WarCry Choice  Posts: 1986 Joined: 29 Jan 2004     | Dana "Lepidus" Massey |
Killed 10 Boars Posts: 13 Joined: 17 May 2007 | I am hoping this will appease the masses some. I personally appreciate it. |
Darkfall Content Editor  Posts: 76 Joined: 4 May 2007    |
That would be hard to do. I find it interesting and informative though. Guard AI in practice presents minor issues: As things stand right now, your AI guard race depends on the territory you build on so if you build a clan city in ork territory, the guards will be orks. The orkish guards will not attack the human clan members, but they currently attack all human visitors to the town based on racial enmity. Was particularly neat. |
Apprentice Posts: 9 Joined: 24 Jul 2005 | I am really glad that they are being honest with us in this State of Development update. Sure, it makes me not expect beta for this summer, but it's nice to actually know where the game is even if they have to put it in layman's terms for us. It seems they are working through some of the bigger bugs now and hopefully they will be ready for us to find the smaller ones in the near future (aka soon!). Keep up the good work. |
Apprentice Posts: 8 Joined: 16 Dec 2004  | "The orkish guards will not attack the human clan members" And thus, the devs had just paved the way for a full-ARAC game. |
Darkfall Content Editor Posts: 76 Joined: 4 May 2007 |
Doubt it. |
Columnist Posts: 25 Joined: 14 May 2007   | I liked this update, more like it would be nice. |
Apprentice Posts: 5 Joined: 3 Jun 2007 | I'm very pleased with this Update. Especially since Alfar updates were mentioned! Right now I'm hoping to actually see the cavern system and Aphelion itself. You can't even imagine how good it's to hear about a game that's actually trying to integrate the best of MMORPG features into a single great MMO. Many people, from both PvP and PvE communities, underestimate the importance of a well balanced PvE (Questing, Farming, Lore) and PvP (Open PvP, Sieges, Land and Sea Warfare). As for the ARAC guards, while I see a problem there, I'm glad Devs see it too, and I trust it'll be solved. With current guard system, ARAC guilds would take up dominance. Nefastus |
BANNED Posts: 52 Joined: 27 Jun 2005  | "Anyway, in this journal we'll talk about what we're currently working on. Overall we're working on the beta process as you know. This is infinitely more complicated to set up than just getting the game online and letting people in to play it." Really? Than why in a Jan announcement thread was it stated they have reached beta and there is a beta up and running. hmmmmmm it's a mystery. |
Site Manager Posts: 345 Joined: 3 Dec 2005  |
What are you even talking about? Now you are spreading false rumors that the devs have said. Please show me a link where any of the Darkfall devs said beta is up and running. Morkdaorc |
BANNED Posts: 52 Joined: 27 Jun 2005 | I don't spread rumors. I spread facts. It's just that too many people are caught up in delusion to see all the facts other than all the positive BS spin they feed everyday to the rabid fanboys. Jan 2007 update thread. On the official forums. It's right there. It says they reached beta status and have it up on servers showing people , publishers , partners etc. This game has gone from pre-alpha testing to super secret closed beta status to private clan beta invitations back into closed beta and now undisclosed as far as I can tell. There's been the possibility of a beta going around since before Q3 2003. |
Site Manager Posts: 345 Joined: 3 Dec 2005 |
I don't think you understand what Beta Status is. That means they are now getting in the process of a beta client. They now can show publishers what Darkfall is but that dosn't mean its ready for beta. Morkdaorc |
BANNED Posts: 52 Joined: 27 Jun 2005 | Ok I'll humor you this round and let them have their "beta status preperation". However , if they feel that it's good enough to be showing publishers than you would think its good enough to be showing the general public also. Since publishers would never sign anything unless the project is at least in Beta shape. But when summer comes and passes and nobody is in any kind of beta then maybe people will finally wake up. I am actually quite glad they announced a Summer beta. Because it will show everyone what this project really is when it doesn't happen. And if it does happen I'll come back here and eat my words... but don't hold your breath. |
Forum Moderator Posts: 88 Joined: 24 Mar 2007 | I was wondering when timberwolve was gonna post in here. And as usual, it's the typical drivel. You're worse than a fanboi. |
Darkfall Content Editor Posts: 76 Joined: 4 May 2007 |
I wonder how much he is getting paid. |
Forum Moderator Posts: 88 Joined: 24 Mar 2007 | Whoever signs his checks should raise his pay. The ability to remain blind in the face of overwhelming fact is something special to behold. |
BANNED Posts: 52 Joined: 27 Jun 2005 | "The ability to remain blind in the face of overwhelming fact is something special to behold." Overwhelming facts? Which are? Please do list some of these "facts" for me. Because THAT is the main problem. There are little to no facts at all. Here is a fact for you. The fact that Darkfall has been in development for almost 7 years in one form or another and has absolutely nothing but some outdated looking screenshots and Alpha videos displaying nothing but the most basic , rudimentary gameplay to show for it. "The ability to remain blind in the face of overwhelming fact is something special to behold." Drivel? Try reality my friend. But it doesn't look like you're interested in reality so I'll just stop there. You wouldn't happen to have been a Dark and Light SoG consumer were you? ;) Ya I am sure Mythic and Funcom are just shaking in their boots over darkfall. lol unbelievable |
Apprentice Posts: 4 Joined: 17 May 2004 |
Which is exactly what you sound like. Anyway I remember signing up for beta multiple times over the last six or seven years. I can't remember a single time when they weren't claiming to be "putting in the finishing touches" and launching beta soon. I remember a post not long ago that claimed all world building had been completed. Yet they are suddenly busy with world building again? This is just more of their smoke and mirrors act. |
Apprentice Posts: 4 Joined: 17 May 2004 |
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=30347 I don't think any of those partners/publishers/technology providers would be impressed if they didn't have a working client. It's just more lies on top of the old lies. |
Site Manager Posts: 345 Joined: 3 Dec 2005 |
I think you know nothing of how this works. Its like music indusrty, a artist comes in with a demo cd. That cd has barley any lyrics, just some bad beats but is enough to show what direction the artist is going. The publishers say "I like the idea now finish it up and will publish it" the game does not have to be finish to show to publishers, just a round about idea what it will look like. Morkdaorc |
Forum Moderator Posts: 88 Joined: 24 Mar 2007 |
I'm not a fanboi, just a realist. Darkfall will come when it does. If you don't like the game, then why are you people even here? Claus told everyone a long time ago: If the wait bugs you that much, go do something else. Words to live by. As for world building, Warhammer Online said they were "finished" with their world-building on the Greenskin vs Dwarf racial pairing, yet in their recent updates they've said they've gone back. If you get some good ideas for an area, go back and add them in, it's a very common thing that developers do. Henning said the world was done, but that they would continue to update it and improve it, which happens all the time in MMO development.
False. I know from experience that partners and technology providers don't need a full on working client. So long as proof-of-concept, as well as some market figures back it up, they'll sign. They just need to be assured that they will get their money back out of their investment, the actual product itself is irrelevant. |
Killed 10 Boars Posts: 15 Joined: 10 Jun 2007 |
On the contrary, you have no fact whatever to support your claims. Here are the facts supporting Darkfall: www.darkfallonline.com You can pick and choose any random sentence from either site to use as evidence for Darkfall's existence. If that isn't enough for you, then obviously no MMORPG in development exists, just because we don't have any physical evidence to support it. You know, kind of like how gravity and wind don't exist. Learn to use a little logic for Christ's sake. You never think about the dribble that you're writing, even as you're writing it. The only argument you have that is even true is that the game has been in development in for seven years. But despite the fact that it's true, it has a lot of other truths that invalidate it. For one, it's only been in development under a company of half-decent size for about four years, less than the development time of that POS we call WoW. Secondly, other games have been in development for more than seven years before being released. It's not uncommon to developers who want to make good games. I mean, if the worst dirt you have on Darkfall is that they're taking their time so that they can assure the quality of the game, you might as well give up now. And that is all you have. Period. Everything else you've ever said here has just been pulled from your ass. It's not credible, it's not logical. You aren't the voice of reason here, and you never will be. Whatever the exact opposite of reason is; the extreme polarity on the other side, that's what you are. |
Looking For Group  Posts: 118 Joined: 22 Mar 2004 | I think the mistake Darkfall did was to announce the game too early. WoW and other big MMORPGs has been in development for many many years before they even announce the game exists. Darkfall made a mistake by announcing it too early and besides that they didn't have a sizeable development team back then. I have said this over and over again, the beta will be in next year, don't expect it to be in this summer. |
Darkfall Content Editor Posts: 76 Joined: 4 May 2007 |
They may have announced it early, but early on the community gave them a lot of feed back that helpedthem to develop a better game. |
Killed 10 Boars Posts: 14 Joined: 28 Jun 2007 |
Or so says you...I have heard a number of things that the fanbase has been crying and whining about that will totally destroy the game if implemented. Many people don't know what the hell they're talking about. A good leader takes vision and moves forward with it. I do agree with the poster that this game was announced way too early. There's a number of things about the game that totally turn me off, but the concept itself still sounds great and it's what keeps me hanging on. I am crossing my fingers that it will actually be a good game and not end up being another Shadowbane... The irony of this whole thing is that the last time I anticipated a game this long and have had to deal with 1 pushback release date after another was Shadowbane...... |
Killed 10 Boars Posts: 11 Joined: 7 Jul 2007 | Timberwolve, sry but everytime i see you complaining im gonna yell at you, saying that there are not overwhelming facts and that we have no clue whats happening and dont know facts. May i ask you timberwolve, where do you get your facts from, you have no proof that they are actually 'facts", the reason that they have pulled back beta so many times is only to add more sontent and help out the game. A startup company needs to do as much as it can to make their first game a good one, im glad that they are actualley trying to make a good game and now worry about the people saying it will never come out. beter games that take a long time to come out are better then bugged out crap games that come out withing 2 years of being announced. |
Apprentice Posts: 4 Joined: 15 Jul 2007 | Alrighty folks here we go. First of all if timber is with another company trying to botch potential customers.. oh well. He is doing a really good job of keeping you guys from giving the developers feedback since you spend alot of time trying to crush him. Its true his words are rather lacking and 99% false we know it lets remember it. Everytime he posts IGNORE him.. give the developers the vital feedback they want and need. We want the ultimate MMO but no way to give them feedback that they need to make such an MMO when your busy countering another poster. Read the article..give them your worries..your wants.. or even a pat on the back. Personally I'd like to know what was wrong with the before Alfar capital and maybe a brief summary entailing what changed. Keep it up make all the races have their own unique culture that will certainly flavor the game. More weapons awsome killing someone with an axe might get boring after a while so I'll just grab something new to kill with! 100 monsters without including variations great.. thats an awsome number for release. Do you have a goal for more unique monsters? Something I've also been wondering. Will the monsters employ any type of tactics.. like those guys who get high off spider venom.. when fighting spiders will they make them surround me ect? Keep up the feedback and the developer journals.. same goes for you fans. Remember.. people like timber come here and stay here because they really want this game.. but they spout this crap so in the end if the game fails they can go.. oh well at least I was right! |
Forum Moderator Posts: 88 Joined: 24 Mar 2007 | It's just too much fun to debunk those words. However, we do give our feedback, here and at dfo.com. I trust the developers, they seem to have a clear idea of what they want in their game, and are going after it aggressively. It's refreshing to see their dedication.
Yep, mobs in Darkfall use tactics like strafing, flanking, evading, climbing, etc. More social mobs will use more advanced tactics. The general idea we got from the devs was "Quake bots" so we should expect a good amount of fighting skill from PvE monsters, which should be a refreshing shock to most MMO players. For more info on the AI in DF, check out this article: http://df.warcry.com/scripts/news/view_news.phtml?site=7&id=69008 |
How I Mine 4 Fish? Posts: 62 Joined: 18 Jun 2007 | y u showing this as new news, this a month old? what happen to his by weeekly journals? a whol month goes back with no word |
Forum Moderator Posts: 88 Joined: 24 Mar 2007 | Tasos was busy travelling and we got screenshots instead, and that last weeks journal was delayed til this up-coming Thursday. Consider yourself informed. |
Killed 10 Boars Posts: 11 Joined: 17 Jul 2007 | Eh, not to be a troll or anything, but I lost all hope of this coming out. I mean the lack of updates, the excuses, all this stuff. I mean, dont even come at me with "well, they're busy on a bunch of stuff." What about other game companies that have millions of fans ? Like Warhammer ? Age of Conan ? They might be big companies, but they still update frequently. I just think Darkfall's not ready to hit the market because of the lack of team, and major companies to support them. It's really not that hard to update the community once every 2 weeks instead of delaying it. If Tasos is busy, why can't someone else from the team update the community ? It just doesn't make sense..maybe some day you guys might understand what I'm saying. |
Forum Moderator Posts: 88 Joined: 24 Mar 2007 | You may as well be a troll since you don't know what you're talking about. We've gotten more or less consistent updates from the devs since roughly January. Other game companies have millions of dollars and dedicated PR people, Darkfall doesn't. They don't want to waste time hyping a game because why bother? Other game companies can hype their products til they're red in the face, they still won't match the reality of Darkfall: A competetive feature set which gives to the community exactly what they want. The team is busy pushing for beta. You can't say "I want more updates from the team" and then say "I want more beta work done on the game from the team" in the same breath. They are busy doing the game, read the article above for proof. When we get to beta, we'll have all the updates we'll need. |
How I Mine 4 Fish? Posts: 62 Joined: 18 Jun 2007 | the game isnt coming out. the excusses are gettin old and even if the game does come out it will fail cuz of all the customer the lost bullshittin around |
Apprentice Posts: 4 Joined: 15 Jul 2007 | I've been in the MMO community for a very long time.. since the days of what made MMO's.. which were muds. Regardless let me tell you the companies that release all that information and have such a huge fanbase.. usually blow up in your face. Darkfall promises alot and it has been in development for a while. Look at Starcraft 2 when they announced it its been in development *I may be wrong don't feel like looking it up* since like 2000-2002.. I bet you 10 to 1 everyone expects a great game.. and it hasn't really released a ton of info on its game. A gameplay video ie Darkfall and some information on one specific race.. and a little about the others. Difference anyone? Darkfall announced itself a long time ago. I really do think if a game rocks the community when it comes out its going to attract people. Theres a rule in the food business and I bet it applies just a much to games. Everytime a customer walks out with a smile he/she tells 20 people.. same goes for bad experiences. So if Darkfall lives up to what it says it is it will have PLENTY of players. This looks like a new/small studio for producing this game. They don't have Blizzard experience in customer service.. hell they are probably learning as they go. Time will tell. Edit: I take back the Blizzard comment. PLEASE don't follow Blizzard on customer service if any devs are reading this. Thanks |
Darkfall Developer Journal #10: State of Development
After a short delay, for which Tasos includes his apologies, we have this week's Darkfall Developer Journal as promised. Inside, Tasos goes into the process of getting a game ready for Beta and how it is more complicated than some might think. This update is a lengthy one and include status reports on all kinds of areas.
Article by Tasos Flambouras (Ass. Producer, Darkfall)
I'd like to apologize for the delay to the journal by one day. Our schedules are even more hectic than usual and priorities are ruthless. I've had several interviews on my to-do list for months and I've been trying to steal time from this or that to get them done, one question at a time and so far it has proven to be a curiously impossible task. Part of this is the fact that the interview questions are getting increasingly more detailed and I'm not sure how deep you can cut into the magic before it's too deep.
Anyway, in this journal we'll talk about what we're currently working on. Overall we're working on the beta process as you know. This is infinitely more complicated to set up than just getting the game online and letting people in to play it. Sometimes I wonder if even the hardcore gamers understand what's involved especially when people keep asking for the specific beta date. Ricki loaned me a book titled "Dreaming in Code" by Scott Rosenberg. I've only had time to read a few pages of it so far, but in these the author wonders why software development is so hard and can't be as precise and timely as bridge or skyscraper construction. The tagline of the book is "Two dozen programmers, three years, 4,732 bugs, and one quest for transcendent software" and he's just talking about a web site application! The title of chapter one is "DOOMED" setting the tone for the rest of the book I expect.
On with the update:
We're hiring a QA lead to formalize our QA process, we're looking for yet another Game Logic programmer, we've been outsourcing some secondary art tasks out, and we've also re-hired Nick, a very talented artist, who had taken a short break. We're also in the search for another good world-builder to help with cleaning up quests.
I had written some things on this journal about the many technical activities relating to Darkfall development at the moment and then decided to take it out after speaking with Kjetil, our lead programmer. To quote him 'if we're going to talk to people about these things we might as well write a ten thousand page document with all the @#%$#@% little details'. So... basically Darkfall is a zoneless game, meaning servers are zoneless too, something most other MMOs don't have. Servers are collaborating in a cluster with dynamic responsibilities. That's what we're working on right now for the most part, the distribution. There's also some GUI work having to do with city building, and parties. We're also integrating with the game, the permission system for clans, the in-game boards, and the player journal, specifically the 'friends' and the 'holdings' functionalities. We're also working on the permission system, specifically for the clan vault. Clan boards are being integrated with the game, meaning that various in-game clan specifics work together with the clan boards.
On world-building we're finishing up the Mirdain areas and working on clan city concerns. The Alfar capital has been completely redesigned, the old one was scrapped, and someone's spending all of next week to making it just right. This is an excerpt of the Alfar capital description to give you an idea of what it's like:
World-building also needs to create extras for all of the quests which are being implemented as we speak. Right now we're working on the human quests by using our quest building tool, using the world-builder to add the extras, and then using a testing tool which allows us to test that the quests work properly before beta.
We're adding batches of new weapons to the game, some special items, more siege weapons, and defensive cannons and balancing them out so there's something for everyone. We're also optimizing the stats for most of the weapons.
All components have been finalized and locked for release. Other resources are also being finalized. Recipes for crafting are also more than coming along. We've finalized the monsters for beta. We have more than 100, (not counting the many variations) as originally planned. We've prioritized here and more will be added during testing and after launch.
We're working through some issues with flying monster AI, and moving on to sea monsters. Guard AI in practice presents minor issues: As things stand right now, your AI guard race depends on the territory you build on so if you build a clan city in ork territory, the guards will be orks. The orkish guards will not attack the human clan members, but they currently attack all human visitors to the town based on racial enmity. Mercenaries have always presented such problems throughout history but we're probably going to make some changes here.
The clan city structures are being upgraded, with a strong focus on racial identity so that the structures are special and unmistakable. Final touch-ups are being made on armors. Some monster armors can be used by the characters after being looted, and these are being brushed up as well. Special effects and particles are all being added. You may have noticed the lack of many of these, or the place-holders in the last video we released. There is some quality control being done on the terrain, fixing various minor bugs and there has been a major update to the terrain textures again and I must say there is a dramatic improvement to it.
The website updates will continue at an irregular pace as time permits. Launching a new website is a major pain that we don't have time for now, so we're giving it a facelift and trying to bring it up to date before we move on to having a new one made that can be worthy to represent this game.
I'll stop here because I need to get back to work, although I could go on and on with the thousands of details we're working on at the moment - you get the idea.
Now it's your turn. Let us know your thoughts.
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