I just have seen this thread for the first time, and have to say that this looks amazing. Keep up the great work.
Two Major DangerLands announcements Our first announcement which we've been hinting upon is that we are developing the ability for players to create and run their own maps. Players will be able to discover their own lands and add buildings, encounters, shops, and houses. Activities which take place on the land will benefit the player who owns them (is the 'lord' of them) in terms of ingame currency and/or experience. Players will be able to decree some laws and will be responsible for enforcing them also. We see this as answering the need for players to be able to have their own part of the game world which other players can visit. In a most basic sense this could be the player's 'home base' or house/personal hunting land, but taken to great extremes could be an entire new series of connected lands on which other players will adventure. The player may choose, for example, to have one or more small shops set up to handle commercial activity, and be free to set prices based on economic demand. Several land templates will be available to build on, with a number of additional land typed and features available on a paid content/premium basis. From a technology perspective, this is a major breakthrough in game server technology for us. One of the benefits is that DangerLands will not need to maintain a large server infrastructure in order to expand gameworld content. Many content areas developed by us can be segmented and run on ordinary hardware in an on-demand basis. For example, a game zone could even be run on an iPod Touch! This ability should allow players to really tailor the gameplay to their own style, and is one step further towards meeting the needs of both the hardcore player and casual game player alike. Beyond theory, the on-demand server technology is created and working well in DangerLands *right now*. No special port opening or router configuration will be necessary, just a device, the game, and a network connection! Our second announcement is that DangerLands is now targetting the Facebook platform for deployment in addition to the mobile iPhone/iPod Touch family of devices. We feel that this will bring a much larger casual playerbase to the game world and should enhance the experience for users on all platforms. Players will be able to maintain and play the same accounts whether playing on Facebook or the iPhone, and can switch around as needed. This will let players expose the game to their social circle and better experience the better parts of the social nature of an MMO. There is a stark absence of 3D roleplaying games on Facebook now, and this is a natural extension of our cross platform and web-based technology using the Shiva game engine. I hope these explain some of the hinting around we've been doing lately, as well as answer some of the recent questions about game engine and player-run shops!
They're not using Unity, it's like a program from some other developer :|... Of course. It was from a post awhile ago. No videos yet for the iPhone Simulator.
Great post daveyoung! Okay, I think I know what would really boost up the epicness ! OpenFeint Integration with achievements!!! I really do like the idea of that, which has been used before several times (on computer), but the problem is is that people would want to "force" people to go to their "hometown", which would need more players. Instead, why not make small houses, which you can upgrade, with DLC items ? This would balance the gameplay onto the real storyline too, achieve this, to gain this item, and so forth. I've seen this fighting happen all the time where people spam to get people to come to their places. Which is a major problem. DLC in hats/wings/clothes would be very nice though. Facebook FTW!
What we'd like to do re: user created content, is to have a rating system, so people will have a way to find the better areas. Still working on the details though. We have the user content worked out so that the areas will "fit" in with the rest of the world. For instance, if you put your area off of the forest area, then you'll only be able to use forest elements. That way forest leads to forest, and there are no palm trees in the frozen mountains, etc.
Part of the strategy is also to give people their own personal hunting ground too! The plusses far outweigh the negatives
Next up is writing up all the methods to give a player an item and have it show up in their inventory, so he can equip stuff Inventory works already!
Also, thanks to some recent upgrades in the Shiva game engine, experimenting with some enormous new terrains. Player movement and jumping around between servers and zones is working smoothly, so the World creation can move continuously forward.
I will carefully avoid answering that question until I'm 100% sure of the answer, as it will just doom whatever date I pick Given the pace of development and all the things left to so (including iPhone optimizations), I would think by the end of January we *might* be ready.
OMG ive been waiting for some time now for an online RPG game to come out, were you can go in buildings like pokemon and visit different places, also would we be ableto see what other people are doing online aswell like Graal Classic ? This will be amazing, on my to buy list defo.
Haha I think I agree with ya. Setting a date just makes things bound to happen to delay it. "might" be ready by the end of January sounds good to me.
yeah i mean theres been atleast 300+ replies and everyone is getting excited to see this but theres no screenies yet... It's still gunna be incredible though with or without screenies.
