Archive for August 2004

Atriarch Dev Update: Kinky Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - 1:09 AM [Filed by xith]

Aside from being distracted by the leaping ladies of the Olympics, Serafina Pechan mentioned this on the official Atriarch site ...but does it work?: Yes! Yet, there is still work to be done. The previous two months we have announced the implementation of our new Assess Skill, our In-Game Knowledge System, our technology's Unique Object ID System, our innovative approach to Skills and Player-designed Skills, amongst many other game features and announcements. (To briefly interject a completely unbiased and objective opinion, I think these Atriarch Game Systems really set Atriarch apart by giving a player not only a fun experience, but a unique as well! Woo Atriarch!) Anyway, this week's development update is not as glamorous as announcing a new feature. Rather, we are focused on working out the kinks in the first iterations of the systems that we have already implemented. In other words we are fixing bugs, tweaking, and multiplayerifying it. (I stand by my initial claim in a previous post that "multiplayerifying" is in fact a real term, and my goal is to spell it in a game of Scrabble someday.) Over the course of development, there will be several cycles in which we take time to focus on tweaking and fixing bugs. This is one of those cycles. Austin Game Conference: Next month, we will be attending the Austin Game Conference. If you will be there, yell "Woo Atriarch" and I'll be happy to show you a demo on my laptop. It will be easy to spot me.. I'll be the one getting a ticket from the police for vandalizing street corners with Atriarch stickers. (uh... just kidding)

Atriarch Dev Update: Kickin your Assess Thursday, August 12, 2004 - 1:09 AM [Filed by xith]

On the official Atriarch site, Serafina gave us some insight into the new Assess skill new Assess Skill added: We implemented a new Basic Skill called, Assess. This new skill is an all-purpose capability that allows characters to watch, observe and notice things about creatures and things in the world. Then the Character can use that information to their benefit in the world. We have tied the Assess Skill into Atriarch's Character Knowledge System. It basically allows a character to gain Knowledge of the target by "assessing" an object or creature or plant. The Knowledge gained may be helpful in specializing or in gaining other types of skills. In some cases, gaining Knowledge through Assessment may be required to gain access to a new skill. For example, if a player Assesses a Dubo Plant, then under the proper circumstances the character's knowledge about that Dubo Plant may increase which in turn could help the player Specialize in Dubos. Perhaps Knowledge of the Dubo is required for another skill. It is a Basic Skill that is applied and useful all over the world. (For details on Skills System, see Dev Updates for June 15th and July 13th. For details on Knowledge System, see Dev Update for July 27th.)

Atriarch Dev Update: Tweaking Thursday, August 5, 2004 - 1:09 AM [Filed by xith]

Stop looking at the windmill in the screenshot, check out this Dev Update tracking gazillions of unique objects in a single, stable, massive, seamless world: (I dare you to say that 10x fast.) Atriarch is big. And a big alien sandbox sounds like a lot of fun to me! In fact, I enjoy playing in it even during our early internal testing. On the other hand, tracking a world that combines those gazillion unique objects in a single, stable, massive, seamless world is not necessarily fun, nor a simple problem. Enter this week's update... In a world of what-you-see-is-what-you-get, it is important to track every single object. Take for example the Dubo Plant pictured in the screenshots below. Since Atriarch is a Physical World, each Dubo Plant you see is physically actually there on the planet of Atriana. That means to the engine's point of view, each Dubo Plant is unique even though they may look the same to the players. To manage this massive physical world, World Fusion designed a Unique ID System. For example, each Dubo Plant is given its own Unique ID in the engine. In fact, each crystal of each Dubo Plant is given its own Unique ID, just like everything physically present on the planet. This Unique ID system is something that we have recently refactored to handle the massive amount of objects in the world. There is still some work to be done on it, but it is working really well so far :-)

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