Open beta will commence at 7 pm server time which you can see on the home page. We will have a download web page available on the website for you with instructions to download the game. So see you in 7 hours!
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Islands Of War Developers Blog
This Blog will be introducing you to the upcoming game called Islands Of War which is being developed by Neojac Entertainment. With developer notes posted here bi-weekly you will be kept up to date on its progress.
Contributor: Sooms
We have final got to the stage where we can show you how the Builders Club will be working. We have been working our bones of to the bone where some people might even thing we are the walking UN-dead to get this out as fast as possible with a 4 man team. SO here is a video showing all the tools which will allow you the player to create pretty much any type of island you can possibly think of.
Neojac Entertainment, a game development company based in Calgary, Alberta has just announced the release of their new Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) Building Platform known as Atavism Online.
The platform is designed to open up the world of online story telling to everyone regardless of programming knowledge or artistic ability. "We want to see everyone both young and old, artist, programmer, or layperson, design and build their own online world" says Andrew Harrison, the Lead Programmer at Neojac.
The Atavism Online solution provides users with Server, Client and World Building tools that allow users to create an online world and accompanying storyline faster than ever before. The solution provides multiple options for users based on how much control they want over their world. Those who have no experience in game development will be able to log straight into a world of their choosing and customize it by placing trees, buildings and non-player characters (NPC's) with ease. With this customization control, users can design quests and stories for other players to explore and interact with and use player’s feedback to modify their world designs. Others who have more experience will be able to setup their own server and have greater control over the game-play experience.
The platform is being built as part of an online community known as the Builder’s Club. The Builder’s Club provides members with not only the Atavism Online
Platform, but a market place where members can buy and sell assets for use in the worlds they are building.
Islands of War, the flagship MMO title of Neojac Entertainment is also being built on Atavism Online. "We wanted to demonstrate that a high quality MMO can be
built on Atavism Online before we let others use the technology" says Jacques, Rossouw, CEO of Neojac Entertainment. Atavism Online and Islands of War are set to be released together in the Fall of 2011.
We have finally come to the point where we can invite everyone to play Islands Of War. Our Open Beta has started and we have had a lot of excellent feedback already on our forum on how we can make this game reach its fullest potential. We can’t wait for more people to give us feedback as this game is being developed with total co-operation between players and developers. With our Open Beta we have only released the starter area called Stonecutter Cove, with the human race. As players have been playing we have found our Hybrid system works well giving players the ability to customize their characters with 4 different Elemental Aspects to choose from each with their own abilities associated with them. The game is still at its early stages of open beta and you can be sure we have planed some nice updates that will be coming very soon. So if you want to say one day that you where there at the beginning of Islands Of War, go to www.islandsofwar.com/media_page_beta.html and start playing now!
Hey, my name is Andrew and I am the technical guy here at Neojac. I spend my time writing both server and client side code along with making sure the servers are running and testing the game. Needless to say, there is always a lot on my to-do list.
Anyway, being the technical guy, I was assigned the task of writing this blog about the technical aspects of the game. I mulled over numerous ideas on what to write, and while I could try to be super cool and write about some ultra fantastic new feature in our game I thought it would be unfair given that the new features will not be added for quite a while (what's that? an MMO developer being honest?!).
Now, the first phase of the closed beta for Islands of War has had its focus on combat and quests. While we aren't doing anything super spectacular with either of those at this current stage I still feel our combat system is rather impressive for an indie MMO. So, for the remainder of this blog I will go over our combat system explaining some of the basic ideas of how a combat system in a typical fantasy MMORPG works and showing some of the features I have coded in.
How Does a Combat System work in a typical fantasy MMORPG?
The main feature of these kinds of combat systems is abilities. Whether it be casting a fireball at some skeleton, healing your ally, or even performing an auto attack on a boar, you are using an ability.
An ability has two parts: the ability check, which determines whether or not the ability goes off, and the effects applied to the target and/or caster. The ability check phase will run a series of checks such as: is the target in range, is the target alive, does the caster have enough energy. If the ability check is successful it will then, depending on the ability type, check to see if the ability was a hit, a miss, or if it was dodged/parried etc.
So far I have coded in fourteen different checks and that number keeps growing. There is a lot of different things you have to check when it comes to combat. I have also currently settled on four different ability types: Physical Attacks, Magical Attacks, Debuff Effects and Buff (Friendly) Effects. Each one has slightly different calculations involved when it comes to calculating whether or not the ability is successful.
The ability check phase is fairly basic, but the effects phase is much more complex and interesting. When an ability completes the check phase it will then apply any number of effects to both the target and the caster. An effect causes some change to your character. It may reduce their health, increase their health, lower or boost up a stat, alter some player property, or even just sit there so future abilities will be altered.
As mentioned above, I have set up our effect application code so when you are creating an ability you can add any number of effects and specify whether that effect is applied to the target or the caster. Lets take the "Wild Throw" ability as an example. This water-based thrown weapons skill has two effects applied upon it's completion: a damage effect to the target, reducing the targets health and a debuff effect applied to the caster, reducing their accuracy for a very short duration. There are countless possibilities with this setup, allowing any combination of effects to be applied from a single ability.
There are also many other features coded in such as "Result Effects". Whenever an ability is completed a result effect is automatically applied to both the caster and the target so that reaction abilities can be used. As an example, if an enemy was to swing their axe at you and you parried, a parried effect is applied to both you and the attacker for a duration of 5 seconds. If you then had some counter ability that required a parry you could now use it.
Effects can also stack, allowing numerous of the same effect to be applied, creating a stronger effect. Or you can use an effect to alter a players reputation with a faction, perhaps making them friendly with some wolves for a while. As one final example (I could go on all day about the possibilities) you can use an effect to improve another ability. One ability may place a dormant effect on the target for say, 10 seconds, and upon using a certain second ability the dormant effect will be consumed, increasing the damage of the effect from this second ability.
So, as you should be able to see, the combat system for Islands of War, while being somewhat traditional, still has a lot of potential and flexibility. Hopefully this write up on the combat system will help you appreciate and enjoy our combat that much more. I am happy to answer any questions people may have about our combat system so don't hesitate to reply below.
Welcome to the second installment of the Islands of War blog. I'm Kareal, the Lead Designer here at NeoJac, my day job is at a large IT company doing Quality Assurance. This project has been in production a long time, I joined the team in February of last year and it was already well underway. Upon joining the team I have been responsible for class, ability and item design as well as many game systems like questing and factions.
I know from the previous blog there were several questions about money and things. I will say right off, I'm not going to be talking about that, I'm not the money person. My goal is to make a game so awesome that it doesn't matter how much it costs you want to play anyway.
Today’s blog will be about the class design, we have 6 classes which we call Affinities because they are not as restrictive as classes. Each player will get to choose between 24 skills to maintain 4 skills at an equal level to their character level, 4 of these 24 skills will have an affinity bonus when purchasing them. Note I said equal level to character level, if a character chooses they could decide to only use 3 skills and have them higher than their character level at an increased point cost. If a character picks all 4 of their affinity skills then they fit neatly into the following class descriptions(for more details go here islandsofwar.com/character_page.html
Earth - Dual Wield tank, uses hammers and group enhancement abilities with heavy armor.
Water - Two-handed Sword fighter, uses poisons and healing medicines with medium armor.
Air - Spellcaster, uses snaring wind attacks and large area-effect spells.
Fire - Dual Wield fighter, uses swords, daggers and speed with light armor.
Life - Healer, uses a staff, life transfer abilities and animal pets.
Death - Rifleman, uses a rifle, engineering skills and undead pets with medium armor.
Each class has unique roles to bring to a group as well as being a capable melee fighter. However when viewed more loosely a Fire affinity could give up some speed for poisons or a Life affinity could take the undead pets or an Air affinity could take the Two-handed Sword. Many of the skills within an affinity are designed to complement each other there are many combinations to tailor your character to exactly your play style.
Hi and welcome to Islands Of War blog. My name is Jacques Rossouw and I’m the Project Lead for the upcoming game developed by Neojac Entertainment. My experience is in the graphic and marketing side with over 15 years under my belt but nothing in the game industry. Neojac entertainment consist of a few indie developers that are actually just players like you who decided to develop a game on the Multiverse platform.
As many of us would love to develop our own MMO game but lack the funding or experience to work for a company that has funding, it has always just stayed a dream until now. The Multiverse platform have given indie developers like us a chance to make that dream come true. The platform is free to use and only when you start making money from something developed on it , they take a percentage royalty from it.
With allot of hard work from us we are finally at the brink of saying we did it. Many of the team members that is working on the project has day time jobs and thus work up to 16 hour days combining the day job and the time spend to develop Islands Of War. Up to now the only fruits of our labor is seeing players who is playing the game enjoying it.
Islands Of War is currently in closed beta testing and like any other game we have been having our fair share of bugs popping up everywhere, luckily we have the right armor and weapons equipped to counter and destroy them. The closed beta testing is moving ahead very nice and we are inviting more and more registered players into the world on a weekly basis.
You can visit us at www.islandsofwar.com
Well that’s it for now, till our next blog release.
Jacques
