Developer Journals

Tasos Flambouras, the Associate Producer of Darkfall, penned his latest journal that hits some odds and ends that have cropped up in the recently for Darkfall Online. This marks a new day and return to the bi-weekly publish schedule for Darkfall journals.

On another topic, I was following a thread on our forum on declaring war in Darkfall. There was quite a bit of debate so I'll give you the overview on how it works:

Clan leaders of sufficient rank can declare war on another clan. When they do, both sides are at war. You can go into the fetal position and refuse to accept that someone has declared war on you, but the other guys will crush you where you lay. You're notified of the change of status and so are your allies, but your consent to the declaration is irrelevant.

You can read the whole think at the link below.

Tasos Flambouras, the Associate Producer of Darkfall, returns for his third in a series of developer journals hosted exclusively on Darkfall WarCry. Today's topic is artificial intelligence.

Mirco's goal for the AI is to provide a fun and convincing PvP training experience for the players. Quake bots are not a bad PvP vs. PvE analogy for the way the Darkfall AI feels compared to an average player, although I hesitated writing that for fear of it being taken literally. You can use all the tactics you can use against players and the AI reacts to it. If you manage to land a MOB that doesn't have a swimming skill into the water with a spell, or by pushing it off a cliff, it will drown. You can physically block them from advancing, you can blow them away from you with using spells, etc. This has nothing to do with MMO PvE as we know it.

Read the full article at the link below.

Today we're lucky to have Matrix Online developer "Rarebit" take the time to pen a developer journal exclusively for MXO WarCry. In this article, he looks at the state of MxO's story.

Early in the development of The Matrix Online (MxO), the powers behind the game decided that it would do something significantly different than most other commercial massively multiplayer online games: It would tell a single, continuing story--the story of the Matrix. It would pick up right after the end of the third Matrix film and continue to evolve the exciting world and characters that had proven so popular in the Matrix movie trilogy.

The series' creators, the Wachowski Brothers, developed a general theme for the first year's plot (Peace and the things people do to wreck it), ideas for a new character or two, and some thoughts on how to kick things off. They hand-picked Paul Chadwick, well known for his comic book series "Concrete" and one of their favorite writers, and put the franchise firmly in his hands. Armed with this creative blessing and plenty of encouragement to take the Matrix to places it had never been before, Paul began writing the first year or so of the story.

More can be read by clicking below.

In their second in a series of bi-weekly developer journals, Tasos Flambouras discusses the recent gameplay video that made the rounds. You can first watch this video here.

"Monkfield lies just west of Sanguine, the human capital. A walled mining village called Longstowe lies in the heart of this region, in the in the shadow of the majestic, snow-clad Hermitage mountains. Elsewhere in this mountain range, a dwarven village clings to a narrow plateau among cloudy peaks, while goblins have carved out a precarious home on the steep northern slopes. Away from the mountains, Monkfield is dominated by sparsely wooded, grassy plains which are home to a rich variety of game, as well as a small but vicious tribe of gnolls.

The Stormcove Islands is an archipelago in the Mirrorsea, which lies west of Agon's main continent. The largest of these islands is home to Threshold, a bustling freeport which welcomes visitors of all races and moral inclinations. On a less hospitable note, the Stormcoves are home to several tribes of hobgoblins which were recently united by an ambitious warlord, and a necromancer who is disturbing the dead of a long-ruined dwarven colony."

Click read more to do so.

Each week on Darkfall WarCry, Tasos Flambouras, Associate Producer of Darkfall, will be joining us with a journal, discussing and illuminating the development process and decisions along the road to completion. Today, we are proud to share with you the first of these journals, in which Tasos opens a window into Aventurine, the development studio behind the game.

While most of this information has been communicated in the past, Aventurine seems to remain a mystery and a point of discussion for some of the Darkfall community. It reminds me of an "America's Army" developer who visited us at our offices and said something like "wow this looks like any other development studio in the US". I'm not sure what he was expecting.

Click below for more!