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(A blog focusing on the development and design of Norwegian Wood, a privately run Ultima Online-shard - with focus on design-theories, discussing pros and cons of individual features, status-reports from the development process and other tidbits that people might find interesting.)
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Ever wanted to be a commentator?
Now's your chance, as I've added the option for you all to comment on the blog-entries made. Ok, so I'm using a free third-party host for the comments, but - it works! Unless anyone think I should get a different one? Comments? ;)
Oh, and we're getting another updater for this blog - giving us a total of TWO(woah) blog-members with ability to post. The individual in question is Eolirin Xianve, one of the Designers/GMs for NW =) He will, amongst other things, offer you details concerning how our different "systems" (magery, combat, etc) will be setup. But he's not limited to those "systems", so I'm sure you'll all see some other interesting updates from him in the future as well =)
Now's your chance, as I've added the option for you all to comment on the blog-entries made. Ok, so I'm using a free third-party host for the comments, but - it works! Unless anyone think I should get a different one? Comments? ;)
Oh, and we're getting another updater for this blog - giving us a total of TWO(woah) blog-members with ability to post. The individual in question is Eolirin Xianve, one of the Designers/GMs for NW =) He will, amongst other things, offer you details concerning how our different "systems" (magery, combat, etc) will be setup. But he's not limited to those "systems", so I'm sure you'll all see some other interesting updates from him in the future as well =)
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Cosutm NPC AIs
Waht I hpoe to mkae one of NW's sortnesgt fatereus wlil be our viraed NPC AIs. Not nsciseelry NPC AIs dsgeiend to kcik yuor ass in cbomat, tsohe are denamd hrad and the palerys ayawls win in the end awynay - but geanrel AI to mkae the voraius NCPs taht paoplute the wlrod seem mroe "rael". Not to say we wno't try to do atihnyng aobut cbmoat as well (we wllil, tsrut me), but it's not the pramriy iusse we'll hvae wehn ipelnemintng our AIs.
(Wonder what's up with this paragraph? Read up on this. Apparently we're able to read and understand stuff like this as long as the first and last letters of each word are in their correct place, since we read whole words at a time instead of letter-by-letter. Of course it gets harder the longer the words are, but in general it seems to be true. :)
Examples include:
-Healers who heal wounded players with bandages, as long as they're not hostile/engaged in combat with someone else/criminals of any kind.
-NPC beggars who follow you until you give them something (Annoying? Yes. We'll try not to have too many of 'em, unless there's reason for it - like generally bad times in a town etc :)
-NPCs that seek out players for help themselves without waiting for the players to approach them first
-NPC reactions to various stuff like player behaviour/reputation, climate, time of day, etc.
-NPC schedules - giving the NPCs their own daily agendas.
This is just a short, basic list - and even though we have to keep the server's system resources in mind when creating our AIs, the final (hopefully it'll never be final, but continue growing as the server grows in age) list of NPC AIs should be multiple times as long. Thus far only the first AI in the example list has been implemented, but that's mainly because we only recently started scripting NPC AIs (we're scripting other stuff too, you know).
Well, time to depart for home! (Yeah, I write this stuff while I'm at work - got to do something to pass time *grins*)
*clicks the blog-publish-button and leaves the computer*
Waht I hpoe to mkae one of NW's sortnesgt fatereus wlil be our viraed NPC AIs. Not nsciseelry NPC AIs dsgeiend to kcik yuor ass in cbomat, tsohe are denamd hrad and the palerys ayawls win in the end awynay - but geanrel AI to mkae the voraius NCPs taht paoplute the wlrod seem mroe "rael". Not to say we wno't try to do atihnyng aobut cbmoat as well (we wllil, tsrut me), but it's not the pramriy iusse we'll hvae wehn ipelnemintng our AIs.
(Wonder what's up with this paragraph? Read up on this. Apparently we're able to read and understand stuff like this as long as the first and last letters of each word are in their correct place, since we read whole words at a time instead of letter-by-letter. Of course it gets harder the longer the words are, but in general it seems to be true. :)
Examples include:
-Healers who heal wounded players with bandages, as long as they're not hostile/engaged in combat with someone else/criminals of any kind.
-NPC beggars who follow you until you give them something (Annoying? Yes. We'll try not to have too many of 'em, unless there's reason for it - like generally bad times in a town etc :)
-NPCs that seek out players for help themselves without waiting for the players to approach them first
-NPC reactions to various stuff like player behaviour/reputation, climate, time of day, etc.
-NPC schedules - giving the NPCs their own daily agendas.
This is just a short, basic list - and even though we have to keep the server's system resources in mind when creating our AIs, the final (hopefully it'll never be final, but continue growing as the server grows in age) list of NPC AIs should be multiple times as long. Thus far only the first AI in the example list has been implemented, but that's mainly because we only recently started scripting NPC AIs (we're scripting other stuff too, you know).
Well, time to depart for home! (Yeah, I write this stuff while I'm at work - got to do something to pass time *grins*)
*clicks the blog-publish-button and leaves the computer*
Sunday, September 14, 2003
So what about the NW Newsletter?
Now that this blog is in place, what happens to the NW Newsletter? Well, the idea behind the newsletter is still sound - it's ability to reach out to a huge amount of people at the same time(that would currently be 1397 people =) is a godsend for when you want to get vital information out to the masses. Information like "Server down for X time!", or "new map-downloads!" or "server ip has changed!". Ok those examples aren't valid right now seeing as the server isn't even up, but you get the point, I hope :)
I might also setup a little something which will send a "digest" from this development blog to the newsletter every now and then - so every time a newsletter arrives it'd contain X amount of entries from the blog (opposed to sending one newsletter mail for each blog update, which seems like overkill).
Oh yeah, almost forgot - You can sign up for the NW Newsletter by sending an e-mail to nwnewsletter-request@freelists.org with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
Now that this blog is in place, what happens to the NW Newsletter? Well, the idea behind the newsletter is still sound - it's ability to reach out to a huge amount of people at the same time(that would currently be 1397 people =) is a godsend for when you want to get vital information out to the masses. Information like "Server down for X time!", or "new map-downloads!" or "server ip has changed!". Ok those examples aren't valid right now seeing as the server isn't even up, but you get the point, I hope :)
I might also setup a little something which will send a "digest" from this development blog to the newsletter every now and then - so every time a newsletter arrives it'd contain X amount of entries from the blog (opposed to sending one newsletter mail for each blog update, which seems like overkill).
Oh yeah, almost forgot - You can sign up for the NW Newsletter by sending an e-mail to nwnewsletter-request@freelists.org with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
Saturday, September 13, 2003
Wooo. Free. AoS-Client. Download
For those of you with either broadband connections or a lot of patience - a FREE, and LEGAL download of the very latest Ultima Online client(Age of Shadows). Even includes a 15-day long trial-run on the official UO servers. :)
And best of all - it can be used for playing on NW too!! ;)
For those of you with either broadband connections or a lot of patience - a FREE, and LEGAL download of the very latest Ultima Online client(Age of Shadows). Even includes a 15-day long trial-run on the official UO servers. :)
And best of all - it can be used for playing on NW too!! ;)
Friday, September 12, 2003
Admin's Log, Day Two
It's a bit early in this blog to start on the heavy theory/design stuff (Fear not, there will be enough of that later), so I think I'll rather start by describing my Vision™ for Norwegian Wood - what I hope it will turn out to be when done, and why I hope players might choose this particular shard from the myriad of shards available out there.
One of the largest problems a wanna-be UO player faces when he's tired of the official UO servers and instead wants to try his luck with a player-run shard, is the huge amount of shards that exist(Here's a short list: UOGateway ShardList). True, because of that there's something for everyone out there - but it also makes it a lot harder to find a decent shard to play on, because to be frank: The majority of player-run shards are low-quality, quick-hack shards which are launched with minimal community support (Attend: Forums, ingame player-support, a decent webpage, etc) and which attract new players with revelations such as "FREE HOUSE FOR 10 FIRST PLAYERS WHO JOIN!"; Often giving away at character creation everything that the players would normally have to make a small effort for to gain from normal gameplay.
Even so, there are shards out there run by dedicated, creative and insightful admins (and their GMs/Staff members) who strive to achieve/maintain certain levels of quality and standards which come close to (or even surpass, in certain fields) the official UO servers. Will NW be one of those? Time will tell, but that has been the overall goal of NW development since I started working on it near the end of 1998. Yes, that was in the previous millenium - sorry that it's taking so long =)
Ok - that's all well and good, but why shouldn't you choose one of the other shards over NW, you ask? What makes NW more worthwhile to play on? We've already established that there are hundreds, if not thousands of player-run shards on the loose, and that only a fragment of those are of decent quality - but what I hope will help tip the scales our way is the Red Thread™ which will go through every part of NW; We'll try to keep every feature, every location, every quest/plot and every background story connected to eachother, creating a world where everything makes sense in connection to everything else. Having 100 unique features on a shard is nice, but unless they're built on the same principles and "fit" together according to the setting/theme of the shard - it's just a big playground with different activities.
We're not trying to simulate a medieval world with fantasy elements, we're still making a game - but we want everything in our world to make sense in context of the setting we're using. By mixing logic, reason, gameplay and pure & simple FUN we want to make a vibrant, sensible world which the players won't have a hard time figuring out how works, but which will still offer a multitude of different paths to take, options to choose between and features to play with. This, in broad terms, is what NW is/will be.
Btw, excuse me for using a (nearly) default blog-template for layout, but hopefully that will change over time as I customize it for my needs & wants.
It's a bit early in this blog to start on the heavy theory/design stuff (Fear not, there will be enough of that later), so I think I'll rather start by describing my Vision™ for Norwegian Wood - what I hope it will turn out to be when done, and why I hope players might choose this particular shard from the myriad of shards available out there.
One of the largest problems a wanna-be UO player faces when he's tired of the official UO servers and instead wants to try his luck with a player-run shard, is the huge amount of shards that exist(Here's a short list: UOGateway ShardList). True, because of that there's something for everyone out there - but it also makes it a lot harder to find a decent shard to play on, because to be frank: The majority of player-run shards are low-quality, quick-hack shards which are launched with minimal community support (Attend: Forums, ingame player-support, a decent webpage, etc) and which attract new players with revelations such as "FREE HOUSE FOR 10 FIRST PLAYERS WHO JOIN!"; Often giving away at character creation everything that the players would normally have to make a small effort for to gain from normal gameplay.
Even so, there are shards out there run by dedicated, creative and insightful admins (and their GMs/Staff members) who strive to achieve/maintain certain levels of quality and standards which come close to (or even surpass, in certain fields) the official UO servers. Will NW be one of those? Time will tell, but that has been the overall goal of NW development since I started working on it near the end of 1998. Yes, that was in the previous millenium - sorry that it's taking so long =)
Ok - that's all well and good, but why shouldn't you choose one of the other shards over NW, you ask? What makes NW more worthwhile to play on? We've already established that there are hundreds, if not thousands of player-run shards on the loose, and that only a fragment of those are of decent quality - but what I hope will help tip the scales our way is the Red Thread™ which will go through every part of NW; We'll try to keep every feature, every location, every quest/plot and every background story connected to eachother, creating a world where everything makes sense in connection to everything else. Having 100 unique features on a shard is nice, but unless they're built on the same principles and "fit" together according to the setting/theme of the shard - it's just a big playground with different activities.
We're not trying to simulate a medieval world with fantasy elements, we're still making a game - but we want everything in our world to make sense in context of the setting we're using. By mixing logic, reason, gameplay and pure & simple FUN we want to make a vibrant, sensible world which the players won't have a hard time figuring out how works, but which will still offer a multitude of different paths to take, options to choose between and features to play with. This, in broad terms, is what NW is/will be.
Btw, excuse me for using a (nearly) default blog-template for layout, but hopefully that will change over time as I customize it for my needs & wants.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
The Norwegian Wood Development Journal
So where to begin? Hm. For years I've contemplated making my own online journal - or blog if you must - of some sort, and for approxomately the same amount of time I've also neglected...
oops timeout. be back later......
*returns*
Where was I? Ah, yes: ...to keep the news page for my Ultima Online shard up-to-date, something the people who follow the development of the shard haven't been overly pleased about. So with this blog I'm hoping to take care of both issues at the same time, giving me a place both to post what's going on shard-wise, and a "diary/journal" of sorts for other tidbits I think people might find interesting. Note: I'm still considering using the idea someone posted on my forums about having a page where we list what we're working on at any given time, what remains to be done, and what is already done - but with this blog I'll try to cover our work more in-depth.
In Other News:
Why the hell is Shadowbane only for people from US/Canada? I didn't know, and downloaded a 608MB-big Trial version (10 days free gameplay) which I can use for naught. Fun? No. If someone has a valid credit card from US/Canada they don't want any longer, feel free to forward it to me. Bleh.
So where to begin? Hm. For years I've contemplated making my own online journal - or blog if you must - of some sort, and for approxomately the same amount of time I've also neglected...
oops timeout. be back later......
*returns*
Where was I? Ah, yes: ...to keep the news page for my Ultima Online shard up-to-date, something the people who follow the development of the shard haven't been overly pleased about. So with this blog I'm hoping to take care of both issues at the same time, giving me a place both to post what's going on shard-wise, and a "diary/journal" of sorts for other tidbits I think people might find interesting. Note: I'm still considering using the idea someone posted on my forums about having a page where we list what we're working on at any given time, what remains to be done, and what is already done - but with this blog I'll try to cover our work more in-depth.
In Other News:
Why the hell is Shadowbane only for people from US/Canada? I didn't know, and downloaded a 608MB-big Trial version (10 days free gameplay) which I can use for naught. Fun? No. If someone has a valid credit card from US/Canada they don't want any longer, feel free to forward it to me. Bleh.
