Ilkor: Metadata Screens
I mentioned a few days ago about revealing some of the GameMaster screens we have recently completed.
Of late alot of dev time has been spent producing the screens which will be used to populate Arcadia (game world) with data. We've produced about 50% of these to date and architecturally have a solid pattern that we are now following. You can get some idea from the screens below.
Within the next few months we should be ready to start to capture 'real' game data such as weapons, shields, armour, spells, magical items, monsters etc.
You might notice from the screenshots that each item has an associated icon and image. Simon, our artist, is busy producing these. Currently we are just using placeholders.
GameMaster - Base Race List
GameMaster - Base Class Detail
Ilkor: GameMaster Section
Development is moving on at quite a nice pace. Currently it is split into three areas; player section, gamemaster section and the game engine itself.
Player Section: We're in the depths of designing and coding the registration process, character creation and login process. All three are closely inter-linked. We haven't any screenshots that are at an advanced stage where we can give a sneak preview. Not yet anyway. We are also thinking that we might not, until the launch, though people that have signed up for playtesting will be invited to not only have a sneak preview but also test it out for us and provide feedback. This should be made available towards the latter part of this year (hopefully).
Game Engine: Nothing visual here to show. This is the heart of the game which can be thought of as a complex clock that continuously ticks and keeps account of the game year, date, season, weather, turn number etc. The engine decides when a phase starts, ends, when a turn number advances, a season ends and so on. The basics are in place and we're now moving onto more interesting jobs like leveling up, distribution of experience points, processing of actions, movement, and combat.
GameMaster Section: This is an area of the game that we've been working on for quite some time and therefore we have the most amount of screens completed and ready to show off! 
The screens are now reasonably polished, though we haven't fully setting on the style nor some of the content. These screens are for the GMs to run and control the game. Initially the GM tasks and tools will be used by us to create the game tokens (weapons, armour, shields, spells), the maps, settlements, NPCs, monsters and so on. However, our vision is that Ilkor: Dark Rising won't be just for players.
Ilkor is being developed for the gaming community and also by the gaming community. Already we've got a small team of helpers from around the world that have input into the game's development. Together we design and code the game. We already have a large list of playtesters waiting to get involved and sometime in the New Year we'll be looking for a few GMs who will want to play Ilkor but rather as a GameMaster instead of a Player. Both are equally important to us and the success of the game.
GameMasters will log into the GM section. Depending on your GM Level (there will be various levels) you will be given access to different functionality. The top GMs will be allowed to map out the continents, design the settlements, poplate with monsters, etc. Lower level GMs will report to their 'Chief GM' and will be assigned tasks.
The entire GM section, just like the player section is designed to be 'in character'. The screenshot below shows what can be best described as the GM Homepage. From this page the GM will be presented with the tasks and tools that are appropriate for his access rights and GM level. The screenshot isn't completely polished yet, the setting and content might change somewhat, but the idea here is that the GM section will be an actual location in the game. At the moment we have a vision of it being a dungeon where each level will deal with a different function. Rather than talk about it here, check out the screenshot, it should hopefully describe what we are trying to achieve.
We'll blog more about the GM section and supply yet more screenshots which are far more interesting. We've got the bulk of the metadata screens complete. These are the screens that are used to create and design all the items and tokens of the game (races, classes, monsters, spells, skills, weapons, etc). More on that another day.
GameMaster Homepage
Ilkor: Build & Deployment Process
Our build process and server have been working amazingly. It runs 24/7 and continuously builds and deploys to our development and QA environments the moment new code changes have been committed to the repository.
Each night, a new Release Package gets built and is available to be deployment into our live environment. The package includes database and website changes.
We are using CruiseControl and MSBuild to handle our automated build process and PowerShell to teardown, recreate and deploy both website and database.
As I mentioned, everything is running very smoothly and even at this early stage of hosting a live environment we are able to deploy in a matter of minutes.
We have 3 versions running in production; test, alpha and live. We deploy to 'test' first so we can ensure the latest Release Package has deployed successfully before we clone 'test' and roll the cloned copy into live. The 'alpha' version will be used to give our playtesters sneak previews of what is coming down the line.
All three versions are available on the website, deployed to the same hardware and infrastructure setup. For us this is important, as it allows global access from anyone we wish to see the various versions and we are therefore experiencing the true performance that players out on the web will receive.
Ilkor: Improved Website Performance
If you haven't visited ilkor.com in the latest few weeks then I strongly advice that you do. Not only is it starting to receive new content, but the performance has improved by 300%!! Sounds impossible, but go and check it out for yourself. The user experience has greatly improved and the response times are super quick.
This is even more impressive considering the hardware Ilkor is being hosted on. We are running it on a dedicated server, but it is a fairly low spec machine. As soon as we start getting the volume of players we expect we'll need to beef it up somewhat, but for the moment it is doing an amazing job.
Ilkor Development: Scroll Popups!
With the website now 95% optimized we are really focusing on pushing new content into live on a regular basis. Our aim is to have something new on the website every two weeks.
New content will be mostly added to the Features section of the homepage for a little while. This is being achieved by serving up the content in our specially skinned scroll popups!!
We've just released an update that gives more information on Lord Vega and Orco. You can get to this information from the homepage. Click on the 'Core Features of Ilkor' and then click on the images of Lord Vega and Orco.
Scroll Popup
Eventually this entire 'Features' section will be riddled with additional content which will help provide a richer backdrop to the game setting and mechanics.
Once everything is in-place these various pieces of the puzzle will give you a complete picture of what Ilkor: Dark Rising is about.
A screenshot has been included of what a 'scroll popup' looks like.
Ilkor: Latest Development News
Hey there!
Many apologises. It's been a little while since our last blog entry. I can't believe just how quickly the time goes when you are busy
And we sure have been busy!!! It's now been a month since we went live with ilkor.com. The site seems to be holding up nicely.
In that time we've had a surprising amount of people signup to be part of the playtest, especially considering it isn't due to commence until June 2012. Having said that we do expect to get the playtesters involved much sooner than that.
We've also refined the website during the month of July, it has already gone through a number of updates mostly centred around performance and optimization improvements. I think we've managed to reduce the image sizes by about 3/4. The site now runs alot quick and we've had some very positive feedback.
On the development front we're working on the character creation process and will be involving our playtesters over the next few months to ensure what we're doing is right. I can't say much more about this here other than the setup will be a two step process. Players will be able to join and get playing very quickly.
We've also made a fairly big technology architecture change. We're now using MongoDB for our database needs. Originally we were going to be using SQL Server and Mongo just for the map components but now the entire game engine will be run off MongoDB.
The only exception might be our messaging and forum system. We've been exploring the idea of integrating phpBB into the game system. This uses php and either mySQL or MS-SQL. Our investigation has concluded it could be the best choice for Ilkor and although the integration won't be that straightforward it is possible. With some luck we should have this in place and ready for exclusive use by our playtesters by the end of the year.
Other than that we've been getting a fair amount of coverage on the various PBM and Gaming Forums and will soon be putting together a small low key marketing campaign to help spread the word of Ilkor further afield.