MMORPG Contest - Final weeks

So the last two weeks for the MMO contest are upon us... our alpha testing is progressing well, but we're still missing a few things, so we're scrambling to fill in some gameplay gaps.

Before boring you with technical details, I'll entertain you with some artwork produced by some of our extremely talented artists.

Portal Fall - Falling through a portal leading to an unknown world


Lasphar City Map


Catacombs outside of Lasphar


Keltar
Keltar are evil spirits born from the concentrated malice of slain soldiers. They can often be found hovering above battle fields or ancient ruins where blood was spilled. Keltar are aggressive attackers, seeking only to inflict the pain they feel upon others.



Redcap
Redcap are large, carnivorous fungi that roam dense forests and nearby areas. With their eyes and mouth tightly closed, they resemble a common species of giant mushroom. They use this natural form of camouflage to catch unattentive prey, quickly jumping from their hiding places to attack with their massive jaws.



NPC / quest editing is complete, albeit extremely complex... due to the lack of time I was unable to create the polished editing system I desired and was forced to create a quick and dirty yet still extremely flexible quest system.

AFX

Impressive, but lacking a bit for MMORPG games. Don't get me wrong... the documentation is flawless and the effects are spectacular, but the one small complaint I have is that the spell books are datablocks instead of objects, making it difficult to create spell books specific to a player. Scoped objects would've been better for spell books, but everything else... well, no real complaints. The code dropped into my customized version of TGE flawlessly.

AI
A* pathfinding is finished except for the small detail of making nav node editing in-game instead of part of the mission editor... a definite requirement for our game; because of this limitation, we might not have pathfinding demonstrated for the Competition submission.

NPC dialogs look outstanding.

Artwork

Character artwork... well, I'm still having problems with the art pipeline and I've stopped working on it for now. Too much time was lost to it already, and although it wasn't wasted, it's not something that I can finish for the contest... sadly we're sticking with stock purchased / MMO Kit toons for the contest.

Buildings... mostly we're using custom buildings with purchased textures, but some buildings are from Arteria Gaming and Timothy Aste content packs. We're also using some work from the Medieval Buildings pack as well.... oh yes, and textures from the RTS and FPS environment packs.... impressive artwork and nearly all of it available from Garage Games.

Monsters

For now we're sticking with some stock MMO Kit monsters... mainly the wolves, but quite likely we'll be adding some Arteria Gaming monsters as well as custom one's... and if we're short on time then we'll add the Skeleton from GG.

Music
Jervin has added several new custom musical arrangements recently... look for the demo video coming out soon with some of his work.

Team
The team has finally jelled into a great balance of extremely skilled people... I'm extremely impressed with the quality of work that's being produced by everyone.

The core team consists of 6 people (not listed in any particular order).
Jervin - Sound / Music
PyroGuNx - Game Design / Business and Marketing
MrBloodworth - 2d / 3d Art / Props scripting
RevolvingDoor - Story / Concept Art
Shiraz - additional game design / ideas
SgtFlame (me :P) - Programming / 3d art / Server Admin

There are others that also contributed significantly during the initial startup phases, but for one reason or another couldn't continue contributing... their help is also much appreciated.

By the time I post my next blog, this time crunch will be over and it'll be time to really get crackin'. lol

Hopefully you'll get to see the dev snapshot posted earlier today sometime soon... Mr B did some impressive work on putting it together.

Come take a look at our new website too... www.FracturedUniverse.com.