I just started getting final Skills, Abilities and Specializations down for the two adventure classes (Mage and Warrior). These should be pretty fun classes. One of my goals is for you all to have a magic system in when we open here for the next testing session.

The quest system is going to be very nice. We’ll have a nice quest log and history log, showing you all the quests you completed and basic statistics such as how long it took you to complete, how many times you died, how many times you failed the quest, etc.

The quest editor is my next big task. Plischa and I will both start pounding on quests for Classes and for general questing.

These are more epic quests and are different for each class. Here is how it works… I’ll use Warriors as an example:

When you become a Warrior, you must visit the Warrior’s Hall in the capitol city. The Warrior Grandmaster will open the crypts of the Ancient Warrior Lords and send you down to find a particular Warrior Lord. Once you find his tomb you are to meditate at his side. A vision will appear before you and the Warrior Lord will issue you a quest. Before you can begin to advance as a warrior you must complete this quest. The quest reward will be a skill, equipment, etc. These things will change during testing a great deal. You’ll all help us decide what is best.

So now, you are running around killing things and advancing as a warrior. Once you hit level 5 you are notified that you must return to the Warriors Hall. You can no longer advance as a warrior until you perform another and more difficult Quest that will be given to you by a different Warrior Lord. And this continues every 5 levels. The quests will get more epic and often be chain quests with branches.

There are some interface changes going into the game. I’ve worked with Ethago to standardize some of the windows that popup and help bring a common and polished look. Slotted inventory is in and fully functional. Many changes were made to Ooz and the core engine to help us prevent ghosting problems of items as you have may seen in the past.

I have an option screen that allows for players to set a huge list of options. The big outstanding task for the option screen is the Keyboard Mapper.

Action bars are in the game and functional. Players will be able to create action bars, place them on the screen and even assign keys to the individual bar items. You can assign a key range to a bar such as F1-F8 or SHIFT-F1 to F8, etc. You’ll also be able to assign regular keys to items in the bar. Action Bars can hold items and usable skills/spells. You can make action bars vertical or horizontal.

I have some sad news and some great news. There actually two items of great news… Great News #1… Tarantula’s metal band The Zombi (http://www.zombideathmetal.com) has taken off quite well. We wish him the best of luck. He is a hell of a musician. That brings us to the bad news… It will be difficult for him to find time to compose music for EL and SW right now. At a point in the future he will have the time, sadly it is not right now.

So finally, Great News #2. I have a guy who is VERY talented working with us now on music for EL. His name is Andrew Sega, I worked with him at Origin and Digital Anvil. He has done some amazing things in the Demo Scene and composed music on games from companies such as Origin/Electronic Arts, Midway and on the PS2 and DS platforms. He has his own little game company if you all want to check out his games (http://www.diffusiongames.com/).

BTW, we currently have about 15 songs for the game. Some from Sega, some from Tarantula and a few I purchased from various music websites.

Plischa is working away at the map, building out the Zima Province. She has been spending a great deal of time in Europe collecting a ton of research material for the artists and design team. Ok, she is having fun too... Who wouldn't have fun in Europe... :D

Icleos has been giving us a ton of new artwork. We have some spell effects, a bunch of terrain bits, even a few monsters. He has also produced several new weapon and armor pieces.

I have written up a ton of details about the first two Provinces (Darnorlth and Zima). I have plotted out the points of interest, the towns, the quest and monster level ranges and of course the types monsters that will exist there. This is actually not as easy as it sounds. It takes a ton of work to make sure the game flows smoothly.

What we want to do is not lock players into areas, at the same time we want to guide them around the world so they are not instantly exposed to a vast world with no direction (Like that Dransik when I opened main land). Most provinces will have content for lower level players (1 – 15). However the general design for each province will be for higher level players as you move further away from Darnorlth. Also, so we don’t have ghost town areas or ghost provinces… Each province will also have mid and high level content. Again, designing this takes time.

We are trying to story drive all the points of interest. I don’t want the random area where FlimFlams spawn for no reason. An example is the Bloodsash Bandits in Darnorlth. They are actually part of a larger organization, The Bloodsash Brotherhood. These pirates and rogues are dotted all throughout Sedok. They have a history and an agenda. In Darnorlth players around level 6-8 will receive quests to deal with the bandits. And at a later time, a higher level (Some mid-ranged) other quests will appear to go deep into their domain and lairs, finding the upper leaders of the Bandits. Eventually this will lead to chains of quests which will end in the players battling the top members of the Brotherhood.

We are trying to make less generic creatures and instead make creatures more specific to the area… So if you fight spiders in Darnorlth, they won’t be the same as the ones you may fight in Anagardon (province in Asper). They’ll have different names, appearance and loot. Not better, just different. There is much more on this front.

On the map building side of the Elderlands development we have been working on a new winter province Zima. The province is almost completed, we have only some more town building still on the schedule.

We have come up with some design changes to a GUI (Graphical User Interface) of Elderlands screen.

1. We have decided to use a slotted inventory for the game. We may consider allowing players to switch between the two inventory types but currently we are focusing on slotted as a default. We can control content and the code behind a slotted system is so much easier to deal with.
   
   
   
   
   


2. We have added hot bars to the game. Some hot bars can be assigned to keys such as 1-8 and F1-F8 and so on. Players can drag menu icons, spells, items etc. into the hotbars and use them via clicking or by a hot key. We will have a set of different hotbars, and may allow them to be draggable and dockable.
   
   
   
   
   

More information about our recent progress can be found here.

As was announced earlier in January we came to the point where we closed Session 2 Technology testing, removed the testing application and took the server down.

The server will stay off-line while we are working on adding actual game features and content to Elderlands. We will announce dates of upcoming periodic testing sessions ahead of time.

Once we have reached our set goals we will re-launch the game server in a full Open testing session.

The winter storm has passed and the evil Santakluz has been pushed back into the frozen hell in the Zima mountains. The people of Darnorlth have stood up against evil once again and the land is free. The snow is melting, the flowers are blossoming, and life is returning to normal. King Mondor thanks every hero who stood up against the legions of the frost lands.




Friday, Jan 11th there will be a patch to the server. It will be down for a few moments. We thank everybody who has participated in the GM run events of chaos and destruction over the holidays. We hope you all enjoyed it.

The development team is very happy with the state of the game. We are starting to move forward with more traditional content pieces. In order to do this, we need to focus on our objectives. For this reason we will be concluding Session 2 Technology testing at the end of January 2008. The server will go offline.

We will have periodic testing sessions that will be announced ahead of time. We will also establish a mailing list so current players may receive updates and notices of testing sessions that are coming.

Once we have reached our internal milestones we will re-launch the game server in a full open testing session. Current characters will not be deleted.

Before the end of the month we will schedule an in game Q&A session so players may ask questions to the development team.

A snow storm unlike any that has ever been known has struck Darnorlth. All the land is covered in snow! What dark magic could cover the land in such cold weather? The land of Darnorlth has always been filled with green grasslands, thick lush forests and majestic mountains. The weather is always pleasant and the citizens enjoy days of sun throughout the year. How could this happen?

The mages of the Breathnor Mage Council have discovered that in the nearby province of Zima there is a mountain range that is cursed by great Ice Mage Sandakluz. His heart is as cold as the land he lives. He is surrounded by his frozen minions and wishes nothing more than to cover the world in ice and snow.

The mages of Council, using their great visionary powers, have foreseen the armies of Sandakluz marching down upon the land over the next several months. They can see the evil beasts invading the outer cities, the Forest Monastery, Breathnor and even the great Castle! They know that for many ages Sandakluz has been building his powers and his armies for a great invasion of the Sedokain lands. Now the time has come, now his army is ready for battle. Sandakluz has begun his invasion and he has chosen to start his assault in Darnorlth!!!

We call upon the great warriors and the great defenders of our fine nation! We ask that they come to aid us in this cold and dark time. Save us from the invasion. Help us protect the land! Help protect the people of Darnorlth!

DEV team has prepared for Elderlands players a special Christmas present, log into the game for a Christmas Event. This special version will be released on the evening of Saturday the 22nd before midnight (Texas time). and will run throughout the holidays until the 1st of the new year.
We will provide more information and the story for the event just prior to launching it.

We have added two new places of interest and enhanced some aspects of the interface. Come and check it out!

We have launched version 01-02-014 today. This was purely an emergency patch to take care of some critical issues. Some of the content that was intended to be in the next update has leaked into this version.

The most significant change from the technology point of view is the new version of Ooz (Engine v1.5) was integrated into the game system.

There have been no item or character wipes with this patch.

Due to a hardware failure the game server will be down for most of the day today. We have to replace some of the equipment and set it up before we turn the game server back on. Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE!
The game server will be down for some time as we will be preparing a quick patch for the game. We have no ETA other than it will be as soon as possible. We will keep the community updated.

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