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Seiichi
Manager
- Oct 20, 2016
- 1,878
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It has been quite a while since our last network update, and since we have recently reached a milestone in some of our projects I figured I would post an update showcasing the work that has been done, and what we have planned.
First of all we have recently gotten the source code of Dragon's Prophet to a state of parity with the current version of the server we are running. This means that we can move forward with additional bug fixes, new functionality, new content and new marketplace items. It has been a long and arduous battle for @Light to get the test server to the state that it is in due to how unorganized, badly written and undocumented the code for Dragon's Prophet is.
Below is some of what Light has had to deal with; the first image is relating to bag expansion and the second is related to mastery reset. These are actually legible Lua scripts compared to the majority of the code in this game, and when you have 1,300+ files of mostly illegible code that lacks a clear organization structure it makes fixing or finding things extremely difficult. The vast majority of bugs reported are related to Lua, while others have some issues within the actual engine or game logic itself.
Getting to the point that we are currently at, with some breaks in between, has taken the better part of 6 months of constant work from Light on the development side, Haterslayer with his knowledge of Dragon's Prophet and experience in GMing and my constant harassment of players. Light and myself easily put around 12-15 hours a day towards the network, and Haterslayer puts quite a bit of time into researching and documenting the game and building the weekly events.
Now that we are ready to move on with source code, we will be testing for the next few weeks to make sure there are no major bugs that will delay a release of first update on source code. During this testing phase we will be looking at fixing the bugs that have been reported since the launch of the server, looking into some of the suggestions requested by the community, as well as laying groundwork for new functionality or features.
As far as custom content goes, we still have some work that needs to be done to the tools that we have, as well as need time to get familiar with them. The first bit of content that we'll be working on is releasing the unfinished zone Runewake was working on as well as the unreleased dungeon "Devouring Void". You will recognize the final boss of Devouring Void as what Hater has lovingly nicknamed Tibtibs, and has used recently during our weekend events.
Our focus will be finishing up the existing content, and then extending or overhauling content to bring it back in line with the original storyline (and tutorial). We'll be gladly taking advice or opinions on world building or lore in the suggestion section of the forum.
Aside from Dragon's Prophet, we have been working on a lot of things behind the scenes that people who are active in our Discord will perhaps know about.
The first of which is the development of our new integrated registration system, and integrated purchasing system which will be used for all of the games on our network in the future. I've previously previewed the checkout system and how simple it is, but it also allows people to register multiple accounts per game, and manage the password and secondary password of those accounts as needed. We also currently have support for adding existing Dragon's Prophet accounts, however there will be a limit to how many you can add so I would avoid adding care accounts.
We have been in talks with another development team to bring a customized Runes of Magic server onto our network for several months now. We will be hopefully welcoming them and the server officially on the first of August, otherwise it will be sometime shortly after. This development team is completely separate from Dragon's Prophet, though we may have some crossover to bring some new content to both games at some point in the future.
We are also going to be working on releasing a Final Fantasy XI server, headed by @choochoo. Work has just started, and some issues need to be fixed but we hope to have this available for beta testing sometime within August, and a release date is tentatively sometime towards the end of August or sometime within September.
A series of Minecraft servers is also currently in the works by @Stealth (Peturabo), and we will be releasing the first of which sometime in August, with several more shortly after. Stealth is a long time friend of mine, and is a big reason that we're able to do as much as we can as he has helped support us and helped us grow quicker than we would have. Minecraft will help to pay builds, as well as to stabilize our finances to expand as we need to, and to hire more people.
Our RaiderZ server is currently been demoted back to development to figure out how to solve some data issues and currently has no ETA. The primary issue was that many quests didn't properly complete even when the objective was met, and that prevented certain events from triggering or from much of the gameplay from developing.
Now that Dragon's Prophet is entering a testing and fixing stage, we will also be re-applying some time towards Dragon Saga (also known as Dragonica). We need to update some of the data, and get some of the content to a working state before we can put it back into testing. We will hopefully be putting work into custom content sometime after the release of Dragon's Prophet.
Swordsman Online is still on hiatus as we focus on our other games, but we will likely finish fixing the one issue preventing us from testing our server, and then work to get that released. The focus of Swordsman will be mostly on the PvP, as it has one of the most balanced systems in any games I have seen.
We are also going to be releasing a World of Warcraft 3.3.5 Wrath of the Lich King server. Testing will start within the next few weeks, and it will possibly release sometime within the next month. The initial server will be Vanilla, but we will possibly look at other servers.
That covers the majority of things that will be happening for the next few months, and I will possibly look into doing a more solid roadmap when possible
First of all we have recently gotten the source code of Dragon's Prophet to a state of parity with the current version of the server we are running. This means that we can move forward with additional bug fixes, new functionality, new content and new marketplace items. It has been a long and arduous battle for @Light to get the test server to the state that it is in due to how unorganized, badly written and undocumented the code for Dragon's Prophet is.
Below is some of what Light has had to deal with; the first image is relating to bag expansion and the second is related to mastery reset. These are actually legible Lua scripts compared to the majority of the code in this game, and when you have 1,300+ files of mostly illegible code that lacks a clear organization structure it makes fixing or finding things extremely difficult. The vast majority of bugs reported are related to Lua, while others have some issues within the actual engine or game logic itself.
Getting to the point that we are currently at, with some breaks in between, has taken the better part of 6 months of constant work from Light on the development side, Haterslayer with his knowledge of Dragon's Prophet and experience in GMing and my constant harassment of players. Light and myself easily put around 12-15 hours a day towards the network, and Haterslayer puts quite a bit of time into researching and documenting the game and building the weekly events.
As far as custom content goes, we still have some work that needs to be done to the tools that we have, as well as need time to get familiar with them. The first bit of content that we'll be working on is releasing the unfinished zone Runewake was working on as well as the unreleased dungeon "Devouring Void". You will recognize the final boss of Devouring Void as what Hater has lovingly nicknamed Tibtibs, and has used recently during our weekend events.
Aside from Dragon's Prophet, we have been working on a lot of things behind the scenes that people who are active in our Discord will perhaps know about.
The first of which is the development of our new integrated registration system, and integrated purchasing system which will be used for all of the games on our network in the future. I've previously previewed the checkout system and how simple it is, but it also allows people to register multiple accounts per game, and manage the password and secondary password of those accounts as needed. We also currently have support for adding existing Dragon's Prophet accounts, however there will be a limit to how many you can add so I would avoid adding care accounts.
We have been in talks with another development team to bring a customized Runes of Magic server onto our network for several months now. We will be hopefully welcoming them and the server officially on the first of August, otherwise it will be sometime shortly after. This development team is completely separate from Dragon's Prophet, though we may have some crossover to bring some new content to both games at some point in the future.
We are also going to be working on releasing a Final Fantasy XI server, headed by @choochoo. Work has just started, and some issues need to be fixed but we hope to have this available for beta testing sometime within August, and a release date is tentatively sometime towards the end of August or sometime within September.
A series of Minecraft servers is also currently in the works by @Stealth (Peturabo), and we will be releasing the first of which sometime in August, with several more shortly after. Stealth is a long time friend of mine, and is a big reason that we're able to do as much as we can as he has helped support us and helped us grow quicker than we would have. Minecraft will help to pay builds, as well as to stabilize our finances to expand as we need to, and to hire more people.
Our RaiderZ server is currently been demoted back to development to figure out how to solve some data issues and currently has no ETA. The primary issue was that many quests didn't properly complete even when the objective was met, and that prevented certain events from triggering or from much of the gameplay from developing.
Now that Dragon's Prophet is entering a testing and fixing stage, we will also be re-applying some time towards Dragon Saga (also known as Dragonica). We need to update some of the data, and get some of the content to a working state before we can put it back into testing. We will hopefully be putting work into custom content sometime after the release of Dragon's Prophet.
Swordsman Online is still on hiatus as we focus on our other games, but we will likely finish fixing the one issue preventing us from testing our server, and then work to get that released. The focus of Swordsman will be mostly on the PvP, as it has one of the most balanced systems in any games I have seen.
We are also going to be releasing a World of Warcraft 3.3.5 Wrath of the Lich King server. Testing will start within the next few weeks, and it will possibly release sometime within the next month. The initial server will be Vanilla, but we will possibly look at other servers.
That covers the majority of things that will be happening for the next few months, and I will possibly look into doing a more solid roadmap when possible