The band is back together - and we even have a few more members.
This summer we are hoping to make a huge push towards upgrading SoD to the Underfoot client. I am going to be very clear: This is going to take a long time. You will notice that as a theme throughout the post. If you lack the ability to be excited for a long period of time, come back in months. Unless you want to blow all your excitement now, in which case read ahead.
Here is a very abridged list of things we get in the new client:
But this will take a ton of work. We are at the very least, many months away. Still, we have made a few huge strides in the right direction, namely four things that were extremely technically difficult. Yet now with the technically difficult things in hand, we have to basically recode our entire game to be compatible with the new client. This is a HUGE undertaking, and as of now we are a team of around 8. We have 9 years of SoD history to port over.
At some point this forum will be where we ask you to post bugs you find with the new server in beta. For now, I am going to ask the rest of the SoD 3.0 team to post in this forum whenever they have a second with fun or interesting things that are happening so far with the upgrade. You will likely see a lot of me here, too, especially since I am not as robust a coder as the rest of the team and enjoy doing PR. Think of it like a blog! While I am restricting new threads, you are more than welcome to reply to the status updates or whatever else we put in here. I also hope to post requests for help on things that players can pitch in on, such as graphic work and string replacement for the new client.
I hope that this does two things: 1) Lets everyone follow our progress and be as excited as we are, and; 2) Hopefully show how much work is being put in, and thereby explain why less content related work will be going on in game.
The current team:
TLR Summary: We are upgrading to new client. This is going to take a long time. We will post cool shit on this forum, feel free to reply. Be excited.
This summer we are hoping to make a huge push towards upgrading SoD to the Underfoot client. I am going to be very clear: This is going to take a long time. You will notice that as a theme throughout the post. If you lack the ability to be excited for a long period of time, come back in months. Unless you want to blow all your excitement now, in which case read ahead.
Here is a very abridged list of things we get in the new client:
- Packetloss Bug, Poof
- Nvidea Clipping Bug, Poof
- Radeon Users get Target Rings
- Brand New UI - Smoother, Faster Running, Better in All Ways
- A TON of /cmds move into the UI. Styles become clickable Combat Abilities.
- Around 450 New Item Models. Everything from Kick Ass Lava Swords to House Building Stuff (No shit we can have you build a house if we want to).
- Around 300 new NPC Models. This includes a ton of new awesome looking models, as well as upgrades to Dragons, Rats, Bats, Skeletons and tons more.
- 150 Brand New High Definition zones for us to use.
- A really awesome atlas feature that lets you zoom around the game world in the map screen.
- The Target of your Target displays in your target window
- Leadership Abilities including Raid Leader Mob Flagging (big arrows shows up above mob), raidwide main assist, and lots more.
- Shit tons of available AAs that frankly I have no idea what we are going to do with.
- Hugely improved graphics. Shadows on everything, you can see your breath when you walk into a cold area... yeah its pretty awesome.
- Casting a portal makes... a fucking portal! That you walk through! And can see where it goes beforehand by looking into it!
- A much more robust server, less lag, less crashes, less everything you hate.
- Sounds are no longer just annoying horribleness, you can hear your friends while in combat, use emotes with voices in them, and the music is actually not terrible.
But this will take a ton of work. We are at the very least, many months away. Still, we have made a few huge strides in the right direction, namely four things that were extremely technically difficult. Yet now with the technically difficult things in hand, we have to basically recode our entire game to be compatible with the new client. This is a HUGE undertaking, and as of now we are a team of around 8. We have 9 years of SoD history to port over.
At some point this forum will be where we ask you to post bugs you find with the new server in beta. For now, I am going to ask the rest of the SoD 3.0 team to post in this forum whenever they have a second with fun or interesting things that are happening so far with the upgrade. You will likely see a lot of me here, too, especially since I am not as robust a coder as the rest of the team and enjoy doing PR. Think of it like a blog! While I am restricting new threads, you are more than welcome to reply to the status updates or whatever else we put in here. I also hope to post requests for help on things that players can pitch in on, such as graphic work and string replacement for the new client.
I hope that this does two things: 1) Lets everyone follow our progress and be as excited as we are, and; 2) Hopefully show how much work is being put in, and thereby explain why less content related work will be going on in game.
The current team:
- Slaariel - Script Converter Guru and The Only Girl Dev
- Jumbers - Nocturnal Code Dude of Great Repute, Hardware Guy and Repo Manager.
- Olive - Actually a girl. Tells Jumbers after 30 hours of being awake to go to sleep. A farmer (not a joke) and a coder.
- Taryth - New Guy - Has Big Code Chops. Laughs at Buttbot in the 3.0 channel *every time*
- KLS - New Client Expert from EqEmu! Rode to SoD on his White Horse to help us reboot 3.0. Give many thanks.
- Meyers - Will code something at some point for sure. Semi-colon expert.
- Zaela - Mistress of all things Lua.
- Buttbot - Changes what we say in the 3.0 channel into phrases with the word "Butt" in them.
- Me, Woldaff - Attempts to make up for his complete lack of applicable skills by making over excited posts to try and drum up attention.
- More to come, especially as the GM team comes aboard once a beta is in place.
TLR Summary: We are upgrading to new client. This is going to take a long time. We will post cool shit on this forum, feel free to reply. Be excited.