From the Developers
Welcome to our Second monthly Newsletter!
Spring is here and summer is rapidly approaching. We're gearing up for Beta release, and some time near the end of summer we'll
officially release Wraith: The Ironhorse to the general public.
In this newsletter you'll find a description of our beta process and how to sign up to participate, a report on the first official IMGDC conference,
and a highlight on Logansport, Indiana and the beginnings of the Wraith world.
We hope to see you soon as a guest or registered member of our
forums!
-The WTG Team
Beta is coming in MAY 2007!!
The Wraith Beta Process
"Beta testing" the software is the process by which a company puts unfinished and often broken software out to a limited public audience for testing
purposes. The company behind the beta typically requires participating beta testers to sign NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) to prevent them from
spreading undue or unfair influence about what sort of product they are using.
Online games, especially MMOGs, are perpetually unfinished works to greater or lesser degrees. Consequently, it is our belief that beta is about a set
of fairly specific action items that we need to address and to do so in the public space.
Larger, more established companies and groups also have sufficiently large followings and impact of their brand on the market that arguably it makes
sense to conduct a legal gag on their community to prevent or at least reduce communication. Our own community is far smaller and our overall presence
in the market is equally as impactful. Therefore, putting together a player-binding restriction doesn't make a great deal of sense. This means people
will talk about the game in their networks of friends, but they'd do that anyway. So, there will be no NDA for these reasons.
Another unusual approach to the beta process is that we will not release the title with much of anything to it. Typically in a beta process the nearly
final version of software is presented and forced upon users to interact with. In our beta process, the features we have will gradually be added into
the game. This will give us a better idea of what the baseline issues are and then we can work up from there.
The overall beta project will last over a period of four phases with an exact end date at this time unknown to us since we aren't certain yet how beta
is going to go. The project will end when a sufficient level of the core game is in place, the backend systems are done and we're ready to
roll.
Beta accounts are free! Simply sign up on the forums and we'll add an
account to the game database for you or provide instructions there on how to create your own account(s).
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Milestone 3: "Building the World" completed on 04.02.2007
MILESTONE PLANNING SUMMARY
-= PRINCIPLE CONCEPTS of M3 =-
1. Unification
2. Content Expansion
3. Rule System
-= TECHNICAL =-
From a technical end, we're looking at the last of the known, difficult things that we need to implement. We're at a good point at this
stage with the core components now being put in place: a characterselect zone, a registration feature, a login feature and a lot of code
from M1 for the character builder that will need ported over.
-= CHARACTER SELECTION =-
The best option for character select right now is to put a character into a special zone where they can build their character or
select characters in their list.
Owing to a lack in instancing technology, the consequence of doing this is that other people will
be able to see what you are doing as you build your character. The upside is that you'll be able to ask others in this space questions
or even chat with other folks in the game itself. In a way, it is like a virtual salon. The alternative option, which was forged from
much hard effort late last year, is to create a custom set of GUIs and backgrounds.
In an effort to best maximize time
that we have available, it just seems more sensible to make the character creation process occur in a zone, where animations and
environmental effects can be seen or heard. Imagine: a character select that is happening in a zone this is alive in some way and to be
able to ask other people how to build your character -- these are things that noob players will find helpful, we believe.
Then for the character creation page, it'll simply be a lot of command-to-client, command-to-server interactions. Simple. With this method
we can even put particle effects and use animation sequences.
-= GAME FEATURES=-
There are only a handful of game features that need completed. Finishing up: bank vaults, merchants, trading items and currency conversion.
-= NEW INTERIOR MODELS =-
At present, we have a great cache of models that we need to use before making any new ones --unless-- as was the case in East Logansport,
there is special need for a particular kind of building that we simply do not yet have. What we need more than models right now are custom
textures and to fix the errors on the models that we do have. Requires use of Quark, Photoshop, and 3DsMax.
-= AUDIO ASSETS =-
We have 18 zones minimally (which may grow a bit depending on time available) which require audio and music. Right now we have close to
6 gig of audio files that need converted and put into the game for SFX and music. Requires use of Audacity and ACID.
-= CONTENT ENGINEERING =-
We recently developed the Karish language, which is the Strider language. These small things like making up languages and other cultural
elements add to the overall depth of the world. We're building a world of the future, which means that while a lot of the
content has basis in reality, we have engineered and crafted entire new cultures and peoples.
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