Comments - Azkanan

Aye, once we've got a working video, then we'll start advertising properly. For now, we're just letting people know in case they want to follow it this early on.

LOTRuler! <3. We tried a a Kickstarter once a few months ago/year ago, which failed disasterously. I wouldn't attempt another till we have at least a working model and a video. See you on the forums?

They're back up now, btw, if anybody was getting an error.

Our we host is abysmal as we can't afford paid hosting at the moment. When its down, its usually back up after 5 mins. :)

Just to let you guys know, a programmer has arisen. However, I'm going to spend more time focused on development than community interaction/information. I'll keep you up to date on major, actual developments, however.

Long live The Ancients! :)

There's one thing I avoided saying at this moment, but I'm going to say it as I'm seeing familiar faces here, I wanted to thank you all for the support you've given me over the last couple of years. Whenever I've felt "Do I really want to continue *wasting* my time on making a silly game?", your new comments and continued hope kept me alive.
And it's that supercharge of hope which is going to fuel me through college and university to achieve my dreams. Thank you.

An experienced programmer that will actually stick around and work effectively.

I'm afraid that Neil is no longer capable of working on The Ancients.

Back to the recruitment stage... sigh...

I just got back from France yesterday. Read this last night, forwarded it to Lightning this morning.

Lightning: Possibly. It's not the priority at the moment though.
Lightning: We'll release the game first, then we'll look into that.
Lightning: Tell him we're not a professional developer, it's just the two of us.

The straight black lines are simply to show the direction the rope will be in, whilst the bottom left is the actual rope, drooping.

Modular system is the current idea with seemingly the easiest implementation, however, we will need to see it through programming first.

The idea is that the player has a bunch of templates he can choose from (3x3, 3x4, 4x4, 4x5, etc). He then selects these from a tray, hovers over the world and then a ghost image of the floorplan is shown.
Player places down, construction site appears.

The sub-divisioning of the options has yet to be seen to, but needs to handle house type (stone, timber, stone and timber, etc) as well as the style (Roman, Middle-eastern, far-eastern, etc) - although, the second shouldn't be too problematic for now! :)

Yeah, it should look more fitting once I get my new artstyle revamped over my ground tiles.

Yeah, I plan to make it expandable upwards, too. :D Should turn out quite nicely.

The problem with using a tiled roofing means I'd have to box-off the corners to make the build square, for second-story purposes. Otherwise, when a second-story section is introduced to a building, you're going to have a blank corner at the turn of the base of a wall.

I might however be able to introduce a small over-hanging terracotta tiling, however.

This was the inspiration for this structure design (CivCity:Rome);

I454.photobucket.com

Hngh! *Deletes*

IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE ROMAN D;.

I wanted a flat-top concrete building for a version of a building. I want a white-brick and wooden/timber one next...

Well, the big "good thing" about having a small Rome to start with, is that players actually have a chance with it and against it. For example, players won't have to amass 150+ NPCs/players to stand a chance against Rome's army.

The problem with having a historically-correct game is that there are "rules" players would have to follow. The city has to have X available, it has to have a population support of X, it has to have an army of X, it has to have... so forth. The city would have to be huge to fully support 200BCE's original Rome. As a result of that, having a player base of <100 roaming around the ancient world means that you'll be lucky to have maybe five people in Rome at any one time - and even with larger counts, I reckon that more people will be out in the wilderness doing their own thing rather than living in the city.

By having a smaller Rome, players will be more likely to bump into each other and interact.

With a smaller Rome, the game can have a more sandbox approach for the players, giving them a clean slate to start with - rather than tossing them into a huge sprawling city with ties already generated in a Golden Orb Web spider fashion.

All of the above arguements have their pros and cons, and ultimately, it comes down to a Black and White decision dependent on the audience's taste... It's really quite a difficult position to be in. :(

I've just posted a new news update... Should be authorized by IndieDB's moderator team by tomorrow. The earleir the better!

Watch out for Sunday. :)

Just an activity post! We're still working on this.

I'm currently mapping out Rome, which isn't really that interesting to see at the moment, and Lightning is working up the rendering, controls and movement/animation systems.

I once set up a World of Warcraft Private server to play with my friends, and I gotta say, it was depressing. The world was empty of everyone, everywhere.

The Ancients is an immensely huge world that, if the void is not at least partially filled, is going to be a shallow and empty husk of what it possibly could be.
The game is being especially tailored so that players can happen upon randomly activated events and work together on that, whilst the world as a whole evolves from player input.

Imagine World of Warcraft, Lineage 2, Ragnorak and all the other greats, where there are only a handful of people playing - it's just *wrong*. *wrong* against nature!

Note: App name is obviously outdated, and the title is "The Ancients: Rome" now, as opposed to what is displayed.

Note: The above map is just a test area.

Oh. Griefers. They can be troublesome.

However, any unlawful action in-game can be reported to people, NPC or Player, who can track them down for you.

If anybody is interested, I've just launched a Livestream, streaming myself working on mapping/tilesets of The Ancients.
Also available for conversation/Q&A. :)

Livestream.com

That's one way of going about building a community; the other being to offer a sandbox to them, so that the player won't need to make their own mods or alternate servers. They can have all the fun and possibilities of modding in one place. This also strengthens player-to-player bonds.

We aren't just chewing out an MMORPG with NPCs who tell you to fetch a useless item that'll disappear when it is returned to them, or to kill 20 boars.
We're making a simulation sandbox. We set rules and ways the world can work, and then setting trigger conditions to trigger world-events; such as quests.
If there are bandits in the area and the town has <X strength, bandits may attack of their own will. If players are in the area to save them or not, is down to chance.

Players can craft the world to their own will. Build their own houses, forts, walls, ditches and defence structures. Wage war anywhere and with anyone. Work your way up the political path and affect the decisions of national forces amongst the Senate, and play political intrigue to strengthen your ideals.

We are making rules for a sandbox to continuously evolve around player input and output, we aren't just making another MMO.

How do you mean? In attitude, or people who are overpowered?

'fraid not Boxer. ASAP. :)

It's an MMO, so the only single-player gameplay you'll find is if you simply ignore everyone else, which will be a totally feasable gameplay choice if you wanted to.
If you mean if there'll be a main storyline, we want to put one in, but it's going to take a lot of planning to work it around the generative quest system we're brewing up.

Oh! Hi Fyrdrinc, haven't seen you for a while </3.

And, thanks. I'm currently working up the city walls which I was up till 2am doing last night, should finish and post them within the hour.

"Possibly" is my statement for now, on this matter.

It's a trap!

Well we figure, why go with the same run-of-the-mill MMORPG, when we can make it different? Why deny gamers what gamers want? "Games made by gamers for gamers" is another company's motto that fits quite well here. :D