Smiers

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:23 am

see now the iceland is much closer to home for me. yellow is pukish.

serious sam yeah yer right it did look that way. but with more poly.

it's not the night time that makes it un-icy. it's the lack of ice.

if you were to come to where i live you would know that in winter EVERYTHING is pure white or clear and very little shines through.

for example your leaves have green edges... real winter causes anything green besides pine needles to turn brown die and fall off.

Neirda · Post by **Neirda** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:08 pm

Well anyway it is just a sample of the few I worked on for the iceworld.
I keep the advice about the pine.

I did not work a lot on Smiers those last days, I have been quite busy at work with tough deadlines.
I even wanted to show a new screenshot, but after considering I just found it ugly so instead I'm gonna hurt you with an umpleasant wall of text.

Because I am aware I cannot decently achieve Smiers by myself before the next century, I want to announce that I would be interested in working with a programmer, if any of you happened to be interested in this project.
I am looking for someone who can actually enjoy working on it, and enjoy relaxed but imaginative team working. Having a friendly atmosphere is to me actually more important than brilliant programming skills. The point is taking pleasure in bringing this to life, not doing it at all cost.
I thought about the programming technical issues and I still continue to consider this point for every new idea I introduce, but I definitively need someone who can actually know what is doable, and what is not.
The project requires building a server/client, a database (such as Mysql), all to be made from scratch.

Developing the concept :
I said before, Smiers would be a Online game in which the main part will be about socializing with other players. This does not mean that everyone has to be nice with everyone, this just means that the human factor shall be the core of the fun.
4 kingdoms, 4 cities in which people can shape guilds and get houses according to the size and power of this guild.
I will make a small Q&A to develop what are actually the improvements I made to the concept.

Question : God, it is damn easy if it is just about making a big guild to get a big house ! And boring too.
Agreed, that’s why the housing shall also depend on the participation of the guild on the richness of their city.
People can decide to collect richnesses for themselves, or for their guild. The more they give to the city in the name of their guild, the more their guild is considered as powerful, the more they can get a huge house.

Question : And why keep it for yourself then ?
To improve yourself ! I planned several useful skills that can be improved… If you have the resources for it. Not mentioning of course the nice clothes you want to buy !

Question : What kind of skills ? There will be a combat system ?
The answer to the second question is no. This part is to be kept as basic as possible. It should be limited to “I slam you with a dagger, you have x% of chances to be dead. Now slam me.”.
The skills I thought about are rather like : investigation (discovering who killed your guildmate), negotiation (get discounts), or lock picking (chances to open a chest, hey, everyone likes it !), etc, developed with several levels of mastering. Things that remain easy to program and to handle with a database.

Question : You talk about collecting resources. How vague…
I admit. I still need to think about it. Why not allowing guilds to own farms that could produce goods (that can get stolen by players with enough sneaking skills, indeed). Or dangerous temples full of treasures. Precisely here, I need someone to tell me what is pragmatically doable and what is just too crazy.

Ok. I think I detailed a big part of it now. I hope it is not too confused, if it is just blame me. I would have a lot more to say but I keep it an overview. If you want to join me, just send me a PM.

Monochrome · Post by **Monochrome** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:56 pm

Just a question: do you have the resources and the cash to host one (if not various!) mmorpg server(s)?

Neirda · Post by **Neirda** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:30 am

Good question. I currently have the ressources for the testing issues. Enough for now. But well, if it comes to be finished one day, and if it ever comes to have enough succes to need several servers, finding ressources will certainly not be the toughest problem I would have met.
Besides, I know people eager to invest in this kind of things here (that's a good point of being a foreigner in China), but I wish to keep the development funny and amateurish cause I don't wish to turn it into an order that MUST be delivered. I have a job for that and it's more than enough

Monochrome · Post by **Monochrome** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:39 am

If you're really going foward with this, also keep in mind that you'll need to provide constant customer support for a lifetime! I strongly advise you to get a bigger team as soon as possible along with an army of webmasters, beta testers, etc. It is a great commitment to create and support an mmorpg and even though your intentions are great, servers dont get hosted on good intentions.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:21 am

nice to see you posting interesting ideas, keep it up.

what's your next step?

what kind of skills do you need in order to move forward?

on the creative side, you may need to set up an outline description on how these assets will be maintained.

on the tech side, you also need to keep track of the teams that will work on each feature.

i can help, mostly donate a few hours of tech and art, here and there.

it's a lot of work, serious work. but the important part is to make it fun and rewarding for members, that's probably the best compensation available for now, though.

my day job is very similar to an MMO operation, working on the server backend. hundreds even close to a thousand users sending data to a cluster.

it's definitely not simple.

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:36 am

你好。Why are they not interested in this? Anyway I can help with arts.

Monochrome · Post by **Monochrome** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:24 pm

Virion wrote:你好。Why are they not interested in this? Anyway I can help with arts.

The irrlicht community is known for being quite apathetic and individualist, so that may justify your question. Personally i'm not volunteering because i have my own projects at hand.

Neirda · Post by **Neirda** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:17 pm

Hello,
I did not answer for several days, I am sorry, it has been quite a busy week.
Thank you to those who answered my call. I work now with a programmer. For what we exchanged until now, he is someone I like working with and I definitely think we can do good work together on Smiers.

Do not be tough on the Irrlicht community, it's not as bad as you think in my opinion. A lot of people come here with their own projects in head, therefore they do not have time and will to get involve in someone else's world. Who can blame them ? Certainly not me.
It is not an easy commitment, especially in an non-professionnal environnement. And still here you can find great people ready for that.

I have been thinking a lot on how to make the gameplay work acording to its original design. Not such easy task, but really I believe in the starting concept. I keep working on it. I plan to open soon a dedicated blog and website. I keep you posted.

I know that in case the may-be final product encounters success, we would have to provide services such as customer help and maintenance. But, well, I guess if we can reach such a point, a business-plan won't be hard to establish. I'm just trying to answer the question, so please do not open fire about me talking business !

Ok, hope I answered accurately. Hope I can send fresh news soon !

Neirda · Post by **Neirda** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 3:26 am

Here I am back !
No, Smiers is not a dead project.
Actually, we've been actually working pretty much on it since the last time I came.
A good (in my opinion, at least) gameplay has been designed (and keeps being), the graphics have been revamped (again), and the programming is going pretty fast, thanks to my great partner.
The project grew bigger than planned, now I have a serious coder

I wish I can detail more soon, a website will be opened for that puropse.

Here are some new screenshots, hope you can feel the improvements.

Note that I know there are bugs in some meshes, that is normal, as those are test meshes

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 5:52 am

I don't see any bugs in the meshes.

In fact that look like some pretty good A/AAA material right there! I definitely thought this project was dead.

Thank you for proving me wrong, it looks absolutely cool! Are you still using Irrlicht?

Neirda · Post by **Neirda** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 7:14 am

Look better, you will see, you really don't want to see that in a final release

Yes, we are still using Irrlicht. The screenshots use only the basic contents of the engine, but indeed, twists are being developped to fit the game's needs.

May I ask you to extend my culture and tell me what is 'AAA/A material' ?

Thanks

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 7:54 am

oooohhh la la....

very nice and shiny.

i can smell and taste the colors and textures from here.

yummeeee...

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:31 am

twists are being developed to fit the game's needs.

Mind to tell what's that?

By the way did you use any shader for this?

Neirda · Post by **Neirda** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 10:53 am

Well, I don't want to talk too much about what is not yet a reality, but for example, a new LOD terrain mesh, supporting textures fadings and with improved accuracy (extended heighmap), is being developped.

There is no shaders in this scene, but we are planning to use some (water, for example).