And we go forward.

Greetings all.

Firstly, I am happy to say that the team has doubled in size (theres now 2 of us) now that I have a shell to work with.

I would like to welcome Andrew Osborne onto the team recruited from this GG website, an exceptional artist (IMO) who is starting to provide the Project with some much needed art assetts to help speed progress and to provide the incentive for me to learn coding to complete some of what I need to do here.

Andrew is working with me and providing input into how I can try to accomplish some of what I am trying to do, and best ways of doing so.

As I mentioned in my previous Blogs, when I started this project, I was not a coder, or even a scripter, but I have had to learn, and it has been a great deal of work, but fun doing so.

I owe a debt of gratitude, also to Dreamer, for his MMORPG kit modifications, the community at Mydream.com and also to all the people that have put up with, and answered my really stupid newbie questions on the forums, and the creators of all the content packs out there.

I also need to thank Jeff Faust for allowing me the priveledge of being an early adopter user of Arcane-fx since all my combat is done with Psionics, not melee or projectile weapons. (By the way, Arcane-fx is awesome, so get your credit cards ready when it becomes available). Keep a close eye on the Arcane-fx forums for availability.

So to sum up, what do we have now.

Full persistance of world and character stats, inventory and location.
Character selection and logins.
Database driven everything
TLK
Arcane-fx
AI Players based on AI Guard
NPC's
A modified RPGDialog which allows for items in inventory and question branching on condition.
Full trading (Buy/Sell) to NPC's
Full Looting from chests when NPC's die locked to player who did most damage to NPC.
Random generation of loot from Database.
Random selection of common, rare or master loot drops.
Skill based advancement system (Use it or loose it type approach)
Money
Object Interaction
Working Doors and Switches
Glass Windows in Dif Interiors using DTS shapes.
Lore Items and NoTrade Items.
Inter Mission Teleporting.
and an initial Learning Zone before going out into the "real world".
Health and Energy Rechargers
Preliminary Tradeskills set up and working.

To anyone who doubts the possibilities of Torque or their skills, I would say.. be prepared to learn (not just ask, but learn by trying it, reading code and playing), be prepared to be so frustrated you want to bang your head against the wall but believe you can do it and do it. Remember forum search, echo and trace are your only friends out there when the crunch comes.

Picture update time for all of you who like looking at pictures of the results after 4 months of hard but rewarding work.

The three new chests for the game from Andrew, Common, Leather and Master :-




When right clicked on to interact (open them)




Casting a spell at an unsuspecting Orc :-



Wow.. The Orc dropped a chest with a new spell in it :-



Darn, got that one, better sell it :-



So what's next? Welp.. Tradeskilling needs a lot more work, and also make the stats more important to what happens to the character. Should keep me going for a month or 12.

Regards to all

Graham