Darkfall: Developer Journals

We're back on track with a new exclusive update from Tasos Flambouras and the Aventurine SA crew. This week, Tasos tells us a bit about the delay, what's been going on over in Greece and gives us a rare gameplay video of the Aerdin Cat, the Mirdain mount.

Since our last status update, there is not much to report: we've been fighting to meet our milestones, we've been adding content, and we've been testing. The beta build is essentially a release version functionality-wise so there are numerous things to go over.

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After a short delay, for which Tasos includes his apologies, we have this week's Darkfall Developer Journal as promised. Inside, Tasos goes into the process of getting a game ready for Beta and how it is more complicated than some might think. This update is a lengthy one and include status reports on all kinds of areas.

I had written some things on this journal about the many technical activities relating to Darkfall development at the moment and then decided to take it out after speaking with Kjetil, our lead programmer. To quote him 'if we're going to talk to people about these things we might as well write a ten thousand page document with all the @#%$#@% little details'. So... basically Darkfall is a zoneless game, meaning servers are zoneless too, something most other MMOs don't have. Servers are collaborating in a cluster with dynamic responsibilities. That's what we're working on right now for the most part, the distribution. There's also some GUI work having to do with city building, and parties. We're also integrating with the game, the permission system for clans, the in-game boards, and the player journal, specifically the 'friends' and the 'holdings' functionalities. We're also working on the permission system, specifically for the clan vault. Clan boards are being integrated with the game, meaning that various in-game clan specifics work together with the clan boards.

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Tasos Flambouras is back with his latest bi-weekly journal entry here on Darkfall WarCry. In it, he responds to a recent call from one of our columnists to tell us when the long awaited Beta really will be. For that and more, read on!

We've been throwing around the word beta quite a bit, and it's not to churn the waters, it's because it's what we're working on right now. An editorial on this site urged us to come out with a date. Well that's nice, and we will when we have one. We've specified that our internal target date is this summer and we can't get more specific yet, but we will when we're ready to make an announcement. We have recent negative examples of games with good potential being rushed out having been improperly tested and we don't want that for Darkfall. Things are going well and we'll keep you updated on that front as we know more ourselves.

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The desert continent of Rubaiyat is one of the many varied locations in the upcoming MMO Darkfall. Today's journal is an extensive, detailed look at that continent from Associate Producer Tasos Flambouras. We also got our hands on three exclusive screenshots of the area.

Brushed aside by the Red Pharaoh's onslaught, the surviving Sharjad retreated to the Leenshards, a chain of verdant islands which lie north of the Rubaiyat mainland - and outside the Ur-Khamset's reach, at least for now. Visitors to the lands of the Red Pharaoh use the cities of the Leenshards as staging posts, where supplies may be bought and loot sold.

Desperate for outside help, the Sharjad offer richly rewarded quests to groups and individuals who are brave enough to take up arms against the Red Pharaoh. The short-term goal of the Sharjad is survival through the decimation of the Pharaoh's troops. In a longer perspective, they seek both to destroy Ur-Khamset and to restore the flow of the Angra.

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Today we get our seventh developer journal from Tasos Flambouras and the Darkfall crew. This week, they look at the Mirdain race, as we learn more about our pointy-eared friends. We also have two exclusive screenshots of mirdain riding their mount: the aerdin cat.

Since time immemorial, the Mirdain have lived in a forest which covers the southwestern reaches of Agon's main continent. The forest itself is called Mirendil, while the Mirdain-controlled realm which occupies it is referred to as the Forest Republic.

To the north, the Mirendil is bordered by the rolling plains of the Mahirim Tribelands. To the southeast lies Nagast, the poisoned and spell-blasted homeland of the Alfar, who are implacable enemies of the Mirdain race. Across the Ruby Sea to the south lies Rubaiyat, a desert continent which was recently overrun by the seemingly unstoppable undead hordes of the Red Pharaoh.

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Tasos Flambouras checks in with his bi-weekly journal update. The team has been extremely busy locking down a beta build of their game and had a recent incident involving a hacker, as such, the journal is a bit shorter than usual. Nonetheless, the content more than makes up for it and just to sweeten the pot, Aventurine SA has thrown in two exclusive screenshots of the Shulgan drake, a mount for the Alfar race.

This happened right in the middle of our huge effort to prepare the beta, so I'll say a couple of things about that. There are a couple of variables to be sorted out before we talk about a date. It will happen in phases leading up to the open beta. We're not looking forward to a prolonged beta period, and we've already performed extensive internal testing in order to minimize it.

The first beta build will be very close to the full game: all races, the whole world, full gameplay, around 300 quests, countless adventure areas, hundreds of monsters, all the mounts, ships, cities, sieging, with as few limitations as possible.

Read more after the link.

Darkfall Online's bi-weekly developer journal series continues today with a unique approach. Tasos Flambouras typically writes a few pages on something game related. Today, he shows us the guide to a demo the team did last year. This is a unique piece of information for fans of the upcoming game and should help visualize how the whole thing works.

This document is a gameplay document from the first Darkfall demo from last year. This was a very limited version which we put together whose purpose was to demonstrate functionality and to give a clinical glimpse at what the game is supposed to look and feel like. It was also used as a war server where we tested PvP. Even though it wasn't meant for fun, everyone, including us, seemed to have a blast playing it.

Since we're done with the demo, and we've moved to the next stage, I thought you might find the document interesting to check out. Giving a look under the hood is usually a bad idea, but we'll take our chances.

Read the full journal after the click.

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.

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."

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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.

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