PC Gamer UK Review of AI War

AI War breaks most of the genre’s rules. Which is precisely why it’s
incredible... This
out-of-the-blue one-man passion project is one of this year’s finest
strategy games.

- PC Gamer UK
Review, November 2009

Open source 3D RPG updates

There has been some activity in the most prominent free (as in freedom) software 3D role-playing games DungeonHack, jClassicRPG and Radakan.

DungeonHack

Green, water and village in DungeonHack [more]

DungeonHack (DH) 0.10 has been released in form of win&lin 32bit biaries and a few commits later I was able to compile the game on my 64bit Arch Linux machine. It is the first release of DH that does not rely on non-free libraries.

I played the game for the first time and I was positively surprised. Not only can I move around in the nice-looking (endless) landscape but also fight, cast magic, pick up items, enter houses and dungeons as well as talk to npcs. Physics also work (see barrels video below). On the downside: the current code is crash-happy and there is little content: In toto three houses, two dungeons, two enemy types, two items, one non-player character, one spell).

Zombie roasting á la DH

The next DH aim is to create a typical RPG village, add some inventory and status GUI and to write a dialog system (the current one runs on boxes). Maybe you feel like giving them a programmer's or artist's hand at achieving one of these or other goals? Then enter the DH chatroom and/or forum (which I find one of the most entertaining floss game forums to read).

Q's first gameplay - DungeonHack svn rev 520

Fun with barrels!

When test-playing DH, it appears weird to me that enemies' bodies disappear when eliminated and wish they would drop and also drop loot, which I could then collect into the (also not yet accessible) inventory. When playing the latest release or watching the videos, is there something you feel is missing?

jClassicRPG

Shrine and road in jClassicRPG

There has been much activity lately in jClassicRPG's Subversion repository. There are texture-roads now, the map not only shows terrain type any more but also infrastructure (roads and settlements). Shrines and Igloo buildings appear in the game world and a yeti creature has been added to the game's repertoire.

Usability has increased a lot through mouse menu integration and addition of buttons for map, character status etc. Though the drop-down menus don't act as the ones most of us are probably used to, the GUI-usage learning curve has dropped a lot. I especially like the tool-tip system, which shows usage instructions for the different controls or details about fields in the map. If only the font was better readable...

If you would like to help jClassicRPG grow, I can think of at least one Blender-modelling task: give attack animations to this gorilla. Apart from that you can find ways to help on this page and in this thread. And if you're hardcore, also read the TODO! (Search for "[ ]") :D

New game & character creation jClassicRPG r1849

Travel and battle

What I would like to see in jClassicRPG are cloth/armor items and a menu for equipping my party members with them. (EDIT: already there - left click character portraits.) Also the shiny flowers scream to me "pick me" and I hope that will be a gameplay option some day. Can you think of content or features that would enrich the game?

Radakan

Panda3D integration in Radakan

Radakan's developer announced a while ago, that the 3D view of the game will be postponed and a text/GUI interface would be developed first. Now Panda3D, a fun, BSD-licensed, python-powered game engine is being integrated.

What Radakan's developers could use help with now is exporting their already available media [.7z archive] and some media from OpenGameArt to the Panda3d .egg format. Instructions here (press "next" multiple times to see instructions for various 3D applications).

Radakan's 'behavior' editor

I do not care too much for the 3D part of the game (at least not yet). I would prefer the engine to be more stable, so I could try out the quest and add some detail to it using the behavior editor. What do you think? Is implementing 3D worth the time or would you rather prefer the gui/text-based framework to get developed further?

Off-topic

A little hint if you ever feel like making a gameplay video yourself: I prepared the videos for this post (and other posts) using glc to record and mencoder to encode. Sometimes (for non-OpenGL games) I use recordmydesktop to record. Feel free to ask in the comments or forum if I can help you with making videos.

Another little hint: If you are unable to use YouTube but curious about the videos and can play back mp4 files (vlc and mplayer can handle them), use youtube-dl to download videos for off-line playback.

Metin2

Site: http://www.metin-2.com/
Wiki: http://wiki.metin-2.com/index.php/Main_Page

Metin2 is a MMORPG in an oriental style. It is a free to play and download game with Asian sceneries, cool warriors, powerful magicians and frightening martial artists.

Graphics and impression
The game features beautiful scenery graphics and the characters and mobs animations are relatively good. (There are some MMORPG with very poor animation of walking and fighting). The characters are not very customizable – you can’t choose anything but class and gender. The fighting animations are pretty cool – your character moves and fights making impression of a dance.

Gameplay
The game has a lot of missions. You can start doing quests right from the beginning. At level 5 you can choose your specialization for skills and weapons.

Mobs fight in groups, at high levels you will encounter aggressive mobs that attack you on sight. All classes can do area of effect (AoE) damage and the low levels are relatively easy. Leveling up is fast and fun. The quests give a lot of money, experience and bonuses so they worth their time.

PVP
You can join or create a guild and participate in Guild Fights. Any guild can take possession of one of the strongholds, hire and train NPCs to guard it.
Standard or non-standard PVP is available from level 15. You can ask people for Duel, fight players from another empire or select the "free" option from the PVP menu. The free option allows you to attack and to be attacked by any character in the game.

Classes

• Warrior – melee character with heavy armor and a lot of strength. At level 5 they can specialize for better attack and speed or better deffence.
• Ninja – high dexterity characters with light armor. Ninjas can specialize with bows or daggers. I am not sure why this class is called ninja not thief (it is like any other thief character in most of the MMORPGs.)
• Sura – they combines long range magic with close range sword fight. At level 5 they can choose to specialize their long range spells or develop their close range fighting abilities.
• Shaman – the magic users. A shaman can choose to be a support character with healing and buff spells or damage dealer with attack spells.

For more detailed view on the game classes read the Metin2 Wiki.

Empires
In Metin2 the player meets a conflict between tree empires: Chunjo Empire, Shinsoo Empire and Jinno Empire. They fight for the domination over the continent, honor, glory and in-game bonuses.



Overall Impression
Metin2 is awesome MMORPG. Yes, there is some grinding but the game has a lot of quest and you can minimize it a lot.

Mini Ninjas

Have you dreamed to be a ninja? Do you want to experience adventure like never before? Do you like to watch animes like Naruto?

Site: http://www.minininjas.com/us
Mini Ninjas is a fun, action-adventure game developed by IO Interactive. In the role of Hiro or the other ninjas you will receive the mission to stop the Evil Samurai Warlord. Can you save the world from evil?

The game offers free movements through the world for better exploration and battles.

No killing. Mini Ninjas offers fun and battles without actual cruelty. Your enemies are transformed with evil magic innocent animals. Your role is to lift the curse from them and save them. So Mini Ninjas is game appropriate for kids - it is rated 10+ with Crude Humor and Cartoon Violence.

Characters:
Hiro – the youngest of all Mini Ninjas. He can use Kuji Magic to posses animals and cast fireballs. His main weapon in battle is the sword.

Futo - the biggest Mini Ninja with the giant hammer. Futo is Hiro’s best friend.

Suzume - she is the most fragile and swift of all the ninjas. Suzume uses her flute in battle. She has a special melody that makes her enemies dance in the middle of combat.

Suzume gameplay

Tora – he uses a pair of self-made tiger claws in battle.

Kunoichi – she is the youngest girl from the Mini Ninjas. She uses spear (Naginata).

Shun - he uses a bow as his main weapon.

Designing Emergent AI, Part 5: Don't Squeeze a Handful of Sand

ABSTRACT
Transcript of a
discussion from these forums, in which Chris explains in greater detail
the desirability of slightly-nonideal emergent decisions versus
too-predictable "perfect" decisions.

Designing Emergent AI, Part 5: Don't Squeeze a Handful
of Sand

NAEV 0.4.0 review

NAEV Items [more shots]

NAEV 0.4.0 is out, a game of the space trading and combat simulator genre, inspired by the non-free Escape Velocity. Win32/lin32/lin64/mac binaries are available here.

The new version has parts of the user interface changed and is better accessible, for example through in-game gui keybind editing. Three aspects of NAEV show that usability is a priority: 1) the tutorial is informative without overwhelming too much 2) most combats can be evaded through the run away-tactic (this might be unintended, but definitely liked by me). 3) The automatic jump system, that allows consecutive jumps to systems without having to manually repeat standard maneuvers gives much relief to the player.

The changelog also lists better-looking visuals as well as new sounds and music tracks. As a bonus, all the art in the game is licensed under Debian-friendly licenses. [license.txt: audio, visuals]

Gameplay

Wingmen fighters in action

In NAEV the player starts with a small trading ship and needs to earn money to buy new vessels and equipment. Trading or patrolling missions are the key to income. Though I'm no fan of playing lots of similar missions in a row, I did feel satisfaction, when discovering the most effective way to earn money with them: play patrolling missions and a lot of them at the same time.

Along with the repetitive, generated tasks, there are some original missions of different difficulties that allow the plot to progress and/or provide alternative methods of earning credits. They alone are reason enough to give NAEV a spin. The developers want to include more and more story missions, so contact them via IRC or mailing list if you're up to some sci-fi 'quest' writing! :)

A third (or is it fourth?) method of increasing wealth is observing prices and buying where prices are low and selling where products are expensive. However, there is not much of an economical simulation implemented in NAEV yet, so I wouldn't recommend this path for now.

Yet another battle

Scout ships, fighters and battle-cruisers are available in the shipyards of NAEV, different kinds of energy and missile weapons can be bought, various upgrades can be installed. The brainless method of costlier=better didn't work for me, I had to balance the effects and firepower against speed an maneuverability. Running away is more enjoyable to me than fighting and waiting ten seconds for my ship to turn.

The coolest item in the game is the fighter bay. It allows to host small allied ships in your cruiser. After 'shooting' them into space, they will attack enemies and can be controlled with a few simple commands. Place two is occupied by the afterburners, which will give a temporary speed boost at the price of having the view shaken.

Interviews

Next, two questions for the current top 5 NAEV contributors (and two extra ones for the lead dev):

Q1: What is your role in NAEV development?

bobbens: I am the lead developer of naev.

Deiz: I do a bit of everything, as required.

Done graphics, sound, missions, etc., but most of my time has been spent on making the sprites look nice and getting the game to a fairly balanced state.

For sound I mostly hunted things down and vocoded a few sounds to get the results I wanted. For graphics, most of the ship models are sourced from Vega Strike, many of the outfit graphics are based on models by Joss that I've heavily hacked up.

brtzsnr: I coded a couple of features that NEAV lacked (one of them is the faction disks), now I'm working on 3d-models and sometimes I fix bugs. I wish I had the time to implement more complex features.

stephank: I wrote some code to save configuration. It was unable to at the time.

BTAxis: I've provided some game content (two missions and half a dozen systems so far). That is the extent of my active role in NAEV's development. However, I also occasionally put forward proposals for new or improved game mechanics on the project mailing list, and if I can make them convincing enough and/or talk bobbens into seeing things my way, they may one day find their way into the actual game. I enjoy doing that. Thinking up game mechanics, making them work in my head and fitting them into a bigger picture is fun for me.

Q2: What do you want the game to become in the future?

bobbens: I want the game to be as good as the memories of my childhood playing original EV made it to be.

Deiz: Ultimately I'd like to see NAEV be appealing to a broader audience. At present if you're not somewhat familiar with the Escape Velocity/Elite/Freelancer/etc genre there's not too much to grab your attention.

brtzsnr: I hope NAEV to become more RPG-like (have a crew with different skills tree, say one engineer, one pilot, one commander, etc). Also I want more non-linear/intricate stories.

stephank: I played a lot of Escape Velocity, so that's why I got interested in NAEV. It looks and feels a lot like EV right now, but it looks like the (active) developers are mixing in interesting features from other games in the same genre, and even innovating. I would like them to surprise me, more so than me influencing them. :)

BTAxis: I already mentioned the proposals I wrote up. They're essentially the answer to this question, or at least they're the story so far. But if I'd have to explain it in two words, I'd say that I want naev to be a space exploration game that offers a high degree of interactivity while at the same time providing and engrossing and believable world for the player. That is not an easy goal to meet. Most space games that I know of sacrifice one aspect to pursue another, and in the end NAEV may have to as well. But at this point in time, I believe it's doable, and I hope to be part of making it happen. [For more information check out the proposals on NAEV's mailing list]

Q3: What made you start the project?

bobbens: I started the project about 6 years ago by myself when I realized that there was no game like EV (which I had played extremely intensively as a kid) on linux. EV also had major gameplay flaws that should have been worked around.

Since I had no projects at the time I started out with the ambitious NAEV, which over the years has slowly been taking shape and was released recently (one year ago) to the general public.

As of 0.4.0 I'm starting to be pretty impressed by the results.

Q4: What do you think of Star Control II (The Ur-Quan Masters) as an example of a EV-like GNU/Linux game?

bobbens: I only played Star Control II after someone mentioned it to me about 6 months ago. It does seem to have a lot of EV features, but it seems to lose a bit the fast paced-ness of EV and customizeability of the ships. However it does have other great features that EV lacks like the zooming in systems and the dialog use.

It's good to find good features in other games and use them for inspiration in NAEV, it's evolved enough that it no longer is an EV clone. It also takes from all over while trying to keep itself unique.

Latest NAEV gameplay video

NAEV 0.4.0 beta gameplay

AI War 1.301 (Co-Op Enhancements, UDP Networking, Supply)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet
Command version 1.301. You can download a trial version
of the game, as well as purchase
a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the
game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to
get the latest patch.  



Many Updates:


- 4 new ships: Decloaker, and three levels of a new Gravitational
Turret.


- Major visual improvements -- the HUD, the galaxy map, menus, and
ship icons have all been revamped.  We have updated our
screenshots, which gives a nice before/after contrast.


- Co-op Enhancements -- players can drop in and out of games if
needed, and all ships can be swapped around between players much better
now.


- New "Supply" game mechanic augments the military importance of
captured planets.


- Several AI improvements to add better tactical intelligence in a
number of different scenarios.


- New UDP-based network code performs vastly better in high-latency
or high-packet-loss environments.


- New render caching performance improvement reduces GPU load in
large battles by 1/2 to 2/3.


- More updated battle sound effects, and an updated battle sound
effect engine, makes the sounds of battles much better.


- Resizable minimap -- helpful in particular for larger monitors,
there are now 3 minimap sizes.


- Force Fields controlled by players are now damaged by shots fired
out from under them, but FFs can all now be moved and repaired.


- Many other balance tweaks, ship logic improvements, and other
enhancements and bugfixes.


The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the
full release notes to see everything (all 4,800 words worth included in
the next post in this topic). This DLC release is not quite as large as
the last one (which took a full month to make), but the visual
improvements alone make this version feel almost like a whole new game.
 Expect our next DLC release within a month or less, but the exact
timing is going to be dependent on how much testing is ultimately needed
for new features -- the next release is going to be the highly
anticipated 2.0 version!  You can always get the latest public
prerelease beta versions from our forums if you'd like to see what's
coming down the pike.  Lots more exciting updates are on the way!

---

As an added note, if you are a player who is is unable to
install patches for whatever reason (this is usually a windows issue),
you can download the patch files through the following link: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1000To1301.zip



Then
unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI
War\ unless you specified something else).  Please make sure that your
unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than
just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.  This is
a cumulative update, so as long as you have at least version 1.000 of
the game installed, this will update you to the latest version (1.301)
without any issues.



This update also now available for Impulse
customers.



For existing GamersGate customers, you can always
upgrade your copy from the "Check For Updates" link in the game just
like customers from our direct site can.  The latest version of the
installer will also be coming to GamersGate, but that will affect new
customers only.

Monday Depression In A Job You Love

ABSTRACT
Like most people,
game designer Chris Park is not immune to the effects of the Monday
morning blues.  What gives?  If you love your job, shouldn't this not
happen to you?  He posits this is some sort of nearly-universal human
process that occurs in most people no matter how much they love their
job.  The trick is to find ways to move past it quickly and not let it
interfere with productivity, since few companies can afford to lose 1/5
of the work week to something like this.

Monday Depression In A Job You Love

Why Rebalance A Released Game?

ABSTRACT
AI War has seen more
than its fair share of rebalancing compared to most other RTS games. 
Why is this?  Is this indicative of some sort of overall failing of the
core design, or is this indicative of a doggedly hobbyist attitude on
the part of the creators?  The creators would like to think neither of
the above is true, but rather that they are laying the groundwork for an
exceptional new long-form type of RTS (via expansions), rather than
your typical quickly-forgotten entry that spawns a lot of sequels.

Why Rebalance A Released Game?

Florensia – first impression

Site: http://en.florensia-online.com/

Florensia is a fantasy, 3D, sea and land MMOG, free to play and download.

Explorer

The world of Florensia is consisted of several islands and a huge ocean. You can fight land battles and grow your character on the land or go and fight sea battles, construct your ship and hire your crew. Land gameplay is your average MMORPG gameplay - the character attacks mobs, gets experience, learn skill and so on.
Leveling up is available for sea and land battles separately. Your land level won’t affect your sea level.

Noble fighting.

At the beginning the game meets you with long tutorial screens but believe me you’ll need to know what you are doing. The land battles are somewhat alike many other MMORPGs but the sea battle is a way different. You need to know how to assemble a ship. You also need to know how to repair it and how to hire a crew. I recommend you to do all beginning quests and carefully read the tutorial.

To assemble a ship you need to talk to dockyard owner NPC.

Sea battles at the beginning feel a little strange. It is not your usual type of game. Sea navigation is somewhat hard but it is a great adventure. I don’t like the Torpedo ship anyway.

Torpedo Ship for apprentices.

You can use five different ship types - Armored Ship, Big Gun Ship, Assault Ship, Torpedo Ship or Maintenance Ship.

Florensia has four starting classes – Explorer, Mercenary, Noble and Saint. At level 40 you can start a class change quest.

Explorer – Uses mainly gun-type weapons. He can also use sword. Explorers have limited defense powers and can’t use heavy armors. At level 40 can become Snipers or Excavators.
Mercenary – mercenaries use swords (of course). They have high strength, high constitution and high defense powers. Mercenaries are weak against magical attack. At level 40 they can become Gladiators or Guardian Swordsmans.
Noble - nobles are the magic users in Florensia. They have AoE (area of effect) damage spells and weak defense. At level 40 they can become Magic Knights or Magicians.
Saint – The Saint is the game healer. At level 40 he or she can become Priest or Shaman.

You can make a choice – to be a pirate or to join the Royal army but I haven’t tried this yet.

She repairs your ship.

Mini Ninjas Video

Very funny.

James Cameron's Avatar: The Game

James Cameron's Avatar: The Game is an upcoming video game by Ubisoft. The game is an adaptation of James Cameron's film Avatar. Less is known about the game. I haven't met even what genre it would be. On the other hand Ubisoft announced that they are using the same 3D technology as the film. Some of the characters in the game would be voiced by the respective actors from the film. The game will be released for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC(Windows) and PlayStation Portable.

The film: James Cameron's Avatar is an upcoming 3D fiction film.It's going to be released on 18 December this year.

Further reading:
http://avatargame.us.ubi.com/
Avatar, the film

ATI Eyefinity

Expect the new monster from AMD - ATI Eyefinity.
Have you dreamed for unbelievable experience playing the next generation MMORPG? Newer, better, bigger virtual worlds and virtual reality.

Yesterday, AMD announced cool, new technology ATI Eyefinity. Powered by one DirectX 11 graphics card, ATI Eyfinity supports up to six ultra high definition displays for better gaming experience.

For more information:
http://www.amd.com
ATI Eyefinity’s Panoramic Future

OpenMW interview with Nicolay Korslund

Early OpenMW GUI implementation

OpenMW is a re-implementation of the (non-free) TES3 Morrowind game engine, written in the D programming language. The engine makes use of OGRE and other open source libraries, features an own scripting language called "Monster" and the latest release has the version number 0.6.

Out of curiosity, I asked Nicolay Korslund (the lead developer) one year ago what his motivation for writing OpenMW was. Later I decided to ask some more and now you can finally read the interview, in which Nicolay tells us about Git, OpenMW's development and whether or not to expect original games as a result of the OpenMW project.

The interview

Q1: What is your motivation for writing OpenMW?

Initially the project was started a few years ago (somewhere around 2004-2005, don't remember exactly), out from desire to improve a game I loved and from frustration with bugs and issues that made it less fun than it could be. Having been a programmer for about a decade, I felt that most of the bugs were unnecessary and could easily have been fixed if Bethesda has devoted the resources to it. I started getting that curious 'I could do this better myself' feeling, that you sometimes get when you've been doing a craft for years and aren't satisfied with someone elses work. (Not that I think Bethesdas coding is shoddy in any way, they're a company with limited resources like any company, and sometimes you just don't have the money to improve thing ad infinitum even though you would like to.)

To keep up (or even start) a big project such as OpenMW, though, you'll usually need more than just one big motivation to drive you and keep you going. For example, I knew from the outset that this project was something that others would get excited about, and that's a big motivating factor. The amount of positive feedback I've gotten on OpenMW since release has been pretty stunning, and it really helps to know that what you're making will affect others in a positive way. I had always wanted to contribute to open source software, but so far hadn't found any project I burned for, and none of my own projects ever made it to the point of release.

Another motivation you'll need of course is the joy of working on it - it's a hobby after all. I love programming, I love improving things, and I love reverse engineering file formats. Thee big pluses when you're doing a reimplementation. It also forces you to learn new skills - I've always wanted to learn more game development, such as using a 'modern' 3D engine, but I never had any real motivation to do it before I started OpenMW. On top of all that I had just fell in love with the D programming language, which blew me away to the point of abandoning C++ literally over night. D had (and still has, to some degree) a desperate need for more attention getting projects, and I wanted to help with that. I knew there would be challenges with using such a new language, but I was determined to show that none of them were show stoppers.

Q2: Are other people involved in OpenMW or Monster?

Yes, quite a few really. I started a mailing list for OpenMW about a year ago, after initially getting very positive feedback on the project. The list now counts over 130 members, and even more pay attention to the project through various forums. Only a very small fraction of those have contributed code of course, but many contribute other things like testing, knowledge about the file formats/mods, or simply through feedback and ideas. For Monster I've intentionally run a somewhat lower profile, but there are a few of early-adopter-type developers who are using it in their own engines. If things go as planned though, the two projects will become much more intertwined in the future, and I hope that Monster can contribute a lot to OpenMW (and make my job as lead developer a lot easier.)

Q3: How did you find those people? Or was it them who found you?

I've done very little 'advertising' for my projects - I think I posted about OpenMW on exactly one forum (the OGRE forum), the rest took care of itself. I had to create the mailing list simply because I couldn't keep track of all the individual conversations any longer.

Q4: Are you going to make OpenMW usable with non-Morrowind content, so that new games can base on it? If yes, will you make such a game?

It's very possible that the project will spawn an engine that's usable for other games, but we don't have any specific plans for that right now. Although we are on friendly terms with another project that uses much of the same technology, called DungeonHack. It's very likely that our two engines will share some code in the future.

Even though we're not working on making a generic game engine, it will likely be possible to make much more extensive Total Conversion mods for OpenMW than for the original Morrowind engine. And the scripting features we're planning will let you bend the rules to the point where you would probably not consider it to be the same game anymore. Personally however I have very little talent for game creation (except for the coding part), so I don't think I'll be behind any of those mods myself.

Q5: You've picked OGRE as OpenMW's 3D engine. What about the alternatives (Irrlicht, jMonkeyEngine, Crystal Space, writing an own 3D engine...)?

I think probably all those (and many others) would have been good choices, except the last one. Writing a new engine and getting it to a point where it could compete with OGRE et al. would have taken years, and IMO it's usually a complete waste of time unless you're doing something really unique with it. There are so many good and free off-the-shelf alternatives out there (too many already...), and if you need some feature that they don't provide you can usually add it in yourself in 1/100th of the time it takes you to write a new engine from scratch.

Q6: You recently switched to Git from SVN. What motivated the switch?

Popular demand :) But after trying out Git (and taking the time to understand how it works), I fell completely in love with it myself. SVN is now ancient technology as far as I'm concerned. And with git-svn, Git is even a better Subversion client that Subversion is. However since it's so easy to integrate the two, we are keeping the SVN repositories on-line for the foreseeable future, and existing SVN users don't really need to change anything. I know it takes a real geek to obsess this much over a version control system, but that's how it is :)

More development information

You can find some technical details about OpenMW's codebase on its ohloh page.

Latest OpenMW video

OpenMW terrain test2: skydiving

Upcoming: Mortal Online

Mortal Online teaser

WYD fast leveling guide and quests help

The first and main part – choose your class and careful study its skills. You won’t receive enough "skill points" and "skill mastery points" to learn all of them so you must decide which are appropriate for your race. Any mistake here will make your efforts in vain.

For this tutorial I’ll use the hunter.

WYD Leveling – part 1

The first quest – “Training Camp” is good enough to level up you to 40 level very fast. You can find full quest description here - http://wyd.gamenetworks.com/intro/quest_256.asp or in your quest window in game. There is a strong monster before every gate and near the Trainers. Kill the monster, talk with the trainer and you will get the key for the next part. The last monster is Orc Warrior. Stay there and kill the spawning monster until you reach level 35. You will get multiple quest items and then you will receive many rewards. You can get you reward only if you are under or 40 level so be careful not to miss it.

At level 40 go to the next quest – Spirit Guardian. Level up there till level 115. At the beginning fight mobs for the quest item. Auto fight can be very useful, just leave your character to collect quest items and do something else. When you are strong enough - go for the quest experience. Leveling up with this quest is pretty fast. The mobs give a lot of experience and the quest award items give +7500 experience – this would be something like one quarter for your character at this time.

At level 40 you can start one more quest – Orc Castle. It is not hard and very useful – the reward is a magic pill that gives you 9 skill points.
The monsters around the Orc Castle drop more Grave Keeper’s Candle – the quest items for Spirit Garden.

Orc Castle Quest – you must fight near the gates for the keys. After receiving the key – enter the Castle gate. I receive pretty good drop there. Orc Guard drops Orc Castle Final S.G Key. ChiefOrc drops Orc Castle Final E.G Key. Orc Lord drops the pill.

This is the end of part 1.

On Writing For Games

ABSTRACT
Originally starting
as a post on these forums, this post details my thoughts on writing for
games, and why I believe that sometimes Less is More.  AI War has
exactly 15 lines of story, and that's something you wouldn't expect from
someone like me, who is also an aspiring novelist.  Was this sloth? 
Oversight?  This article explains why it was an intentional design
decision.

On Writing For Games

Preparation and Luck: Marketing Your Indie Game

ABSTRACT

Discussion of lessons
learned from marketing AI War.  Nothing overly surprising, but useful
for those who wish to enter the indie market but don't know much about
what to expect.  Short answer:  expect to do a lot of work.



Preparation and Luck: Marketing Your Indie Game

Hello Kitty Online

Site: http://en.hellokittyonline.eu/

Hello Kitty Online is cute, free-to-play, MMORPG. HKO combines gaming and social networks together, making the world of Sanrio Land unique place to make friends and have fun.

Gameplay and impression
Hello Kitty Online is relaxing and peaceful, maybe way too peaceful. It is centered on crafting and collecting resources rather than combat. Even leveling up is done through collecting resources and crafting. HKO has four types of recourse collection: woodcutting, gathering, planting and mining. Item crafting is also very important Players can obtain items through trading or through crafting. HKO has four skills for crafting – cooking, making tools and weapons, making clothes and making furniture.



Farming – players receive a farm upon entering HKO and it is the base source for in-game money.

Fighting
HKO don’t have typical monster killing. The fight with the monster ends with the monster defeat without actually killing the mob. The weapons are also a little too funny.

Pets
When you defeat monster in Hello Kitty Online – you have a chance to obtain a pet card. A pet card can be used to make a pet from the monster. Pets can be very helpful - even in collecting resources. If a pet is fed regularly it level up.

Home sweet home
Players in HKO can build a house. The first thing necessary for building a house is a land certificate. You can obtain this certificate from npc or quest.

Social Networking
Hello Kitty Online is a type of social network. It encourages its users to interact and communicate like other networks (twitter, facebook). Players can blog, watch videos and send e-mails from the game. The Adventurer’s Journal is a special feature that allows players to post in their blog from the game interface.

Minigames
HKO offers some cute and fun minigames and puzzles for its players.

AI War 1.201 (Major Economic, AI, and Graphical update with 16 new ship types)

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the release of AI War: Fleet
Command version 1.201. You can download a trial version
of the game, as well as purchase
a license key to unlock the full version. If you already have the
game or demo installed, just hit "Check For Updates" inside the game to
get the latest patch.  




Huge Updates:

- 16 new ships: 1 new energy reactor, 3 new starships, 8 new
turrets, new mercenary space dock with 3 new mercenary ships.

- Major visual improvements -- planets and backgrounds, some
effects, parts of the HUD, and a few ship classes.

- Massively updated economy that is easier to manage and which
scales better to very long games.

- New Energy model that provides more incentive for expansion while
also fitting within the updated economy.

- Faster Starts:  The repetitive activities from the first 5 or so
minutes of a new campaign have now been automated to let players get
right to the real game.

- Several major AI improvements: tactical retreats, better
aggression against key targets, better tactical intelligence in a number
of different scenarios.

- Revamped cross-planet attacks that are better balanced for
players.

- A good number of performance improvements make giant battles
perform better than ever.

- Network latency settings allow players to tune their game for
high-latency networks.

- Improvements to the interface in general, most notably the
planetary summary upgrades and the addition of the Threat Meter at the
top of the screen.

- Drag-building of ships is now possible, and placement is even
easier with Ctrl and Alt hotkeys while placing ships.

- Some updated battle sound effects.

- New "Energy Storm" music track replaces older "Thor" track.

- Many smaller balance tweaks, ship logic improvements, and other
minor enhancements and bugfixes.




The above list is just a sampling, however, so be sure to check out the
full release notes to see everything (included in the next post in this
topic). This DLC release was so massive that it was a month in the
making.  Expect our next DLC release to come sooner than that, but the
exact timing is going to be dependent on how much testing is ultimately
needed for new features.  You can always get the latest public
prerelease beta versions from our forums if you'd like to see what's
coming down the pike.  Lots more exciting updates are on the way!

---

As an added note, if you are a player who is is unable to
install patches for whatever reason (this is usually a windows issue),
you can download the patch files through the following link: http://www.arcengames.com/share/AIWar1000To1201.zip

Then
unzip it into your game folder (usually C:\Program Files\Arcen Games\AI
War\ unless you specified something else).  Please make sure that your
unzip process keeps the folder structure from the zip file, rather than
just unpacking all of the files into the base target directory.  This is
a cumulative update, so as long as you have at least version 1.000 of
the game installed, this will update you to the latest version (1.201)
without any issues.

This update is also available directly
through Stardock's Impulse for customers purchasing the game through
that platform.

For existing GamersGate customers, you can always
upgrade your copy from the "Check For Updates" link in the game just
like customers from our direct site can.  The latest version of the
installer will also be coming to GamersGate, but that will affect new
customers only.