Greetings all,

It's been a busy two weeks since the 1st of the year, but I am happy to report that the goals I've set thus far have been achived.

Week 1:



The goals for week 1 started with 'getting my act together' concerning the planned release for May.

It was decided that instead of spreading too thin; we'd first shore up Garranshall so it will stand as a good example for the free areas in the game (acting as a demo as well).

The first thing to do was clip out a few areas that had grown out of fancy, but with no player interaction yet, and no likely development in the near term of May.

Reduction in size of the Dimensional Atrium, and a few quest modifications (notably to "A Relic of the Old World") was a good start.

After that, the goal was to design and implement the exterior buildings and paths of the inner city of Garranshall, and that has been done.

Interiors are still predominantly empty, but they will fill out as quests which require them develop.

All this took roughly one week at 24 hours spent, though I'm fairly sure I forgot to record some hours.

Week 2:


The plan was, after finishing the Garranshall layout, I was going to start working feverishly on quests.

We previously had one quest finished in Garranshall, "The Noble Air of Violence" and bits and pieces of "A Relic of the Old World" and "The Monarch's Return".

As of last night we have two new, non-trvial quests implemented in development; "A Seal of a Deal" and "Shall we not Revenge".

This has really exercised the quest system, and so far it is working excellently.

In addition we've had several technical changes:

The move to a day-part only (night and day) time system, using 12-hour clock display (days passed since start is recorded but not shown; for quest purposes).

A karma/fame system, that is affected by player decisions, and drives future opourtunities.

positive and negative karma points are kept, and usually doled out in +1 and -1 increments; in addition 'fame' may be awarded as positive or negative (again usualy in single integer increments) which adjusts positive and negative karma together.

These two values formulate both magnitude of reputation, and your reputational compass.

When compared against constants for 'max amounts' where karma points are saturated; it allows us to formulate 'how famous' 'how good' 'how evil'; which are key questions for driving checks of conversation, quest aquisition etc.

We can adjust these max values, as the game expands to provide more headroom in what it takes to achieve different levels of fame, evilness or goodness.

The Next Update:

All of these changes have been taking place in Garranshall which is free to play, and will hopefully be updated sometime late this week.

With this update we will be wiping alpha level saves as we've made a pretty big departure with this update, and it marks the first time you can really start to effect change in the game.