Developer Journals

Every week, we plan to bring you a set of journal entries from someone on the EverQuest II team. This week, we begin our series with the worlds of Emily "Domino" Taylor, a Game Designer who specifically works on tradeskills specifically in the upcoming Rise of Kunark expansion. She records her work for us.

Once the spreadsheet is complete -- which, for tailors, took well over a day's work -- then I run a perl script that reads in each line of the spreadsheet and spits out each recipe. There was an old script that my predecessor had used, but it didn't work for all recipe types so I had to modify it. I have taken only one perl training course, and that was about a year ago, so I am still pretty slow at that type of thing.

The recipe files are just created on my local machine, so I copy/paste them into the appropriate folder for that type of recipe and give them a quick look to make sure nothing too obvious is wrong. If I do spot something wrong -- which has happened quite often, even if it's a small thing like forgetting to enter the recipe level or marking something as a common when it's a rare -- then I go back to the spreadsheet, fix things up, and re-run the perl script.

For more, make the jump.

The Fury Challenge continues as does our examination of their in-game abilities. This week, we bring you Purify, Soul Flux, Bloodfire and Fist of the Cobra. All three are interesting abilites players can earn and use on their enemies in the PvPMMO out of Australia.

Read more after the click.

This week, the Darkfall developer journal series continues with a brief, but enlightening entry on recent events at Aventurine SA. This last week saw a fan - Asp of the Lords of Death guild - visit the studio and Flambouras also reveals that they now have a specific Beta date chosen. Although, he isn't yet in a sharing mood on that front.

Asp from the Lords of Death guild visited us today. He was in a neighboring country on business and he made the trip down to meet us, see what we're up to, and to hang out. We were hoping to maybe give him a small beta preview but he couldn't delay his visit until Monday for our beta build to be up again. We talked about city building, conquest, tactics, the economy, griefing, clan cities, alignment, racial balance, and a lot more. He met several of the developers and saw some of the work. We let him play our demo to get a feel for the gameplay. Asp has played pretty much every MMOG out there since Ultima Online, and his reaction really elevated our spirits, made us remember what our goal is: to hopefully blow you away. We don't get that many visitors around here so it was great meeting with him. I believe he's going to write something on his impressions when he gets back home.

Read more after the jump.

With the pot up to $2 million, the Fury Challenge is in high gear and today, we give you the insight that might help you capture some of those goods. These are four more abilities as the weekly Wednesday series gets back on track.

This week we bring you Backstab, Elemental Mirror, Stormseal and Cyclone.

Read more after the click.

The bi-weekly Darkfall developer journal series moves to a new day as we continue with our coverage of this game. Associate Producer Tasos Flambouras will continue his updates every other week in this space, but from here on out, it will be on Friday.

In this issue, he gives us a general development update.

There are a few AI issues having to do with the AI configuration which are being fixed. Some animation blending bugs have been fixed. Animation blending as in the character jumping for example involves three different animations.

We're continuing to make tools lessening the need for human interaction with the data which leads to less inconsistencies and more speed for the developers. We're making more worldbuilder tools to automate production, and server monitoring tools for statistical analysis of the data.

Read more after the click.

Fury is on the very of its $1,000,000 Fury Challenge Beta Event. This is a chance for players to take in $1,000,000 worth of prizes through pure, unadulterated PvP skill. The event also serves as the "Open Beta" for Fury in advance of its October launch.

In the 15th week, we get a couple basic Healer abilities and two neat tricks. Static Slam is the Overlord stun and Chainfire sends an arc of flames from the Destroyer to his enemies.

Read more after the click.

After a few weeks on hiatus, we're back with a brand new exclusive Darkfall developer journal. In this new issue, Tasos Flambouras brings us up to date on all that's gone on behind the scenes since he last had a chance to write.

We're working on hardware compatibility and hardware support issues. There are some minor problems with some older NVIDIA cards which are being addressed. Some Z fighting issues are also being dealt with at the moment. Z fighting is basically a graphical glitch where you get some flickering in areas where polygons meet or are placed too close together. It has to do with world building and the placement of objects.

We're building tools for ourselves to automate data integrity testing, and to report inconsistencies in the content.

Read more after the click.

In our weekly Wednesday feature, we look at four more of the hundreds of abilities players can earn in the upcoming PVP MMO Fury. Published by Gamecock and developed by Auran, Fury lets players mix and match their skills for the ultimate arena-based PvP experience.

This week, we have "Roar of the Warchief", a unique field ability that buffs the damage output of all the good guys in that area. Freezing Shot not only roots, but injures the target. Paralyze slows the enemy, doing damage. Finally, Judgment steals health from the target and any nearby enemies, then transfers it to the player and nearby friends.

Read more after the click.

Today we have a special treat directly from Electronic Arts, an exclusive developer journal focused on the new player experience in Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn. This 2007 coat of paint for the classic MMO that started the whole craze has been a while in coming and as they wind down towards its launch, they're focusing on nuts and bolts like the new player experience. Producer Aaron Cohen explains:

Want to start an argument with MMORPG designers? Bring up new player tutorials.

You'll find some folks feel passionately that these are large complex games that need a lot of teaching. They argue that if you shove players into the world with no preparation, they'll get lost, get frustrated and quit before they see all the great stuff you've spent the last one to five years building. How are they supposed to know to click there and pick up that and swing a sword like this unless you tell them?

Read more after the click.

The highlight of this week's dose of Fury abilities is the Guardian's Wrath, the elite Warden ability. This attack does large damage to all surrounding enemies, knocks them back and then simultaneously acts as a buff to nearby allies. It shows that it is not a good idea to piss off the local Warden.

The Guardian's Wrath is joined by three other abilities in our weekly four-pack. Check back next Wednesday for four more!

Read more after the click.