Ilkor: A Long overdue update
Well its been a while since we blogged. It's been a hectic last few weeks both in home, work and here at Gad Games developing Ilkor: Dark Rising.
At the moment we are not getting nearly as much time on the project as we would like. All the members of the dev team have their own personal reasons but non-the-less there has been significant progress.
Alpha Feedback: Thanks for the feedback from everyone who checked out our alpha site that allowed you to experience the sign-up and character creation process (alpha.ilkor.com).
It was very reassuring to hear that we have got things pretty much right. This doesn't mean we didn't get some very good constructive feedback and suggestions for improvements. These improvements (and a few detected bugs) have been worked on over the past few weeks and will be making its way to the alpha and live websites very soon.
If you haven't yet checked out alpha.ilkor.com then please do so, we are sure you are going to love what you see and really want to hear what you think about it.
Tavern Talk: Much work has been done on Ilkor's messaging system that is being dubbed 'Tavern Talk'. We're very close to launching it so you can all experience it and see try it out. The messaging system is going to be a forum that will allow players, or rather 'Player Characters' and 'GameMasters' to communicate via forums and a private messaging system. Emails are not revealed and the system will be integrated with ilkor.com. The messaging system will be located at tavern.ilkor.com (note: this is not available yet). When you signup and go through the character creation process you will be granted access and rights to 'Tavern Talk'. Each PC will be granted rights to various forums related to your character. More on this in our next blog, hopefully with some screenshots.
Character Creation: We have finished integrated the improvements and bug fixes that came out of the alpha and now handling the integration of Tavern Talk and then we should be finished with this very important aspect of the game. We're still waiting on Simon for a number of art pieces (avatar and character portraits) but they can and will be slotted in as we receive them.
Mapping Engine: Process is being made, though it is slow, but what is coming out of this area is very interesting and we are sure it is going to blow you away.
Game Engine: This is working nicely. This is really the heart of the game, it is the engine that controls the turnaround, seasons, phases, weather, movement, and so on.
Hopefully you'll get an update very soon.
For now, keep well.
Ilkor: Character Creation now complete!
Ilkor development is progressing at a good pace, but not as quickly as we had expected or hoped for. The character creation process is now complete, though is missing some artwork. We'll be allowing everyone to have a sneak preview next week when you'll be able to create your own character. You won't be able to save the character, but it should give you a good insight of what is to come. This will also be your chance to submit your comments and feedback, both good and bad 
Chris is now working on the Map Engine and we're seriously entertaining the idea of changing the current 2D grid layout to a hex map format. It is potentially more complex to develop, but will assist us in providing an accurate and balanced movement formula and enable us to handle the terrain transitions more elegantly between locations.
Simon is now freed up from other non-releated Ilkor work and is working hard to finish off the missing class/race portraits and avatar facial parts. We are expecting the male dwarf avatar images any day now, which we're all excited to see.
Jon Roberts, the offical cartographer for the Game of Thrones book will be back on Ilkor next month to help Chris on the mapping engine. We'll need a bunch of sprites in keeping with the hand-drawn illustrated maps.
GameMasters Scott and Mike are continuously updating the wiki with new content and helping populate the gaming engine with the vast amounts of metadata that is required.
So, slowly, but surely things are coming together.
Ilkor: Updated website
We released a new version of the website early this week.
We are finding the performance has improved which is kinda strange since we didn't focus on such enhancements. There isn't too many obvious player facing improvements with this release. However the back-end (the Gamemaster section) really has come together nicely now and is pretty much in a full working state.
The GMs are now starting to use the Gamemaster tools to populate the game and world of Arcadia with all its rich information, and the many many tokens that the game depends on.
The game engine currently contains mostly 'stubs' for all of its entities and tokens, such as weapons, shields, armour, settlements, etc. There are close to 40 different types of tokens. For example, a weapon is a token type. There are about 50 different types of weapons available in the game. Currently they are simply naed 'weapon 1' through to 'weapon 50'. The GMs now have to go through each and every weapon, assign it a proper name (i.e. Short Sword), along with icons and images, stats and descriptions. There is ALOT of work.
Ilkor: A Long Overdue Development Update
Sorry guys, it’s been a long time since I last blogged. It's not due to the lack of progress and news about Ilkor. Far from it. We've been very busy. However, I do feel rather tired, it’s been a busy year and I think my mind and body has already gone into 'holiday mode'.
OK, so here's a quick status report on where we are with the project:
Content: The website (http://ilkor.com) has had continuous updates over the past month. The website has had numerous subtle changes made to the 'Features' area. If you haven't gone over and visited for a while then now might be a good time. Besides new content, we have also fixed up a few reported bugs specifically around cross-browser layout issues. In the next day or two the site is due for another update, this time we'll be supplying detailed information on each 'base class': fighter, wizard, rogue, priest.
Wiki: Our newest GM, Senyors (a.k.a Scott) has been working hard on populating the Arcadia Gazetteer wiki (http://gazetteer.ilkor.com). It is taking shape, but it is still far from being ready for public viewing really. However we don't mind sharing this info here, we know you'll understand that it is very much 'work in progress'. So by all means check the wiki out and let’s hear your comments.
Sign-up: The sign-up process has been developed and complete. This isn't available to the public yet. Don't get confused with the 'beta sign-up' that is currently on the website. The actual sign-up process will require you to sign-up and submit 4 pieces of information (email address, class, race & gender).
Character Creation: This follows the sign-up process. The sign-up flows straight into the character creation. Here the player will be able to make last minute changes to his original sign-up options and deal with additional options such as character name, stat allocation, starting town, and so on. The early stages of development has started and we'll be working on this going into 2012.
Security: The login and logout process has been developed and complete. This handles 'role management' which basically grants or restricts access to various areas of the website.
Metadata: The last metadata screen has now been completed. It has been a huge job that has taken several months. We have 48 different metadata screens, some of them rather complex, others fairly basic. The metadata screens are used to create the world of Arcadia. The screens will never be seen nor used by players. They are for GameMaster eyes only. The Metadata screens form a small part of the GM section. Early into 2012 we will start to use these Metadata screens to design, populate and configure the world of Arcadia
Map: We've had a bit of an unfortunate setback with the Arcadia world map. Jon Roberts, our cartographer has had his laptop stolen and with it alot of his cartography work. The Arcadia maps are part of this 'lost' work. Jon has had resort to backups so he can finish the maps. I will keep you informed with the progress, hopefully Jon doesn't have to perform too much rework.
Artwork: Simon is due to deliver a fairly large amount of illustrations which will be used specifically within the 'character creation' stage of sign-up. No doubt you'll also come across pieces of this new artwork stash throughout the website and wiki - keep your eyes peeled.
Game Engine: We now have a 'Game Engine Service' in its early stages of development. This accompanies the website and is used to process turns and phases. It has been written in a modular fashion so that as Ilkor becomes richer in functionality we have a mechanism to plug in new features.
And thats all for now folks. I'll do my best to post more frequently from now on.
Cheers,
Sean.
Ilkor: Brief Update
We've alot happening right now on all fronts. I'll get straight on with it.
Game Engine: Work started on this about a month ago. Obviously we still have a long way to go, but we already have a bare bones service that processes the turn, advances the turn and phase number, seasons and years. Over the next few weeks we will be integrating into this cycle the introduction of players. The engine persists its data straight to MongoDB.
Registration Process: Development here has slowed down a little due to our move from using SQL to Mongo for our database requirements. So there is little to report, but we'll be re-starting this in a few days time.
New Content: With the website now 95% optimized we are really focusing on pushing new content to the live website 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'!! Go to ilkor.com and see for yourself, we are revealing more and more about the game features and details.
Map: Jon, our fab cartographer is still working hard on completing our world and regional maps. We hope to get the final finished maps very soon now, hopefully before the end of October. You can then expect to see a number of sneak previews of the finished maps!
Avatars: Simon, our amazing Artist will be delivering the first batch of avatar 'facial parts' (head, shoulders, eyes, nose, hair, mouth). He has dealt with a male human for starters. We need this so we can then test our our avatar generating code. If it all works out as planned Simon will then have a few amount of work to do over the next few months coming up with the facial parts for all the other 7 possibilities. Personally I'm really excited about this and will certainly be blogging about the Avatars in far more detail soon.
Database Migration: As mentioned last time, we are busy migrated across from MS-SQL to MongDB. The process is good and we hope to have everything in place by the end of October...hopefully!
And thats about it for now..
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: 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.
Partnering with HeroQuest
Hey Guys,
Just some brief news. Behind the scenes of the Ilkor development we have actually partnered with a gaming engine company, HeroQuest Pty.
They have a website heroquestgaming.com. it isn't much to look at really as the're not really 'player facing', at least not for the moment.
They are developing alongside Ilkor a gaming engine that will be generic in nature, targeted at the fantasy rpg genre. The idea is that the engine will be used to power Ilkor: Dark Rising.
It's proving to be an interesting partnership, basically all the world setting, history, maps, artwork, theme etc will remain the property of Gad Games while the engine itself will belong to HeroQuest.
After the beta playtest (which we imagine will take up the better part of 2012), the HeroQuest Platform should be stable and mature enough to then be offered to other interested companies who might like to host a game.
The engine is proving to be quite configurable. Although it will come with a standard set of maps, data, etc, it can all be customizable. It's quite an interesting concept. Ilkor will not only be powered by the HeroQuest engine, but will also be hosted on their infrastructure. This means as a gaming company we only need to worry about the GameMaster duties, player service and ensuring the game world is rich with background history and a theme. HeroQuest will ensure the servers are up and running, that there is no connection issues, upgrades and new features will be introduced in a structured and controlled fashion. They are even putting together a payment gateway where various value added services can be purchased.
Anyways, enough rambling. I just thought it worth informing you guys.
Cheers,
Sean.