Like a Phoenix

Its been almost 10 months since the last post. Sadly we fell off track. Taps went off for his engineering; I doubt on the amount of work from him. Akshay and myself went busy in trying to sort out the mess in our personal lives.

The past 10 months has been a roller-coster ride for me personaly, A shift from a not-so-doing-well tourism company to "technical support" for mobile devices in the UK to "database operations (sybase), scripting (in unix), front-middle-and-back end application support, application testing and maintainance and dealing with requests pertaining to financial instruments" at the worlds largest asset manager in less than 6 months has been taxing both physically and mentally.

Now that I have a steady job that I enjoy and that supports me to do what I want. Free time to do things I enjoy and love; I think I'm all set to get in the grove and speed things up on the game front.

Its just awesome to work in an environment that allows me to apply my technical know-how and "economics and business management education" at the same time. The learning of networking, data and file security and storage, transfer of information on a single platform over a wide range of operating systems - globally :- And on the job :) is sure to be of help in the building up of the basic game architecture. And to top it all, being out there working in the midst of wall street firms in todays volatile environment has surely helped me understand the working of the finance industry and global economics which I'm sure will be of great use later on in integrating the game economy with the real world.

I aim to have a pre-alpha version ready in 4 years time (by September 1, 2015) that includes a game world, character interaction i.e. chat and trade, a combat system - PvP and PvE and basic skills in place. And maybe integrate it with the real world economy by 2017 - Second Life and Entropia Universe have a successful model so we'll need to study those. It would be even more fascinating if we manage to get the currency strong enough to match the GBP( as per today's standards: Stronger than the dollar, euro and yuan) - That would be my education put to good use.

My aim is not to make a game for earning money - as long as the game pays for itself, I'm happy.

Looks like the side project that I've been working on is bringing out the writer in me...lol. I'll get a few more concept art and literature ready in the meanwhile and leave this post to rest.

PS: Don't mind the typos as I've been working for like 9+ hrs and haven't slept properly in the last 2 days.

Some progress and a List of 100

First of all, as posted in my personal blog Conundrum I was finally relieved of my duties at my job & now I'm a free man. No longer a Nine to Five Zombie \o/

Now, onto serious business.

Yesterday Aditya came over & we(he) tried a List of 100 approach to get his ideas for the game out.
After a brief struggle, which included handing me the pen & notebook after 14 entries saying "here, now your turn", he finally came up a 100 ideas. After that I sat down with him & chalked off quiet a few of them, accepting the ones that we had already discussed, while he sat there looking exasperated, but accepting my superior logic.

Next its my turn to make a List of 100, but its a more difficult one - Skills & Sub-skills :O

Will write about it when done.

A New Look

Updated the blog with a new background and theme.
-Opeious

Finally some progress

With the change of genre, we have actually started to make progress. Before that we were running around in circles, shooting down each others ideas. But now, we finally seem to be on the same page. The concept design has taken off & we know exactly what we want to make. If executed properly, it would give the other top MMORPGs a run for their money.
Now we have to start working on the game. One point of contention is what 3D engine to use. We have narrowed it down to 2 engines - OGRE3D and Panda3D.
Anyone who wants to weigh in on the Ogre vs Panda issue, please feel free to comment.

On a side note, I have a personal blog now - http://blog.justarandomguy.com \o/ *Shameless self promotion*

Development on the Sci-Fi Concept.

As Akshay said, Medieval MMORPGs have been done to death, so we again did some brainstorming. And we finally agreed on one topic - for a change. It will be based in the future in a Sci-Fi kind of a setting.

Can't divulge out much details. but it will be huge - on a scale never attempted before. Our aim is also to develop a self-sustainable economy based on the current world economic principles - which with time will be integrated with the real world economy. It would be possible to earn ones living through the game economy. {My Degree in economics will not go to waste :)} - implementing that is a big challenge. Looking forward to it.

One good thing is that since the basic background is clear, we are now free to go haywire on the designing and coding. After almost 3-4 years I picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper and went on to designing some architecture for the world. Here is something I came up with.

For someone who has a personal inclination towards medieval architecture and palaces and castles, thinking in terms of sci-fi & minimalistic & futuristic was a bit time-consuming (I was pulling my hairs out). Will fit this somewhere in the game. Time to give it life and build it in 3d. Blender, here I come.

-Aditya

Change of Genre

Okay, so Adi & I were talking about the game, discussing the game play, game universe & how we wanted to look & feel like. Somehow during the discussion we came to an agreement that a Sci Fi MMORPG would be better to make cuz Medieval world based mmorpg's have been done to death.
The universe we discussed is similar to the universe portrayed in Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga and Void Trilogy.
I don't think such a game exists. If it does, please leave a comment with a link, we'd love to check it out. Anyways this decision provide for a lot of possibilities in terms of game play but will also make making the game more challenging, specially in terms of the graphics & visual, but its a challenge we will gladly take on.

-Akshay

What did I get into! /o\

Though we(me, Aditya & Tapan) decided to make a MMORPG in August, Aditya has been talking about making an MMORPG for 2 years and I resigned from my job to start working as a independent web developer & have more time to start working on Project X, the enormity of this whole endeavor has just hit me.
Earlier, Project X was just an idea, a dream & I've had tonnes of those and all of those remained just ideas, nothing more. Just a few months ago I was a lazy college student who cut classes even though he had just 2 days of college a week(last semester ftw!). Now I am starting my own company.
Its surreal. Its also scary & I have a lot(& probably the most) to lose if this goes bust.
But successes of independent game designers, like Radu Privantu who made Eternal Lands, a free MMORPG, Evan Blaster, whose game Infinite Blank" is one of the most interesting ideas I've seen and many other independent game devs, give me the belief that we can pull this off.
Okay, enough rumination gotta get to work. Here's to Project X, hope it attains the same success as Station X(Bletchley Park) did :D

-Akshay

PS - Aditya didn't vote for a sci fi game, he voted for a contemporary game -.-