I'm coding, but judging by the progress I've seen on the environment, the object placement is getting down to bushes and rocks and lighting, so chances of that are good
Nope! There's a good dent in it, but with 39 skills, it's hard to finish them all at once.... Like I've said though, this release's focus is on PvP, so we will make sure all those skills are done and ready
Hey from the world builder Hey everyone, I'm the guy who's been building the world. I'm glad you like what you've seen so far. I just finished placing and tweaking the trees and mushrooms. Buildings are already done, so next up I'm doing the ferns, rocks, and other small bits. Then comes lighting. But already it is shaping up into a nicely creepy forest. I contribute to a gaming blog, and I've been posting updates over there. Here are the DangerLands articles: http://www.multiplaying.net/tag/dangerlands/ I wrote some about the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes into zone creation, so I hope you find them interesting. If not, you can just look at the pretty pictures. We also do a podcast, so expect some chat from me in future episodes, and if we can talk Dave into it, we'll interview him. Let me see if I can whip up a nice pic of Shroom Corner to attach. You should feel special, I just finished it and Dave hasn't even seen it yet. Enjoy --Winin
That looks very nice, but the squared off 'walls' are something to avoid. I know from experiance (I make crysis levels) that it makes it way less immersive, and can be disconcerting for the player. I'm not exactly sure how terrain editing is done in ShiVa though.
I played EverQuest 2 for a few years and instead of simple boxed off walls something like a mountain or a Ocean or even a Lake can be used to make the player forget about the boundaries of the current map they are in.
Could you explain what some of the different schools of magic are? I'm really curious about that. And when you said different schools of magic did you just mean different skills? Or when you train source and sizzle do you pick from within that?
Aesthetically you are definitely correct - who doesn't like wide open rolling terrains? The terrain is an occluding object however, which is definitely needed for the iPhone.
Thanks for the suggestions and feedback! I tried smoother, more natural looking terrain at first, but when I viewed it on the small screen, I didn't notice many of the details, so I tried this blockier/cartoonier terrain. We liked the look, and it fit with the overall art style we were going for. Screenshots don't do it justice. While running around in the world, it works for me. Hopefully others will like it too. As for the zone walls, well, I did want a bit of a claustrophobic feel to make the forest creepier. I have been messing around with different skyboxes to see how they work (dark clouds, the underside of a tree canopy, etc.). I'll try a mountain skyline and see if that gives the illusion of something other than a run-of-the-mill zone wall. Unfortunately, we are constrained to use fairly small maps, so I try to squeeze as much content and playable area into each map as I can. And if any point on the map is drastically higher than other points, you'll be able to look down and see everything (i.e. nothing will be occluded) and your iPhone will explode from the strain. For the same reason, I tried to avoid having long "corridors" where you can see from one end of the map to the other. It a lot of ways, it was like setting up a board for a tabletop miniatures game.
This is an important thing in any game for performance. Does ShiVa support LOD settings for models, and occluder areas? I had this issue with one of my crysis levels, so I totally understand what you are saying. A player had to fight their way up the inside of a mountain and get on top for extraction, but the performance was really nasty even with LODs enabled on anything but a pretty decent gaming computer. So what I did was use two layers of non-volumetric clouds with occluder areas placed in between the layers. Unfortunately the map never got finished. Just something to think about.
we gonna have any npcs running around in danger Forrest with us on this first release? You should have like one big powerful one that wanders the forest and everyone is trying too keep away from. That would add to the feeling you want
This looks terrific, please do carry on and complete this idea. What do you think, will there be a monthly charge for the servers? Best luck!
Yes, there are several types of collusion for the non-iPhone platform. The iPhone platform does not have the best type of occlusion: hardware based occlusion, so we are making heavy use of the terrain occlusion, which does work. The other question about LODs... ShiVa can support mesh LOD in its Unlimited version which we don't have yet (too costly for me ATM), so we'll be using our own LOD system to eliminate the rendering bottlenecks we can, by using BBs and activation distance in code. The engine does a lot, but as we're making the iPhone client a priority, we need to pull out all the tricks and some of them fall on the design level.
I am pretty sure we won't be requiring a monthly charge, but rather going the 'free-to-play' route (with the exception of the iPhone client up front cost). We have been tossing around the idea of a possible monthly subscription option with additional benefits.
There won't be NPCs in the first release, it doesn't fall into the schedule. They will be in the second release, along with native creatures. The first release is focused around PvP and exploration, and all the necessary features to support it. The world server technology is fairly well designed at this point however, if not yet implemented. So I am quite confident the second monthly release will see that happening.
Spell Skills The schools of magic are: Creeping: Use magic that has an effect on the properties, skills, and stats of creatures Hoom: Cast spells which directly affect the safety of creatures and people. Affect their vital energies, strengthen or weaken their protections. So named for the sounds these spells typically have Sizzle: Hurl harmful magical energies at your enemies of various elemental and physical types Binding: Cast spells which bind magic to items, or bind people to places. Includes Sending, which is a type of travel magic Each of these has their own spells. Once a player has trained/focused the basic skill, he can increase in mastery of it over time and therefore be able to cast more and more powerful spells in it. A 'fizzle' is what happens when you fail to cast a spell The other spell-related skill is: Source: Increases your mastery of Source, the energy which fuels magic. Affects recharge rate, the amount you use when you cast spells, sometimes used as a prerequisite to use an item
