Happy Independence Day to you Americans out there.

We’re still working on bits and pieces that play into the progression system. This is going to be a running theme for a while as we get it sorted out.

Kyren is now fully moved and is back to programming. Right now she’s writing a small piece of code that will allow us to play around with leveling curves and get everything exactly as it should be. It’s a process that’s going to require a lot of tweaking and testing but once it’s out of the way it’ll be glorious.

We’ve also finished up the design of the quest screens. You can see a mockup here:

These will be implemented once Bartwe is done with some deep level voodoo.

Also, because yesterday’s post was so controversial. Here’s another image from the Floran intro.

Evening everyone! Quick update tonight.

We finished the Floran intro, which is appropriately barbaric. You can see a shot of that here:

We also finished off a bunch of base work that will allow us to do new things with player characters, and continued work on unique NPCs.

And lots of testing was done! Hooray for testing. We’ve been testing how smooth progression is in the beginning of the game. It’s crucial that players understand what they’re doing and why, that crafting and survival make sense and aren’t too daunting, and that the UI is intuitive and easy to understand. And that the game is interesting, of course! So far so good. :)

EDIT: Lots of people complained about the above screenshot! It was my bad.  I was rushing out the update, trying to get to bed, and was under the impression the Floran intro was completely finished so I just picked a screenshot and posted it. I didn’t realize it would lead to a 21-page comment thread full of raaaaaaaaaage.  Apparently the screenshot I picked originally had human campers around the fire, but was being adapted so it was Florans sitting around the fire. It wasn’t a final pass.
So I suppose it goes without saying that I was totally wrong and the Floran intro wasn’t quite finished. :P

So to make up for it, have another. Sorry my sleepiness caused so much trouble!

Hi Guys,

Kyren is still busy moving stuff around, but today has been very productive.

We’re working a ton on progression right now. Lots of bits and pieces are coming together and our goal is to get the game fully playable without any admin commands. That means every important item needs to be craftable, getting the costs right and the leveling right for everything that has a level. Making sure ore distributions are correct. That sort of thing. It’s going to take us a while but it’s a major step towards the completion of the game.

We’re also working on the quest system which is going to help give the player direction (if he or she wants one) and alternative ways to earn money and items.

On top of that we’ve been giving each of the random monsters an evolution. You can see an example of an evolved monster hanging around with his base chums here: