Role of the Hero - July update

July has come, and almost gone... So it's time for me to report on the progress of my DreamGames contest entry. If you recall from past posts, Role of the Hero is a smalescale persistant world game - rather like an MMORPG, but with an indie-sized focus targeting a sliver market. The game focuses on Story first and foremost, with GM-player interaction to develop an ongoing plotline which affects change over time in the game world. It's targeted at those players who are heavily into the roleplaying and storyline aspects of these games.

You can read more about it at my regular blog: roleplayersworld.wordpress.com/


It's actually been a slow month - the standard Indie Blockades of work, family, and "sundry emergencies" have been working hard to slow down progress. But I've made some good strides despite this.

Modeling: My primary focus right now is on getting the models together for the first couple of zones. I took the models I showed last month, and made some improvements based on various suggestions from here and elsewhere - so thank you! I've also been working on several sets of housing (hill people tribal camp, stockaded refugee shacks, and stone knightkeep structures) which I'll probably show more of next month, perhaps via some ingame screenshots.

Alpha Test: I've been offered a year of free hosting by API Servers; their sponsorship is much appreciated. I'll be sure to report more on their services once I have more firsthand experience. The hosting starts next month, so to get maximum benefit, I am tentatively planning an early "walk and talk" alpha starting in September. I've started to interview and sign up testers, and have about a dozen solid cantidates so far.

Website: I had hoped to have at least the rough draft of the website up and running already, to show today. But I'm still hip-deep in photoshop, working on refining the images and layout a bit more. Since I'll be away on vacation next week, my guess is it won't actually be up on the web for another two weeks or so. I do have roleofthehero.com reserved and ready to go; I'll let folks here know when the site is available for viewing.

Today marks the end of the first third of the contest! There's only eight months left. I still have a lot to do. ;)