Latest CoS news

To keep everyone informed and so this forum doesn't die I'm quoting the latest update here. What does everyone think of the newest developments?

April progress

20 April 2009

* As stated in the previous post, we're in a long development cycle right now. However, here is a little information on what is happening on CoS.

1) The new client update system is working well now. We're going to be adding the 'news' system to it in the near future. This is a daily newspaper that comes out telling players what is happening in the game world today, and what transpired yesterday. What towns fell, or were liberated. What players did, what guilds were formed, what new offensive Morphael is rumored to be planning, etc. Players can read this while they wait for any file updates, this way they know what is happening before they get into the world. Right now programming is adding the news display system to the client updater. Later the news generation system will be worked on as well.

2) Art is working on several areas. We're creating the structures for the first questing territory, villages, towns, forts, castles, ruins, towers, etc. In addition work continues on the Citadel as well, adding some headquarters for the strange 'commanders' of the Citadel forces. We haven't released information on these nasty guys that you work for as a player, but we will down the road. We've also started modeling some of the commanders as well.

3) Level building is eagerly awaiting Enact. Though the tool is working, it has not been turned over to them for use as design and programming work out some of the issues with this new piece of technology. However, we expect to give it to them in the next few days.

4) Design continues to expand the player Abilities and will do so for month to come. In addition a new element of the game is under design, the Spirit World. More on that later.

5) Quest writing goes on, the system is now generally in place and we just continue to fine tune it and add more content to the system.

6) New team members! We added two new people to the team (one quest writer and one artist, a modeler/texturer). We have also added three new interns recently, one to Level Building and two to Quest Writing. They are learning the ropes still, and we hope to get them up to speed soon. Of the previous round of Interns,five made it through to the second internship (a one year stint).

7) The new game, update and database servers have run into some hardware snags, but we should have the new systems up and running soon. We got a couple of bad pieces of hardware, but should have the replacements back soon. This is a necessary upgrade so that we can stress test the game with larger groups of players later this year. We need to get these new servers up and running so that the testing phase can happen on schedule. No, we're not signing up testers yet, though we have been compiling a list of people who want to be notified when that time approaches.