Finally! The game loads!

[Karl G.]

We're 90% of the way there, everyone--the new version of Evidyon with all its glorious new features now loads in the client and server. I logged in and walked around today as one of the new races we'll be releasing this update A lot of stuff is still disabled as I'm working through bringing everything back online, but this sure has been a stretch...8am - 10pm coding almost every day for the last week!

I'll keep you posted on what comes next.

[WACOO]

FIRST!

FCK YEAH

[Sinful]

Sounds great, I'll be waiting.

[Karl G.]

I've finished most of what needs to be done to get combat back online. There are only a couple of things holding back this release now: the biggest ones are no spell effects (so I can't even tell if they're working right...they might not be =/), no equipped items, no treasure, and the map needs to be reimported.

[WACOO]

G to the Karl, any ETA yet?

[Sinful]

Will this update be the beta release?

[Joe M.]

Will this update be the beta release?

Well, we were talking about this today...

We've made some plans for this release that will require it to be delayed by a little bit. It won't be Beta, but it will be the last stage of Alpha, the "pre-Beta" release. I think y'all will like it.

More details soon.

[Tseiga]

Sounds good.

[Sinful]

The only thing I'm really wondering about is te characters, will they get deleted after this update? I don't want to spend to much of my time grinding a character to lvl 20 just to have it deleted.

[Joe M.]

bad news: Characters will be wiped with this update ...
good news: But there will be no character wipe going into Beta.

Details:
Beta requires both a complete technical overhaul and a complete design overhaul.

The first, Karl has been working on for over a month. The end result will be a game much more technically sound, with the capabilities and elegance needed for the future; this technical work is laying the foundation for Evidyon which will persist all the way into Commercial release. I'll leave Karl to tell you exactly what this technical update will do for Evidyon, but it's pretty damn impressive.

The second, as we've said before, is necessary. To quote my progress report from the end of May, "everything that's in-game right now was just created at the last minute to test whatever code Karl had turned out for that particular update, and none of it is fit for a public game." That is definitely true. We've needed to do this design work for a while: new classes, a new spell system, a new item system, a system of properties for the items, new spells, new items, new maps, new monsters, new equations for everything, and so on. So while Karl finishes up the technical work, we're all meeting every couple days and pounding away at a solid design for the game.

We had thought about doing the technical work first, and then once that was in place concentrating on the design work, but we realized that we'd have to waste a lot of time to make the current (poorly designed) version of the game run on the new technical platform. So instead of doing that, we've decided to delay the release until we can release both at the same time. This means, essentially, that we'll be releasing a completely new game.

Because it will be so new, we'll have to wipe the current characters. Another big reason for this is that we'll need to have the game as thoroughly tested as possible before we release Beta, especially critical design questions: do characters level too quickly? too slowly? do monsters give enough exp for their difficulty? is the drop-rate of loot reasonable? are there enough items? how about the rate at which characters gain spells? are the classes balanced? races?--stuff like that. To answer these questions, we need a lot of people playing a lot, and all starting from the very beginning.

Now we had already planned on wiping characters for Beta. The above reasons are pretty compelling as to why we need to wipe characters for Pre-Beta. To wipe characters twice in such a short time would just be mean. And since we know that several people have stopped playing because all progress would be lost anyway at Beta, the solution to all this is obvious: wipe characters now, don't wipe them at Beta. This will also have the benefit of giving Alpha testers a head-start, so y'all can go into Beta already familiar with the game and with a good number of levels. We're still planning a reward item for Alpha testers, so we'll give that to all players active at the end of Pre-Beta.

So what's Pre-Beta going to look like, then?

We won't wait until the new version of the game is *entirely* done. Instead, we're making sure that we have the foundation firmly in place and the essential design work done. We'll then release the game in a pretty minimal form: no quests, only a small map, only a few monsters. But because at that point almost all the coding work will be done for Beta, and most of the design work done, we'll then turn to adding content as quickly as we possibly can. Expect very frequent updates, even daily--maybe even twice on some days! That will continue up until Beta itself. Just as important, we'll be actively asking for feedback as to what works and what doesn't in the game, and adjusting according to y'all's responses, trying to get everything in shape for Beta. We expect the Pre-Beta stage to last only about two weeks.

Right now we're not exactly sure when we expect to have Pre-Beta ready, but we'll be meeting today and hope to have an ETA by this evening.

Sorry for the length. I hope that answers some of your concerns. If you have any questions, please ask.

[Sinful]

Yeah, I think that will be enough info.

[strafe of x2]

i like it

[Joe M.]

We hope to have Pre-Beta finished by August 10th. We could finish sooner, we could finish later--there's no telling how slowly or quickly some of these phases will move. We'll be sure to keep y'all updated as we work.

[WACOO]

Meh, who cares that the characters get wiped, its best for all

[Forlorn]

Sounds sweet, I have been gone for quite some time, but I will be happy to rejoin when beta is out!

[Karl G.]

Glad you dropped by We'll be announcing this everywhere when pre-beta is out, don't worry

Things are rolling along nicely, and August 10 is looking promising right now.

[Sankt Pauli]

Will it still be "invite-only" or public?

[Karl G.]

Pre-beta is going to be fully public. We'll be trying to attract as many people as possible to play--but since it's still testing, the true "launch day" for which we'll be trying to advertise will be about two weeks later when we hit Beta.

[Sankt Pauli]

Ah kaykay. Feel free to make a big thread on xentales when it's about time and i will sticky it. That way you get the best (worst) playerbase you can get. =]

[XpLiCiT]

im sticky

exciting times

[Karl G.]

Ah kaykay. Feel free to make a big thread on xentales when it's about time and i will sticky it. That way you get the best (worst) playerbase you can get. =]

That would be wonderful! We have all been putting a lot of work into this version and it's coming together really nicely. I just recently got portals, ranged weapons and swimming all implemented and playing around with them has been a lot of fun. Believe me, you'll know when this thing is out--we're all itching to see the game in action.

[Vapore]

Ah kaykay. Feel free to make a big thread on xentales when it's about time and i will sticky it. That way you get the best (worst) playerbase you can get. =]

That would be wonderful! We have all been putting a lot of work into this version and it's coming together really nicely. I just recently got portals, ranged weapons and swimming all implemented and playing around with them has been a lot of fun. Believe me, you'll know when this thing is out--we're all itching to see the game in action.

I sure as hell am.

[Vapore]

It's August 10th
Still need more time Karl?

[strafe of x2]

woo august 10th and i sold all of my xen gear for cash so whenever ur ready boss

[Sinful]

Sounds better and better, I must play!