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Developers Update - Massive Multiplayer Reflected Worlds
Posted Tuesday, July 13, 2010 by Alexis_Starfire
30 June 2010
* In a recent design meeting the decision was finally made to let players experience the Reflected Worlds in a fully massive multiplayer environment. This has been something we have been kicking around for awhile in various ways, but the decision was finally made to include it. This is a fundamental change to the game and so worth mentioning here.
First and most importantly, we are taking nothing away from what we already planned in the game play, all that continues as planned. What we are doing is adding Community Reflected Worlds (CRW) where players can go in fully massive multiplayer. Our original goals for this game were founded on the depth of our Quests and Missions in the game, and we are not willing to compromise the game play in this area. This means that the only way we would create massive multiplayer adventuring areas (beyond Campaign Raids, the Citadel and Guild locations, which were already planned) was if our Quests and Missions were not impacted by this change.
So what we have done is design the system to allow players to choose to go into a CRW or a Group only Reflected World (RW). While in a Group only RW the world is configured to have all that is needed for these epic Quests and Missions: details and happenings that would not function well with other groups messing with your story.
However, there are a lot of other types of game play fun to be had in the CoS world, and all of these are available in the CRWs, were you can and will run into many other players out doing their own thing.
One such element is our Adventure system, which includes some of the war elements of this world. For example: you might be in a CRW and run into one of Morphaels armies coming out of No-Mans-Land and headed to sack some town in the Citadel lands. There is no way your group of 1-8 is going to be able to take this army (in this example, anyway). So, you can head for the nearest town, or use the chat system, to call for reinforcements by other players in this Reflected World. Once you have enough Heroes you can go take on that army together; kind of an impromptu raid.
But not all challenges in the world need reinforcements. You could come on some bandits attacking a town and deal with them on your own or with your group, or find a castle under siege and deal with the attacking monsters, or help the Citadel Infantry who are trying to burn out a nest of Maggotmen in some cave network.
These are just a few examples of the MANY kinds of game play available in the Community Reflected Worlds.
Of course, this does not take away the small group version of the Reflected Worlds, and if you want you can still enter one of those with just your group and do all of the same things you can do in a CRW, with the exception of seeking reinforcements from other players, that will be unique to the CRWs.
This was such a large addition to the game play that we thought it worth a note in the development log.
May Developers Update
Posted Sunday, May 30, 2010 by Alexis_Starfire
Memorial Weekend Update
28 May 2010
* Happy Memorial Day weekend! Sounds like a good time for some development news on Citadel of Sorcery.
Our Art Department has been busy with upgrading the in game User Interface art. Our goal is to add this new art to the game within the next month. In addition our modelers have been building castles, lots of castles, big castles, massive fortresses and tall fantasy castles. With a world as massive as CoS we wanted to make sure that the castles were equally impressive. I know you would like to see some screenshots of these castles, but we are holding off on those until the new terrain system is far enough along. Be patient, it will be worth the wait.
Design has been working on our Guild system. This is very important to the game and the designers have been revisiting the Guild system to make sure that it has everything we want. Guilds will have a physical Guild Hall that Players build out in the Reflected Worlds. They can build them, improve them, add new halls and ramparts and they can keep improving their Guild Hall over time. In addition Players may purchase land around their Guild Hall (from the Guild) and construct their own house and business. Eventually they will construct their own village or town around their Guild Hall. Only Guild members may enter the actual Hall, but other players (non-guild members) can visit the village / town and make use of the various player run businesses.
There can be a whole economy setup and run by the Guild in these locations and we are trying to give the Guilds many options on how they want to run their Guild.
In addition the designers have been working with the artists on some of the various types of mounts that will be in the game: land, air and water. Your first mount will be fairly standard, a horse, but over time there will be many types of mounts that players will own and/or ride. They can even have a stable at their house and keep extra mounts for different situations (or as replacements if their current mount is killed).
Programming is concentrating on three areas right now. The primary one is the new Terrain system. Some of the preliminary screenshots of the terrain look very promising, with overhangs, arches, natural bridges, caves and more. The level of detail is extraordinary, even though these shots are still from an early version of this new technology. We are very excited about the progress and potential for amazing terrain over a vast world. We have mentioned before that the size of the world is going to be 900,000,000 sq. kilometers (basically the size of earth). This is the terrain system that is building that world (and replacing the previous placeholder standard terrain system that we used in early development of the game).
The second area of programming concentration is on Enact, or world building tool. Enact is a series of tools, some of which are working, many of which are still coming. In total, the Enact Tool set allows us to do almost anything a level builder or designer can imagine. The work on adding more tools to Enact will continue for several months and is an important concentration of a portion of the programming team.
The third area of current programming work is on the user interface system, which includes the chat and instant messaging system. We expect to see a lot of that system fully functional in the next few weeks.
Level Designers continue to work on scene decoration in the Citadel and testing of new features on the latest version of Enact while they wait for the new terrain system.
Our writing staff continues to progress their stories in anticipation of the day when the Quest Building portion of Enact is completed and we can start play testing some of those quests. Each of these stories would be worth an entire RPG game, and there are many stories currently being written. So the writing staff is plugging away at these epic adventures and climbing a mountain of required work. Writing on these stories will continue for many months to come in order to have enough content for a game that relies on its novel quality storylines to power the primary game play.
I should mention our interns. We have been working with a series of interns over the past couple years of the project. Many come and many go, but whether they are still here or not, most of them have put forth very good efforts. Right now we have five interns helping on the project (and learning). Several people who started in the internship program have now also joined the team permanently. We require potential interns to already have some game building skills in place, so if you have talent and knowledge and would like to gain experience, go ahead and contact us and we will see if you have what we are currently looking for in interns for this project.
So that is it for the moment, as always, we make no promises on when the game will be done, only that we continue to stay our course and follow our design goals. We would love to hear from any of you who have questions. To send a question, go to the CoS Q&A section of the web site and submit your question through that system, we try an answer every submission. As to forums, we are considering adding them to the site eventually, but not quite yet.
Last but not least, each player in our game will play the part of a Fallen Hero, a person who fell defending freedom in the mythos of our world. But the true fallen heroes are the men and women of the real armed forces who fell defending freedom in the real world. Here is to those fallen heroes on this Memorial Day weekend, long may they be remembered.
April 2010 Developers Update
Posted Thursday, April 15, 2010 by Alexis_Starfire
New engine build and other progress this quarter.
6 April 2010
* We have had a major new build of the T3D engine completed this quarter. This build improves the memory management as well as many other areas of the game. We got a 30% increase in performance, faster loads, and MANY bug fixes. Of course, it came with its own set of new bugs, but those were swiftly squashed and the build is now fully functional. This will help the development team to speed up work in many ways as they are not waiting as long for loads and the new build process goes from minutes to seconds. The world builders are VERY happy now!
Meanwhile, we have reorganized the entire code to be more efficient and gotten rid of some of the old legacy code from when this engine was first developed. We have also been revamping some of the data management systems to make the Enact World building tool more robust. Since Enact lets us edit in the live running game and allows multiple designers to edit in the world simultaneously, we had some collision issues with designers hitting the same data at the same time. This system has been redesigned and implementation is nearing completion with auto locking of certain elements as they are handled by designers.
Our database tracking tool has been improved to help us track all the different lives of each NPC in the game: where they work, live, where they hang out when they are off, who their friends are, what organizations they belong to (and attend), what time frame the do this or that, etc. Each NPC has a full life, and so we needed ways to track their design and follow their connections. This is essentially a social network for NPCs (so we can follow all of their complex connections to other NPCs). This tool has been working for some time, but we have added new things and ways of searching the data. Now we can do things like see who a particular NPCs friends are, and who shares those same friends. This makes it easier for us to make a more consistent and real world for players to enjoy.
In less technical areas, we have been dealing with some design issues. With a world this large (think VERY large), getting around the world can be an issue. Most games use an artificially small world to handle this (meaning you can run across the whole game play area in 10 minutes if nothing attacked you). In CoS you could take months (of real time) to get across some distances. So, we have been designing in a new kind of flight on a unique creature that allows players to skim across parts of the world at break neck speeds riding a very fast moving flying mount that they control. We will give more details on these new flying mounts later on.
Quest writing proceeds at a slow pace, but this is not really a problem. The reason that quests are taking several months to write is simply that we are still tweaking the system and having to chart unexplored territory. The depth of these quests, well, it is hard to explain, but try to imagine a story that is not only fun and interesting, but changes with game and player decisions constantly so that each PCs journey through the quest is unique. The number of challenges this represents are staggering, but we have persevered and stuck to the original goals of the game design.
The actual quest system we are using now is so evolved from where we started that it hardly seems the same, yet it is constantly getting closer to the original design goals. What were those? Well, to put it simply, to make each quest a novel quality story, but unlike a novel, to allow the story to change based on the PCs past, and sew itself into the PCs long term story and to allow the PCs choices to influence and change the path of the story and the eventual outcome. Easy, right? The good news is that we are getting there and since this is the primary game play of Citadel of Sorcery, it is a very important piece of the design.
Art continues to get work done, but frankly it is not our priority, though it will become a priority eventually. Right now we are still concentrating on game play and our technology. The reason for this is very simple, if we had gone out and done art first ALL of it would have to change now. As time moves on computers get faster, video cards do more, etc. Art that was created for the cards when we started this game would be wholly inadequate for current technology.
We knew from the beginning of this project that we were breaking new ground in almost every area of MMO game design. This would (and continues) to take time. Therefore, art had to come at the end of the development, not at the beginning.
Of course, even though we tell people this, they still complain about the concept art that we use during this portion of development. We even have better looking stuff than we have released previously, but there is still no point to showing this stuff since it too will all change when we make art the focus of final development.
Still, work continues as we develop techniques (if not the actual art). The first art that will be done that is not concept / prototype art is actually underway now in the new Terrain system, but it will be some time before we are willing to show that to people. Be patient, art will come after the game play and technology are finished, and we are working on that part diligently.
On that note, we are on the downhill side of technology and game design, though we are just working in some new areas of applying the design to the technology (world construction). That will go on for some time to come. This is a big world, and it cannot be rushed if we are going to stick to the design.
That is some of the progress on development for the moment. Keep the faith, we are working hard to bring CoS to you eventually.
February 2010 Dev Post
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2010 by Alexis_Starfire
Picking up steam in February
28 February 2010
* Programming has really picked up the pace recently and we are seeing weekly updates on the Enact tool. They are swiftly clearing up various bugs and adding new features. Right now we are concentrating on the A.I. net tool. This includes improvements on adjusting the net. All the mass connections were causing some slow ups, so they are redoing the data structure and other elements to keep our level designing team moving at a fast pace. But in addition to that we have also seen some preliminary screenshots of the much talked about (by programming) new terrain system. These are early shots with several months of work to go before it is complete, but they show great promise and demonstrate that we are still on track with this (excuse the pun) ground breaking technology.
Art continues to develop new dynamic objects. We have begun some work on some final art elements and are now going back and improving elements done early on for the prototype. Currently we are slowing down on making NPCs as we have plenty for the time being, though some key NPCs involved in the Epic Story Line are still being developed.
In Level Designing work is going on within the Enact tool as well as the Static and Dynamic object Editor. We will never have enough Level Designers, that is a fact. The world is very large and the more we have the faster we can develop things, but we are progressing. Right now they are still concentrating on two main areas, world development and the A.I. net (which controls our NPC lives). Enact was built so that Level Designers could practically create any A.I. they want for their NPCs and we are starting to see the power of the tool as programming fleshes it out and fixes up various bugs in the Enact tools. New tools within Enact will continue to be added over the next six months or so. The Level Designing team has gotten started now and will are beginning to breathe life into the world of the Citadel using the Enact tool set.
In Quest/Mission/Adventure/Crisis etc. writing work continues at a steady pace. Like Level Designers, our writing staff can never be large enough. CoS is a content hungry system requiring some pretty amazing talent to write our quests. The current team has the talent, we just need to clone them all to speed up work (or find some equally talented individuals who want to be chained to a computer to write fantasy novel quality quest stories). But work continues. We anticipate that it will speed up some now that we have ironed out many of the wrinkles in our quest system and the writers have a clearer understanding of what it is that is expected from their stories in this complex (to write, not to play) system we use for this game. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes, and their output speed should soon increase. Of course, we are always looking for new writers (as well as level designers and artists).
The team expanded up to thirty people recently, but then we lost a few people to other endeavors and the complications of life, so for the moment we are holding at twenty-seven. This is still a small team for what we are doing, but we will continue to look for talented individuals who want to work on a truly amazing and ground breaking project. We ask a lot from our team members because we are unwilling to compromise on any of the design elements planned for this project.
There is still no time table on completion, which is actually impossible to predict. With cutting edge development of new technology (which is very unpredictable), and a new system of quest writing never done before and many other innovative (and therefore at times painful) design goals, we often hit snags that slow up that part of the development. But, we have a goal and so far we have not had to compromise on what we are building. It will be done when we think it meets the original design goals, and not a moment before. However, we are slowly nearing a time when we will be willing to show the game to various publishers. This is a very exciting year in the development of CoS, and we expect to see great things. Our team is working seven days a week to bring it to you, be patient.
First Dev Post of the New Year
Posted Monday, February 1, 2010 by Alexis_Starfire
MMO Magic Team is growing, progress continues
27 January 2010
* MMO Magic Inc. is going through another growth spurt as the Citadel of Sorcery project continues to roll. Recently we have added nine new people to the team: 4 artists, 1 Level Designer, 3 Quest Writers and 1 programmer.
There is a lot of work going on in the design team as they write up all the personalities and lives of the NPCs that inhabit our world. This is no simple task as each has their job, hobbies, friends, family, enemies, daily routines, occasional oddities and events, troubles, etc. Work on player Abilities continues to be go through design, though they are still working through phase 3 of that development, having 270 Abilities now confirmed (but that leaves a lot to go still as there are around 1800).
Programming is still buttoning up the new sound module, though we anticipate integration in the next two to three weeks. In addition some bug fixes to the Enact tool continue. Progress has been slow on these bugs, but they are making a concerted (and sleepless) effort to get a new build done by this Friday. The new Terrain system is on hold until that round of bug fixes is complete.
Quest Writing has had some new blood introduced and we are starting to see more progress on these epic quest stories. It's still quite a challenge, but we're seeing good development.
Work on the player races is also developing from a design standpoint and we will release information on a new race sometime next week. Design work and concept drawings for multiple new types of fantasy mounts (not horses) have been developed and are being reviewed for possible inclusion into the game. Additionally, concept and modeling are underway for new monsters for the game, with current work on Maggotmen and Insectoid races of creatures.
People continue to ask when the game will be done, and we continue to tell them when it is finished. We have no idea when that will be, however we can guarantee that although we expect to see great strides forward this year visually, the game will NOT be released in 2010 (and we make no guarantees beyond that either). Really folks, this is new R&D and it will take as long as it takes. The best we can do is keep you informed of progress, (see above) :)
Keep up the faith, we are working on it!
Developers Post - November 2009
Posted Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
Happy Hallogivmaseve, or just happy holidays
23 November 2009
* Tis the season to be jolly and all that stuff. We thought we would add a mid holiday update on our Citadel of Sorcery MMO game project. We have been spending a lot of time on the playable character races lately. As promised, we have started to release information on one of the six races each month (and we are due to release information on the second race sometime next week). This is not just a matter of what we want to tell you, there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes as we continue to develop these races. Design meetings continue to define the races and modify them to make the more interesting, and more fun to play. Art continues to refine the look of the races with new models and animation.
In programming, among other things, we are currently working on the sound module. This includes all the ambient sound, noises, conversation, music and other sounds that bring the world to life. It also includes priority systems to make sure the player hears the more important sounds. Sound, in CoS, is not just ambient filler. We notice that in a lot of games we players turn the sounds down (or even off), since it doesn�t really matter to the game play, it is mostly about immersion in the world. We want the immersion, of course, but we also want sound to be more than just ambiance. It should matter to your strategy and decisions.
Like many areas, CoS looks to both movies, books, RPGs and table top gaming as we strive to bring more to the MMO game genre. In this case we looked at how a player uses sound in a Table Top game. They can ask to listen to a door, and what they hear (since there is no ambient track) is what the Game Master tells them they hear. This information can be very useful, for example you listen to a door and hear a conversation that tells you the location of a secret door... or you hear a particular grunt that tells you this room might have a certain monster waiting inside. This is valuable sound, and worth the effort to listen before leaping.
Our sound system is attempting to bring more of this informational sound to the player so that they will want to listen. So they can hear the drag... step, drag... step sound of an approaching beastie in the dark, or the sound of flames from behind the door so that they do not just open it and get fried. Sounds that matter. From the movies we are trying to incorporate a dynamic sound system that adds to the tension of the moment, and allows you to hear the important sound rather than drown it out with music. This system tries to combine music with sound effects that are aware of each other and their relative importance, and vary accordingly.
This new sound module is underway, but will be developing over some months to come.
In other areas we continue to develop the character abilities. Right now we are still in our phase three of abilities design. We keep attacking the player ability system because we believe it is so critical to the enjoyment of the game. We are planning over 1,800 separate abilities, with numerous variables assigned to each. The system allows you to get ANY of these abilities as any player in the game, and improve the ones you wish with no cap. This makes the system inherently complex, which is why we are already in phase three of design, with lots still to work on before it is done. We have a complete list of Abilities created already back in Phase one. In Phase two we reworked the system based on everything that is possible to do in our engine. Phase three is attacking the system from a purely creative end, where we are just having open ended blue sky ideas presented, discussed and refined, as we try to make the best possible choices for players. Our goal is to make you want each and every one of the 1,800+ Abilities, so that, yes, you have to agonize over which ones you choose. Even though you can get any Ability does not mean you can get all of them. You get to pick the ones you want, but you can only pick so many. How many? Well, that is not a fixed number. The longer you play the more you can get, but... no, we do not believe anyone can play long enough to get all 1,800+. You would die of old age.
Quest storyline writing continues to be one of our biggest challenges. We have ruined several writers who thought they could write our type of massive quest story, but in the end they found that it was too difficult. Still, we have located a few people who are excelling at this strange form of fantasy writing. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent out there to writing our quests. Novels are easier, and our quests have absolutely nothing to do with what other MMOs use. There is a current RPG released that lots of people are playing... and the story they include would only be just one of our quests, and it would have to be far less linear and tie into the world events as well as player individual stories... you get the picture. Still there is good news here. Some recent quest stories written for CoS are finally capturing the goals of the game. We feel that we now have a few people writing quality CoS storylines. We need more talented writers to add to this pool, but at least we have a few doing productive work now.
Other areas getting attention right now would include the NPC behavioral A.I. This is another vastly important portion of the game. We are relying on a MASSIVE improvement in NPC behavior compared to previous MMO offerings. It is imperative to the game play for NPCs to have real and varying intelligence. We sre trying to do away with the one strategy works for all, concept that works in most other MMOs.
For example, with our varied intelligence system, the old Tank system of combat will not work in most situations, and in truth, we are trying to do away with it for the most part. When you are facing intelligent opponents who may employ changing group strategy against you, then the idea of having one Tank stand around while all of the monsters beat on him (or her) just will not fly. Players will need to adapt their strategy to the situation at hand, based on the terrain around them and the intelligence, distribution and tactics of their opponents. This sounds complex for the player, but it is not. We are just designing the game so that good strategy will reap benefits in combat.
As for the holidays, it is nearly time for the annual MMO Magic holiday party. We always do something new in the game world for the party, but the details will have to come later on. It is a surprise! Sure, it is only for the team at this point, but later on when the game is released, we will continue to hold special holiday extravaganzas for the loyal player base as well; for now, this is good practice.
CoS Developers Log - October 2009
Posted Monday, October 26, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
Dealing with wandering monsters
* We've spent a lot of time on making some design changes recently. We want a living world where monsters don't pop back into existence after being killed. On top of that we don't want players forced into a typical level grinding situation where they stand around killing the same things over and over. To keep this from happening we have been working on the wilderness monster system. This includes how monsters inhabit these lands.
To make the game even better we have recently redesigned the tool that manages the large wilderness portions of the world. We improved the design to make the monsters in the world both interesting, dynamic and changing.
The wilderness areas of the Reflected Worlds deploy NPCs (monsters) by giving them tasks and goals and then turning them loose to achieve those results. Those monsters can make choices based on what happens to them as they go about their tasks.
When NPCs are killed by Players they will replenish in that area over time, but not by popping back into existence. Instead, new monsters (or mobs) will move into the area. These new monsters have their own agendas and goals, and they will soon begin making their way into an available area to start their tasks.
For example they might be a Raiding party of Recreated... sent out of No-Man's-Land to enter the Citadel lands in search of free people to kill so that they can drag their bodies back to be used to make more of the Recreated.
They will have a target, like a particular town, village, farm, fort, etc., and head with purpose for that area. If they reach their goal they will try to take the free folk (NPCs), kill some and retreat with their bodies.
Players may come upon this mob of raiders on their way to or from their goal. But... should the player not run into them directly, they may still cross their trail. This is a visible and traceable set of foot prints. Depending on the player's skill level in tracking, they will know varying amount of detail about the tracks they cross, and can choose to follow them to the Recreated raiding party, if they wish.
Conversely, the raiding party might cross the player (and group) tracks and decide to alter their path to follow and attack the PCs. Thus, whether you run directly into your opponents, track down your prey, or become their prey, you may have to deal with this raiding party.
All of the mobs and individual monsters out there have agendas, and can make decisions to change those agendas as they interact with the presence of the players.
On this note, we also created two new classes of monsters for the game, the Dark Spawn and the Dark Defiled. We'll go into greater detail about these new classes of creatures, how they are created and what they are up to in the war between the Demons, the Citadel and Morphael.
But for now, the new designs for them are very evil, nasty and downright disgusting in some cases.
On other areas, lots of Level Building is being progressed on the game side. Work on the design of the Adventure creation tool has been completed.
There have been further delays on the Enact Event Tool, but we hope to get the issues with it resolved soon.
In art there has been a lot of progress on Dynamic object creation as we cut down the lists created by the Level Building team. New NPCs have also been added to the game, and work on key NPCs continues.
We are hoping to get a big push in the next few months to get us to the next major milestone, more on that in future updates.
An update on Traveling in CoS
Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
* There are several ways to travel in CoS. Walking and horseback are the most obvious. However, a note about horses...
In CoS horses are not something you must wait to obtain. You can always get an 'issued' horse from the Citadel Garrison. These aren't the best horses (by far), but you can get mounted for free, right away. As soon as you can afford a better mount, get one. Better horses do cost more, but you can get a basic horse right away.
In addition, horses are more 'real' in CoS. You must mount and dismount, and horses do not disappear. They must be picketed or tied to a hitching post. They will, however, come when you whistle. Finally, horses will not go where horses are not supposed to go. Depending on the quality of the horse, they may balk at jumping down too large an incline, or crossing flowing water. However, no horses will go underground or in houses. OK, enough about horses for the moment, and back to the meat of your question.
CoS also offers Permanent and Personal portals. A Permanent portal cannot move, but will take you to any other Permanent portal that you have previously discovered or to your Guild hall, or to a personal portal of a group member.
A personal portal can be opened (for a small charge) almost anywhere. These portals will always return you to the Citadel, and then back to the location where you opened the Personal portal.
Beware portal blocks, for they can trap you in a zone where you cannot open a Personal portal to escape. As for flying mounts, and other forms of transportation... there will be some of these features in the game, but we're keeping those details a secret for the time being.
August Dev Update!!
Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
Challenges and Progress in July and August
25 August 2009
* The last two months have seen progress in some areas and delays in others. We're still waiting on the latest build of the Trident3D engine. There have been additional delays due to some serious bugs and because of some last minute design changes. The part that is costing the most time is the Event Tool, which is an insanely complex tool. However, it will be worth the wait as it will allow us to breath an amazing amount of life into the world.
This is one of the primary tools for making Citadel of Sorcery change every day, or truly, at any moment.
For example, this is the tool that allows us to setup a situation where a bar room brawl might break out... and then spill out into the street. Or, have a building catch on fire and have the local NPCs react to that fire. Not only would they react, but the news of this fire would spread from one NPC to another naturally. Players could talk to an NPC who spoke to another NPC earlier about something that happened recently... all spread naturally through world using the Event Tool.
Naturally, the power to allow events and rumors to spread naturally comes with the potential for bugs, and so we have seen delays in the tool as some of these issues are handled by the engineers.
However, while we continue to wait for this powerful tool other areas of the game continue to expand. Level Building goes on as more details of the world are placed and added. NPC creation continues as well as we expand the number of models.
A new tracking database has been created for the Level Building department to help us search out some of the bugs created in using a tool as powerful as our Enact world building tool. This database allows testers to track down who what where when and why something was added through Enact in the case of something strange going on in the world.
For example, since the NPCs are created in Enact to have their own individual lives, and even we don't know exactly what they will do at any given moment, strange occurrences can sometimes take place. You might be wandering around with your character and find the streets kind of empty because most (or all) of the NPCs heard about something happening at the Citadel Palace and went to go see the event. This, though possible, isn't desirable. We would have to track down who messed with the A.I. net and caused such a powerful Event, and tone down the power of the rumor, or change the priority of this event. To do that we have to know what caused such an occurrence.
The tracking database allows us to search on many different parameters and (hopefully) find out what some Level Builder may have done to affect the world so grandly.
Design continues on the character races and we're planning to start releasing some information on each race through the www.citadelofsorcery.com website in the near future (one race at a time). As always, the Quest system continues to go through more and more design phases. This is the main thrust of the entire game. We want quests to be everything you have ever dreamed of in a game, and never gotten. This means that we have to spend a lot of time designing, writing, testing and constantly improving the game play. As those of you who play a lot of games know, a world that has unique quests for every player, that changes due to what players accomplish, that moves forward in time, has many, many MANY difficulties in design.
We have received countless emails from concerned players wanting to know how we plan to overcome these challenges. Well, we can't release all of that information, it's what sets our game apart from other MMO games. Still, we can say that we know the challenges , we understand the conundrums, paradoxes and dangers. Our design team works constantly, going back over the system again and again, looking for those problems.
We're trying to balance a system that will give the player all of these things and yet still explain as much of the system as naturally as possible in our game universe. We don't like arbitrary rules, so we try to work everything into the mythos of the world, and yet give the player the richest experience we can in a changing world. It's not easy, but we feel we're getting it there. We are no longer having to swing at it with a virtual design sledge hammer and are down to more gentle taps. These small mods will continue until the game releases (and probably beyond, hey, this isn't easy!)
So, this brings us to the most asked question we receive in email... When? No answer there. Not for awhile, and not before it's done. We have sworn to the Dead gods that we will not release this game until it has achieved all our goals, and since we are aiming so high, this could take awhile. We will not be rushed, sorry. We will continue to release development news as it becomes available so that you can follow the progress, though we don't guarantee when these posts will happen. We only post when there is something worth saying... and though work is ALWAYS going on, sometimes it is just a lot more of the same, and not very exciting. Still, we'll try to post something somewhat regularly.
Keep up the faith, work continues.
Sorry, No Dev Posting for July
Posted Friday, July 31, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
There was no dev posting for Jly, because of busy..busy..busy :)
Hold out for August ..
New Developer Post on MMORPG.com
Posted Wednesday, July 8, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
Developer writes long explanation of the workings of Citadel of Scorery (CoS)
FULL ARTICLE DISCUSSION:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/333/view/forums/post/2934308#2934308
Developers Posts
http://cos.oldmmogamers.net/library/devpost_explain.shtml
Cheers
Library Information Added
Posted Thursday, July 2, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
Some new information has been added to the library.
Click 'COR Information Library' Link on menu to left.
Cheers
June 2009 Delvelopers Update
Posted Monday, June 29, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
New team members and E3
24 June 2009
* The MMO Magic team is growing! We've recently added two new people to the Quest Writing staff. Our game takes a very special type of writer and we are constantly looking and testing people to find those capable and foolish enough to want to take on this difficult task. Writing just one of our quests is like attempting to write a detailed outline of an epic fantasy novel, and that story changes every time you read the darn thing. It takes the average Quest Writer more than a month to write just one of our quests. It takes a kind of masochistic writer to want to punish themselves in writing in this style. However, we have found two more writers who do it quite well. Since each of our quests takes an average of a week of play to complete, you will only go through about 50 quests in a year, but due to the time it takes to write each of these epic changing stories we are increasing the size of our writing staff to handle the work load.
In art we have been working hard on NPC animations, additional structures for villages and towns.
Level Building continues to add to the world as they try to get ahead of those who will be adding our 'living' NPCs to those same areas. Right now placeholder terrain is used, since the real terrain system is still under construction (hence, no screenshots released yet).
The Trident3D engine is nearing the next build. There have been a lot of requests from the game designers on changes to features in the Enact tool and they are attempting to get a build out soon.
We took off some time and most of the company went to the E3 game industry show. We were both disappointed and thrilled to see that there wasn't a lot of competition for CoS in the MMO arena. We were disappointed in that there were no game coming out that we wanted to play (we are game players, even if we are also working on our own game). And we were thrilled because there still wasn't anything like Citadel of Sorcery being shown. The games we saw demonstrated had the same old game play and technology that we've seen for several years. Our company goal of releasing a new type of MMO game using new technology are still on track. :) We returned to work ready to redouble our efforts to bring this game to the public as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, there is still a lot of road ahead of us. Fortunately, most of that road involves the more exciting parts of development, writing, building and testing quests and combat, for example.
One last note, we continue to get emails constantly asking us if we are like this game, or that game, if we are PVP or PVE, if we will have crafting, etc. We want to state again, you have to forget other MMO games when talking about CoS. This is a new type of game, and therefore we don't have what other MMO games have, we're simply not like other MMO games. Expect something different and stop trying to fit us into some pigeon hole. For better or worse, this game will be something new. We hope you will like it.
May Update On Game Progress
Posted Friday, May 22, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
20 May 2009
* Time for a small update (to keep the wolves at bay). Work progresses in all departments.
Programming has been handling some issues with Enact, mostly server communication and a few other areas. The fact that Enact works in the live game world has made for some interesting bugs. They will soon be moving onto the world terrain creator (the world is currently using older style hand created terrain pieces, but this is placeholder).
Art continues to add structures and NPCs. Upcoming work includes some architecture based on the different ages of the world (some of this will be ruins, of course, but some castle and keeps as well).
Quest Writers are working on writing more quests, and pushing the limits of what can be done in quests to make them exciting, fun and as addictive as possible. These Quest designs take an incredible amount of work. A single Quest design for CoS can be 50 to 100 pages, including various flow charts and spreadsheets, and each one is a mental maze to design since the player choices change the way the quest unfolds AND the quest has to be adaptive for use within the customization system for individual player stories. Novels are easier to write, trust me.
Level Designers are currently writing Bios for various. NPCs. Since all of our NPCs have lives, jobs, hobbies, interactions with other NPCs and players, friends, enemies, political views, etc., each has to be designed with a full bio. NPCs also have to work within the community, meaning have proper interaction with all the other NPCs. Work on this is barely started and will go on for months.
Game Design is working on character Abilities (which seems to be endless, with approximately 1400 to design). The Story Tool has recently been completely redesigned to handle some of the new quests and missions being written by the Quest Writers. The object of the Story Tool is to allow the writers to design any quest they can imagine. As previously stated, our quests should take players a week or two to complete if they play a couple hours every day (although there are smaller achievements within each quest so that you get a chance for payoffs along the way rather than just the big one when you reach the grand climax of the story).
Overall the game progress is steady, and fairly on track. People keep asking us how close we are to being finished, which is a question that cannot be answered. With all of the R&D work and pushing the game and MMO design envelop, the project will just be done when it is done. Thanks for your patience, we are working hard, and Citadel of Sorcery is progressing.
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April Developers Update.
Posted Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
April progress
20 April 2009
* As stated in the previous (March) post, we're in a long development cycle right now. However, here is a little information on what is happening on CoS.
1) The new client update system is working well now. We're going to be adding the 'news' system to it in the near future. This is a daily newspaper that comes out telling players what is happening in the game world today, and what transpired yesterday. What towns fell, or were liberated. What players did, what guilds were formed, what new offensive Morphael is rumored to be planning, etc. Players can read this while they wait for any file updates, this way they know what is happening before they get into the world. Right now programming is adding the news display system to the client updater. Later the news generation system will be worked on as well.
2) Art is working on several areas. We're creating the structures for the first questing territory, villages, towns, forts, castles, ruins, towers, etc. In addition work continues on the Citadel as well, adding some headquarters for the strange 'commanders' of the Citadel forces. We haven't released information on these nasty guys that you work for as a player, but we will down the road. We've also started modeling some of the commanders as well.
3) Level building is eagerly awaiting Enact. Though the tool is working, it has not been turned over to them for use as design and programming work out some of the issues with this new piece of technology. However, we expect to give it to them in the next few days.
4) Design continues to expand the player Abilities and will do so for month to come. In addition a new element of the game is under design, the Spirit World. More on that later.
5) Quest writing goes on, the system is now generally in place and we just continue to fine tune it and add more content to the system.
6) New team members! We added two new people to the team (one quest writer and one artist, a modeler/texturer). We have also added three new interns recently, one to Level Building and two to Quest Writing. They are learning the ropes still, and we hope to get them up to speed soon. Of the previous round of Interns,five made it through to the second internship (a one year stint).
7) The new game, update and database servers have run into some hardware snags, but we should have the new systems up and running soon. We got a couple of bad pieces of hardware, but should have the replacements back soon. This is a necessary upgrade so that we can stress test the game with larger groups of players later this year. We need to get these new servers up and running so that the testing phase can happen on schedule. No, we're not signing up testers yet, though we have been compiling a list of people who want to be notified when that time approaches.
When will this be out?
Posted Thursday, March 26, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
The Q & A's below are answered by the Developers of CoS, not by the owners of this website
When will this game be downloadable?
Answer: No matter what you are actually asking here (Beta tests, game release, etc.) the answer is the same, no one has any idea. We're working on it as fast as we can. When it gets to the point where we're getting near any testing stage we will add a 'Tester Signup' area on the web site. After all testing phases are complete, the release date of the game will eventually be announced by the publisher (not us, we're just the developer of the game).
Will this be a game that you can play online, or do you have to download it?
Answer: The publisher (yet to be decided) will decide how the game is distributed, and how you pay. If I was guessing I would think that you will need to either purchase at a store, order the disks online, or buy and download the client online. Regardless, it's going to be big. With a full 3D environment of epic proportions, the client is likely to be between 4 and 8 gigs on your hard drive.
New Content
Posted Saturday, March 21, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
There is new content in the 'Library' section.
A complete back story of the game. A real nifty read.
http://cos.oldmmogamers.net/library/history.shtml
Cheers
March Developers Update
Posted Saturday, March 14, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
A new developers update appeared at the Official CoS Website.
http://www.citadelofsorcery.com
13 March 2009
* A short update:
Not a lot of 'new' things to report, just a lot of work done on furthering existing elements such as:
Final touches on Enact Phase 1 (in game level building too).
Testing and tweaks on the new game client update system.
More NPC character development.
Lots of design work on player Abilities.
100s of bug fixes to existing elements in game.
Level building continues to add dynamic objects.
New models pouring in, both static and dynamic.
Design tweaks here and there on the game.
We're going to be entering a period of development in the next few months where this will be the norm. Meaning, we have already finished much of the core functionality, and now we're just adding more and more using the existing tools. Of course this doesn't mean we won't post progress updates, otherwise people seem to get worried. Don't! Progress is continuous.
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New NEWS! from the Team at CoS Development
Posted Friday, February 13, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
February interim update
13 February 2009
* Well, it's Friday the 13th, but we're not superstitious. We were holding out on the next update for Enact Phase 1 to be finished, however, there have been some unavoidable delays in finishing the tool. Of course, other work has been done in the meantime, so we decided to go ahead and post a short 'interim' update report. So here goes...
Recently the art department has been working on several areas of the game. The main screen user interface final art has been started, working off the previous design art. In addition several new NPC characters have been modeled and animated. Work on character races has also continued, with particular work on Jenemos and Waerian player characters. As for structures, The Black Market is under construction, which is part of the sewer system, and is where players can shop during the night while the shops of the Citadel are closed.
In Level Building we have been fixing bugs in existing city areas. Planning has begun on the NPCs that live in Tier one of the Citadel. Since they each live their own life, we have begun work on the places they live, work and what they do during their leisure time. This work is in anticipation of the Enact Tool, phase 1 being completed.
Design has continued work on player abilities. This is a very long process. Our issues are simple, since players can get any ability from any league we cannot have any ability from any league be similar. Each ability should be unique. This may not seem odd, yet most other games have similar abilities for different classes. Example, they may have a healing spell for a cleric and another slightly different healing ability for a warrior. But since any character in CoS can have any ability, we want them all to be unique. Who needs two healing spells? Since we are planning over 1,400 ability choices, this is a daunting task. Work goes on.
Other areas that have seen recent work in design include the combat system and the ongoing history of our progressing world story. Our system of an advancing world time line gives us unique challenges in keeping the world history progressing.
We expect the next update on the Trident3D engine soon. There have been some delays on the completion of the Enact tool, but we expect that to be delivered in the near future. From our end there has been work on the game client updating system and work continues on the audio module. Finally, server security code is being improved (got to keep your character data safe!)
New servers have been added to run the game. These will help with testing phases planned for later on this year. We will need to stress test the system and find out what each World Server can handle. Since we are doing things on the server end a bit differently than most other MMO games (like everything else in this project) there are some aspects of our server system that need some serious hammering to make sure there are not any issues. This includes the ability for players to move between any World Server in their geographic territory any time they wish. The objective is to make it so that players do not have to pick a server when they start the game, and can move to any server they want at any moment, easily.
Bug fixing continues (it never ends). Several new people have joined the team in 2009, and we anticipate more over time. We're a snow ball gathering size as we get closer to the bottom of the hill.
In the last report we mentioned demolishing the Guild District. Plans have changed. We have decided to let it remain as the Housing District (which is what it was originally) though we will improve NPC housing in the District. Of course this means we are left without a Guild Distinct. Don't despair! Design has decided that Guilds will get to construct their own Guild Halls. Sites in the Reflected Worlds can be selected by the prospective Guild and then construction of their Guild Keep can begin. Over time they can expand and improve their Guild.
In addition, we're considering player housing (please keep in mind that some of this stuff is in flux, don't flame us later if it changes). This would manifest as a village or town springing up around the Guild Keep. Guild members could choose to construct their own house near their Guild Keep. They can invite non-Guild members to come visit their home in their town or village, though access to the inside of the Guild Keep would be restricted to Guild members. To reach a Guild Hall players will use the portal system, which can take them there from the Citadel and many other places around the Reflected Worlds (any permanent Portal will do).
We'll talk more about Guilds and Guild Keeps and Guild villages and towns in the future as more of the design is detailed. Since Guild Keeps are now part of the Reflected Worlds, this system will be dependent on the World Generator, which is technology still in progress. So, it will be a while still :)
All right, that's it for now, but we will have another update much sooner than the last as several things are nearing readiness.
Under Construction
Posted Thursday, January 1, 2009 by Alexis_Starfire
Site Still Under Construction
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