Chat Log: Stratics House of Commons #2 [09.21.1999]

Log file provided by Giggs and edited by DarkSoul
--PROVIDED BY ATRIARCH STRATICS--

[22:04] <poq> Greetings, and thank you for attending tonight's House of Commons.
[22:04] <poq> Tonight's chat is considered General Discussion. As such, we will accept questions of any topic relating to Atriarch.
[22:04] <poq> This evening's HoC will be moderated. In order to submit questions please /msg or /query me, DarkSoul, Jaynen, Fripp, or Sarvas.
[22:04] <poq> Please /msg different question-takers at different times, in order to balance the load and speed this process up.
[22:04] <poq> Do not msg anyone from World Fusion -- these questions will be ignored.
[22:04] <poq> Remember that World Fusion may not have the opportunity to answer all of your questions. In addition, some questions may not be answered if the Dev Team feels that it is not appropriate or that it has been better answered through some other question.
[22:05] <poq> We will post the log of this discussion shortly afterwards on Atriarch Stratics - at.stratics.com
[22:05] <poq> Today, we are fortunate enough to have with us three of the Atriarch developers:
[22:05] <poq> Serafina, the lead designer -- Arc, the chief architect -- Eng, a software engineer.
[22:05] <poq> Thanks for coming, everyone. We will now begin accepting questions.

[22:07] <Sarvas> <Enix|eating> How will Atriarch combat hacking?
[22:08] <Arc> It will be pretty difficult. The servers will not accept anything that they don't agree with. Hacking the player shell or the comm link to the server wont do any good.
[22:08] <poq> *Azrial* do you have any idea generally how long it will take to build once a person has materials and blue prints.
[22:09] <Serafina> There will be two different ways to build. First, you can do it yourself if you have the skills necessary. Second, you can hire Natives (Atriarch's term for NPC)
[22:09] <Serafina> The faster way to build will be to use Natives.
[22:10] <Serafina> The legnth is takes to build structures in the game will depend on many factors: the complexity of the structure; its function; the terrain; materials used.
[22:11] <Serafina> Just to clarify...structures will not pop into the world. They will physically be built.
[22:12] <Slay> <Iimzodar> From FAQ : 'Will I be able to own land? Yes.' In order to own something you must have enforcers to protect your right of ownership. If I own a part of land, who will enforce it?
[22:13] <Serafina> The player will have to enforce it themselves.
[22:13] <poq> *Taraturg* When building who will be hired? both NPCs and players or just one of the two?
[22:13] <Serafina> There is the concept of ownership versus possession
[22:14] <Serafina> ok...well, those two questions kinda go together, so I'll continue to answer them both... You can hire Natives to defend land, build stuctures, go on quests with you
[22:15] <Serafina> Natives can do anything a player can do. They just aren't as smart...hopefully.
[22:15] <DarkSoul> *Taraturg* How does the development team feel about pages like Dr. Twister posing cheats and third party programs to help advance a character?
[22:15] <Arc> I don't have a problem with it; it should keep us on our toes
[22:16] <Serafina> I agree. Dr. Twister came about because a game company was slow to fix bugs.
[22:16] <Serafina> I hope that we are able to respond quickly to the community and players concerns
[22:17] <poq> *Iimzodar* Will we be able to build underwater homes or cities?
[22:18] <Serafina> As much as we would love to build underwater cities and homes. I think that will have to wait for the next release. There is sooo much in there right now. We would really like to make our release date ;-)
[22:18] <Arc> If you can figure out how to survive under water, sure.
[22:18] <Serafina> You can swim, though.
[22:19] <Jaynen> *Iimzodar* Will you have limits on grouping? (ie High lvl ppl cannot group with low lvl ppl.)
[22:20] <Serafina> There will not be limits on grouping. In fact, there will not be Character levls.
[22:21] <poq> *Mitchy* The World is a large percentage Water Right? Will there be Boats? Ridable sea creatures, or other ways to explore the Oceans?
[22:21] <Serafina> Being able to adventure with friends is a huge part of why games are online in the first place....otherwise may as well play a stand alone game.
[22:22] <Arc> There will be boats and sea creatures. The game is dynamic, oceans are not some special case.
[22:23] <Arc> That's what I meant about surviving under water, you can build anywhere physically possible.
[22:24] <poq> *Enix* do u know if multiple monitors will be supported?
[22:24] <Serafina> Yes, we plan on it.
[22:24] <Jaynen> *Raze* What level of Detail goes into your character Appearance?
[22:24] <Arc> Since I am doing for my own enjoyment, you can count on it.
[22:25] <Arc> But not necessarily on every 3-D card.
[22:26] <Serafina> Atriarch support multiple levels of detail. A Character that is close in proximatey to you will be highly detailed and textured. A Character that is far away will not be.
[22:26] <Jaynen> *Eladamry* Are you planing on supporting Direct3D?
[22:27] <Arc> Not at this time, as long as the OpenGL drivers are good enough, there is no reason to support Direct3D.
[22:27] <Arc> There are some issues with several OpenGL drivers, but hopefully they will be remedied by the time we release.
[22:28] <Arc> Right now, TNT and TNT2 cards work best.
[22:28] <Serafina> We have been in contact with some of the 3D vendors to work on better Open GL drivers specifically for Atriarch
[22:28] <Arc> Since portability is important; i.e. Linux, etc. we prefer to use open, portable APIs.
[22:30] <poq> *Mitchy* Forgive me if this question has already been addressed, but will the PC Species and the Natives speak diffent languages? If Not, why not? If so, what does it take to learn a new language?
[22:30] <Serafina> All the Species on Atriarch communicate in two general ways...telepathically and verbally.
[22:31] <Serafina> The telepathy is common.
[22:31] <Serafina> The verbage will be alien. There will be different dialects.
[22:31] <Serafina> Best of all...we are planning for you to hear the alien language and voices when you type in the chat and speak to someone.
[22:32] <Serafina> on our website in a week or two, there will be a lanuage translater
[22:32] <Serafina> it will be there to give you the verbal pronounciation of an English word into ATrianese
[22:33] <Serafina> It will be used to test out various languages and get yor feedback.
[22:33] <Serafina> That was a good question, thank you Mitchy
[22:33] <Jaynen> Arc isnt OpenGL sort of dominated by 3dfx cards right now?
[22:33] <DarkSoul> <Pander> Is there an age limit on the Internship? ie, anyone under 18 eligible?
[22:34] <Serafina> Pander is referring to a job posting for a writing intern on Atriarch.
[22:34] <Arc> No, the 3dfx cards focus on MiniGL for the Quake engines, that is not full OpenGL support. So far the TNT and TNT2 cards have the best OpenGL support.
[22:34] <Jaynen> So the Geforce256 *drools* might be good choice for Atriarch?
[22:35] <Serafina> Regarding intership...We posted it this past weekend. No under 18 will be considered for legal reasons.
[22:35] <Arc> Well it depends on the drivers for OpenGL, not just the hardware.
[22:36] <poq> <Slay> My Q: According to the FAQ there will only be one server. Will there be multiple machines supporting the load?
[22:36] <Serafina> Slay...uh...it actually says one world...not one server. Arc will elaborate.
[22:37] <Arc> What the FAQ means is that there is only ONE instance of the world, no duplicates like EQ. There will be many physical servers to support the one world instance. Thank you.
[22:38] <poq> *Taraturg* How many people will Beowulf handle at a time still maintaining decent frame rates when implemented in Atriarch?
[22:39] <Arc> The servers don't handle frame rates, your own workstation will deal with that, depending on the rendering and CPU horsepower. Thank you.
[22:39] <poq> <Mitchy> Will there be ambient sound? Such as the sounds of the environment? Will there be a Non-diegetic soundtrack of Background Music? What level of detail is going into this? for example, will there be support for 5.1 Surrond sound?
[22:40] <Eng> The sound provided will depend on the hardware and the bandwidth.
[22:40] <Eng> We will detect 3D sound support and use it.
[22:40] <Arc> As a side note, Beowulf is an unbounded scalable architecture for a single server cluster. Our architecture utilizes both clustered servers to increase the horsepower of each server, as well as multiple servers. There is no upper limit, theoretically. Thank you.
[22:41] <Eng> If the bandwidth is low, you may get midi, unless you have a media CD. Otherwise, you could get MP3 or another compression.
[22:42] <Serafina> Let me translate....yes, there will be very cool sounds. If you would like a sample of the ambient sounds, ATS wil have a Windows theme using them up for download soon.
[22:43] <poq> *Enix* Will you be able to build a house then sell it, so you could make money as an architect?
[22:44] <Serafina> Absolutely! You can make money doing lots of things.
[22:44] <Serafina> For example, you can build an inn that will keep Characters safe. You can map out territory for use by those heading into war.
[22:44] <Serafina> You can have travelling caravans of "nifty and useful" items
[22:45] <Serafina> There is a lot that you will be able to build....all of it can be profitable. Thanks Enix.
[22:45] <Jaynen> *Chac* Such a large world would require massive storage. Does the world come on CD or do you downoad peaces as you go?
[22:46] <Arc> The player's machine only downloads and cache's what you need and visit. There will be some intelligent look-ahead caching, but you could never contain the entire world...its just too big.
[22:47] <Eng> also, you can configure your cache size
[22:47] <Arc> Besides, the world is constantly changing, new structures are being constructed by players, the terrain can be modified. Anything on your machine would become stale very quickly. Thanks.
[22:48] <poq> *Enix* will hardware t&l, environmental bumpmapping, or multi-resolution mesh type thing be supported?
[22:48] <Arc> Will are, and will be, taking advantage of any advanced rendering feature that is available through OpenGL standard API and extensions for certain boards.
[22:49] <Arc> If you have cool features in your 3-D card, there is a pretty good likelihood that it will get used. Thanks.
[22:49] <DarkSoul> question from me'self- Will there be any profit to being a tradesman? In many of today's games the economy and market on one side of the world is basicly the same as another city or even land mass, that somewhat defeats the adventuring merchant, braveing great danger to get his goods across the mountain range..
[22:49] <Serafina> Yes, you will be able to make a living as a tradesman.
[22:50] <Serafina> Some items, plants, soil, creatures will be indigenous to ceratain continents.
[22:50] <Serafina> A Character that takes the time to travel their special wares to another continent will be rewarded.
[22:51] <Serafina> For example, there will be items that an Eshlar uses to build perhaps a special builing, but the materials are only found on the Cavolon continent.
[22:51] <Serafina> The economy will be such that trade and exploration is rewarded...not penalized.
[22:52] <Serafina> There will be five different currencies.
[22:52] <Serafina> There will be the opporutnity for players to set up exchanges since certain currencies are only accepted on certain contienents
[22:52] <Serafina> It will make for an interesting economy. Thank you.
[22:53] <poq> <Cidmin> how will food and eating work? will I die if I don't eat?
[22:53] <Serafina> No you won't die if you don't eat, but food will play a part in the game.
[22:54] <Serafina> Food will have unique properties such as healing
[22:55] <Serafina> poison
[22:55] <Serafina> How much of an affect food will have will be tested.
[22:55] <Serafina> Thank you.
[22:55] <Jaynen> *Chac* How many players do you plan on supporting at the same time in the world?
[22:56] <Arc> There is no set limit. We will add hardware and network bandwidth to support however many want to play. Thanks.
[22:56] <Serafina> Well Chac...more than the competition ;-)
[22:56] <poq> <Cidmin> will i be allowed miltiple charicters? and if so, since it is a persistant world, could I have 1 character build my home, while another character travels the world? etc?
[22:57] <Arc> You may be able to have more than one character, but can only play one at a time. We have not yet decided what the limit of characters per user will be yet.
[22:59] <Arc> Thanks
[22:59] <poq> *Iimzodar* You talk about growing your own plants in the FAQ and I was wondering if the PC would be able to create their own type of plant (or discover ones that are not native but have been implemented in the code)?
[22:59] <Serafina> The breeding of plants is designed so that the player can create new species using a core set of plants.
[23:00] <Serafina> So yes, you will be able to make new plants that have not yet been seen. Of course, we (game designers) will add to the species as time goes on to mix things up a bit and make them interesting.
[23:00] <Serafina> thank you Iimzodar
[23:01] <poq> *Kaldaur* i had a question. if we live in a certain part of the world (i.e. mountains, coastal region, valley) will our characters slowly adapt to their environment over time like if they live in mountains become able to mvoe more efficiently there
[23:02] <Serafina> Mutations and evolution are part of the game, but not in that way.
[23:02] <Serafina> Thank you Kaldaur for your question, but this is something you'll have to wait to find out in game :-)
[23:02] <poq> *Kapatid* Q: How do you travel from one continent to another ? Portal ? Water Vehicle ? Flying Vehicle ?
[23:03] <Arc> That is also something that you will have to figure out how to do, as a character. Thanks.
[23:03] <poq> -- There are only ten more minutes remaining in tonight's HoC. If you have questions, please submit them soon - thanks! --
[23:03] <Arc> There will be a way. There are no hard boundaries, or zones in Atriana. Thanks.
[23:04] <Serafina> Cross continental travel will be most efficient using the wind tunnels.
[23:04] <Serafina> Like Arc said, other than that, you'll have to figure it out. Thanks.
[23:05] <Slay> <Dack> will you be able to manualy control the vehicals or will they be automatic?
[23:06] <Serafina> You will be able to manually control the vehicles.
[23:06] <Arc> Of course, they will be alive.
[23:06] <Serafina> And of course, this being an organic world, vehicles are mostly creatures...water creatures, air creatures, land creatures.
[23:06] <Arc> You will never have total control.
[23:07] <Serafina> So you'll have to be nice to them
[23:08] <Serafina> also...some plants in Atriarch are also creatures. lol...imagine riding walking plant
[23:08] <Serafina> Thank for your question Dack
[23:08] <Slay> <Cebu> Will there be a limit on how long you can fly on a creature before it becomes too tired to carry you? What about normal animals? will they tire faster if you work them harder? When they get used to it will the time increase?
[23:09] <Arc> Of course, the harder a creature works, the faster it will tire; especially of you. :) Thanks.
[23:09] <Serafina> uh...yes yes yes yes
[23:09] <Serafina> thank you for your question Cebu
[23:09] <poq> <Cidmin> you said that PC never leave the world, meaning that they are there when someone is off line, can a character do complex things like build citys, reasurch plants etc, while off line? or are the off line peramiters set to things such as run, hide, fight, hit a punching bag?
[23:10] <Serafina> well...unlike other games that try to prevent macroing...ATriarch encourages it
[23:10] <Serafina> Yes, that's right. Why try to stop something when you can just make it part of the game?
[23:10] <Arc> It is possible that the "offline" instructions may be quite complex. But we haven't finalized just how far yet.
[23:11] <Serafina> however
[23:11] <poq> -- 3 minutes remain for tonight's HoC --
[23:12] <Serafina> oh....well, in that case...let me interject quickly
[23:12] <Serafina> I think we overlooked something when we began. We didn't have a chance to introduce the Atriarch members who are here.
[23:13] <Serafina> Let me introduce Arc...he is Atriarch's Chief Architect
[23:13] <Arc> Hello
[23:13] <Serafina> Eng...Lead Software Engineer
[23:13] <Eng> hi
[23:13] <Serafina> and myself, Lead Game Designer
[23:14] <Serafina> I think that everyone who has been emailing us and following Atriarch have been wonderful.
[23:14] <Arc> I agree, the support is outstanding.
[23:14] <Serafina> Thank you to all of Atriarch Community. Your ideas, suggestions, concerns, and support are making Atriarch a better game.
[23:15] <Serafina> We read all of the discussion boards and take seriously what you say.
[23:15] <Arc> Atriarch will be gamer's game.
[23:16] <Arc> That everyone else will want to play too, of course.
[23:16] <Serafina> hmm... A Gamer's Game? I'll have to run that through market testing ;-)
[23:16] <Serafina> anyway, we are all fanatical gamers here and that is why we are building Atriarch...it is the game that we always wanted to play and hope everyone else will too.
[23:16] <Arc> Please excuse my pathetic online grammar.
[23:17] <Serafina> We don't really have time to answer more questions. Sorry if yours was missed. This is our first HoC and we questions were flying left and right.
[23:18] <Serafina> I hope to answer the rest of the questions at a later HoC.
[23:18] <Serafina> I will stay on after to chat with everyone in an open forum.
[23:18] <Serafina> thank you.
[23:18] <Arc> I will hang around a bit as well.
[23:18] <poq> And with that note...
[23:18] <poq> Thanks for participating in the second Atriarch House of Commons!
[23:18] <poq> Please extend your thanks to Serafina, Arc, and Eng for joining in in tonight's HoC.
[23:18] <poq> A log will be posted on Atriarch Stratics - at.stratics.com - shortly.
[23:19] <poq> Should you have unanswered questions, feel free to discuss them here in #atriarch or on the ATS forums.
[23:19] <poq> Again, thanks for participating!
[23:19] *** poq sets mode: -m
[23:19] <giggs> WOO ATRIARCH!!!!!!!