feature to get up and running before we can add more people to the testing.
ETA? I promised I wouldnt guess no more :)
20/11/01 Rant!
Ok I swear I am never ever ever again going to guess a date for anything
never ever.
So whats new? While we all hold our breath for the pre-alpha to magically
finish itself, I have been working on our new design system. This new design
system is so secret I cant even talk about it hehe. It rules tho, and makes
it alot easier for our programmers to implement stuff into the game. It also
helps game balance and bug hunting alot.
I have also played some DAOC lately. File it under "research" I guess. Its a
real nice game, but I think the constant search for good xp groups, and the
/tell Somedaocplayer "got room for me?", followed by the quick "full, sorry"
is real annoying. I guess its time someone makes a badass MMORPG that doesnt
take months of boring leveling to fully enjoy and compete in pvp ;)
Else Ive been checking out all the available info on Shadowbane. Since
everyone seem to think that we are copying all their good ideas, I might
aswell go check out what they have, and STEAL IDEAS!! Muhaha!
J/K Wolfpack ;)
Shadowbane looks real nice though. And yes, they DO have alot of our stuff
in their features list, but like a wise fellow designer told me once:
"Remember Claus, If you have a good idea, you can bet your ass 1000 other
guys just had that same good idea".
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Shipping a game is a totally different sport.
And I am really looking forward to play Shadowbane.. SO I CAN STEAL IDEAS
MUHAHA! Woops.. just kidding again. Seriously, gimme a SB beta account pls..
It really looks like a great game :)
And last but not least, I promised to mention a few friends in my next
.plan so here we go: Hello Zuljin, Lanta, Mjoll, Dagio, Zargar, Zunk, Frank,
Meanie, Missy, Skadis, Elvis, KTV, Travis, Gekko, Cola, Kass, Ciana, Jha, Val
+ the rest in SUN, and everyone playing online games from Mjolls cafe in
Copenhagen (Except Azalar, cause he is teh sux, hehe).
Hah. That reminded me of the good old days writing scrolltexts in Amiga demos..
Those glorious days...
20/09/01 Yikes!
Almost a month since I updated my .plan. Thanks to Zakath for reminding
me (read: nagging about it endlessly in IRC =P).
Ok so what have I been up to?
Lots of biz stuff. The rest of the team is busy with the slightly
delayed pre-alpha, so that means I have to do most of the day to day
administration stuff here at the office.. replying to emails,
paying bills, answering the phone, writing development reports...
exciting stuff like that.
On the design side, I have been working closely with Henning on the
concept sketches of the races. As a result, we put up a new dwarf and
a new alfar. Next up is the elf, and he should be up just over the weekend.
The pre-alpha was scheduled for release end of august, but it is still
not 100% done. Mainly this delay is a result of us restructuring some of
the client-server code, cause we werent 110% happy with it.
Pre-alpha should be ready in about a week, unless something really bad
and unexpected happens.
There you have it.
Next up for me now is continuing work on the races, finishing up the design
of the clans, and finishing up on the design of the conquest rules. Pretty
cool stuff in other words.
27/08/01 Clans Galore
Just about done with redesigning all the clan stuff, and it is looking
really really good. Clan Leaders will have total control of their clans
with the tools we are gonna give them. I cant really say too much, but
trust me, its really exciting ;)
Yesterday me and Henning went over all the races, and came up with some
ideas and guidelines for the redesigning of the races. Expect some new
concept sketches in a few weeks...
I can just say that the Mahirim weapons are gonna look absolutely
awesome. Really something to look forward to :)
- Flesh out the clan design
- Redesign Conquest/Ownership
- Add to the site
- Do some interviews
15/08/01 Fun
Besides doing the interface design and adding stuff to the site,
Ive been busy with rewamping the design of Clans and Conquest/Warfare.
We had a big developer meeting yesterday were we sat down and discussed
the old Clans and Conquest/Warfare designs, and as a result I am now
gonna have to redo most of it.
The bad part is that my workload now increased by 100% for the next
week. The good part is that the game will be alot better, and the entire
team is gonna be totally happy with how Clans and Conquest/Warfare works
in Darkfall.
..sadly this means I am gonna have to cut down on the site updates for
the next week, but I am sure everyone understand whats REALLY important,
and what isnt :)
So my plans for the next few days:
- Rewamp the design of Clans and Conquest/Warfare
- Help update the company biz plan somewhat
- Add to the site
- Stop smoking
09/08/01 More evil plotting and planning
- Continue tuning the interface for the pre-alpha
- Add something juicy to the site over the weekend
- Continue to ask Kjetil if he is "done with the newest build yet?"
- Work on game logic with Ricki
06/08/01 More planfile madness
Here is a post I made about the viability of 1 character on each
account on our dev board:
**********
This is an interesting thread.
As already stated in our FAQ, we only allow you 1 race on each
account. We havent really thought much about how many actually
characters you can have on an account though.
There are strong points both for and against a 1 char limit on
each account.
For:
Obviously having only 1 char means less griefers, cause you
cant just create a char named Abcdefgh, be an ass to everyone,
then make a new char once you are done being an ass.
Against:
Some people share accounts with their brother or sister, and
they have 1 char each. This would be bad for them.
About tradeskills: Please keep in mind that we have a totally
open class system - meaning No classes. There is no problem in
having a character that is both a PvP god, and also a great
carpenter, making arrows and high quality bows when he needs a
break from the fighting.
It is totally impossible to "gimp" your character in Darkfall.
No rerolling cause you didnt know missile defense was useless,
and spent 8 valuable skillpoints on it. No rerolling cause you
are sick of playing a melee type character and want to try a mage
instead.
Here is how it works (and this is definately inspired by UO: You
start out and want to be good with a sword, so you use your sword
to kill stuff. Then you pick up some more sword related skills
along the way, such as disarming, parrying, critical strike, etc.
Then you decide some magic to help you would be nice, so you pick
up Lesser Magic and start casting minor spells such as magic missile,
light, create food etc. You also need some tradeskills, cause you
are killing War Bears, and they drop some pretty neat hides that you
have heard can make you nice leather armor. Wouldnt it be cool to
make some War Bear Leahter Armors and sell them? Just pick up
Leather Crafting. No big deal.
We are yet not 100% sure about how you pick up new skills, but
it will probably be possible to buy most common skills from NPC
trainers for ingame money. Point is, you cant possibly screw up
your character, so 1 character will be enough for whatever you
want to do - unless you have a brother or sister that wants to
share the account ;)
*********
What do you think? Go use our dev board :)
03/08/01 W00t! My first .plan file ever.
My name is Claus Grovdal, and I am the lead designer and producer of Darkfall.
Here is my current plan:
- Get those damn press releases out
- Start working on the menus for pre-alpha
- Send them to Henning and have him make them good
- Add more stuff to the site
- Stop smoking |
