Crowns of Power nearing completion! (pics)

Well, it has been a crazy few years, but our MMORPG is nearing finalization. When people say the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time, they are not lying. Here are some of the things that have been taking up my recent time:

-Tutorial help system: Dynamic display of tutorial help based on player actions. Although most of the game will be intuitive for those coming from previous MMO games, there is a lot of unique functionality that must be explained.

-Admin panel: Supports admin levels: Guide, Moderator, Seinor Moderator, and Admininistrator. This will allow us to hire new support volunteers without having to worry about then exploiting admin commands. Admins can teleport anywhere in the world, teleport to/from players, award any item in the game, change players names, view logs, go invisible, one shot any person/creature, etc.

-Logging: This is one of those coding projects most coders dead doing, but unfortunatly must be done. Effective and efficent logging is a must in any large scale online game. Item logs can be viewed in game, and will give a breakdown of the items history, from the time it was first created in the game, to its removal.

-Custom mob AI: Keeping encouters exciting requires mobs to behave and interact differently from each other. Some of examples are mobs that heal each other, buff each other, root/dots players, etc. We also have custom scripted events with epic raid AI that will require groups of players to create effective strategies to defeat them.

-Custom quests: Sometimes killing x mobs, and collecting x items just isn't enough to keep a player excited. Torquescript has been very important to being able to quickly script in completely unique quests. Some examples are Defend a bridge and its NPC guards from wave after wave of hostile mobs; using a magic item on werewolves to turn them back into humans; Luring spiders out of caves with a special mixture; and many others.

-Server architecture: Smoothing out our backend servers has been an ongoing and evolving process. The current setup consists of 4 dedicated servers: One login server, one realm server, two zone servers. The two zone servers will be where the player actually plays. All zones connect to the realm server. The realm server handles all cross-realm communication. The realm servers then connect to the login server which handles character creation and of course logins. Zone servers are extemely powerful machines (dual quad core Xeons, 8GB RAM). This allows us to run up to 8 zones on a single server.

Some things that remain:

-GUI design still has a ways to go
-Creating an effective game distribution/patching system
-Game itemization
-Monster loot tables
-Hiring game mods/guides
-Removing dev code (i.e., batten down the hatches)
-Performance optimizations
-Internal testing

Screenshots:

Red Spell: Fireball


Casting a heal


Casting a green buff


Main menu background


Loading background


Quest available


Spiked Helm


Vampire Helm


Skull Helm

View more screenshots and info at www.crownsofpower.com