Last Saturday (Nov 7th) we were at the “Expo Eva 2015” indie game showcase. For the first time gamers had the opportunity to try our latest game “Little War Online”. Everyone just loved the game! you cant imagine how motivating it is for us and we will keep improving the game more than ever!
Thank you so much!
http://mobilecostudios.tumblr.com/post/132942559312/last-saturday-nov-7th-we-were-at-the-expo-eva
Last week, we reported that The Repopulation had suffered a patch delay as a result of contract and financial renegotiation on the part of Hero Engine. While Above & Beyond was reluctant to discuss the matter in depth due to confidentiality agreements, studio co-owner Joshua Halls did say that the team was “blindsided” and was working with Hero Engine to “minimize its impact.”
This weekend, Hero Engine owner Idea Fabrik PLC gave more information on its internal problems. As the company’s chairman explained to its community, it’s about money.
As some of you have learned already, we are facing difficult times at Idea Fabrik PLC. Because of outside 3rd party related issues, we may be facing some down time to all our HeroEngine and HeroCloud services.
Though we are confident that Idea Fabrik is not going out of business and the HeroEngine and HeroCloud services will be restored, the issues we face right now mean a possible black out (or interruption) of all services. This will include all HeroBlade services as well as all web services.
It has been speculated that funding is the primary issue. And this is partially true. Due to forces outside of the company, at this time we are legally and morally bound in what information we are able to give regarding the causes. However I can say that it does not involve any of our middleware partners.
We are working hard to prevent any outages, however, if one does occur, rest assured that we will work twice as hard to get all survives back up and running.
Idea Fabrik PLC is a public company that relies on third party financing. We are currently in negotiations to secure our funding for the present and the future. This however does take time, and sadly, could result in a possible downtime of services. Since we were not given adequate time to make any adjustments, we are working very hard towards this goal.
While I realize this information may seem vague, we sincerely apologize for not being able to say more at this time. Please rest assured that we are doing everything to either prevent this or make it as painless and short as possible.
In response, Josh Halls cautioned Repopulation players that a game service blackout may occur and said that “there is a very real danger of downtime at this point.”
If there is an interruption of service this will impact us as well (as already seen by the new account issue that resulted in suspension of sales). We cannot comment much further on the situation at this time beyond what has been made public.
A&B’s J.C. Smith admitted the studio is in a “holding pattern“:
Best case scenario, we’re just looking at a patch delay for them to get things back up to speed. Other scenarios could involve downtime and legal battles, or Hero Engine being bought by another company. Until we allow the situation to play out on their end, will be hard for us to provide a real update. At this point, similar to the community, we’re in a holding pattern waiting to see what will happen.
Players have speculated that The Repopulation makes use of Hero Engine’s HeroCloud service, which may go offline during the negotiations. As of the time of this writing, however, the servers are still up and the devs are still waiting to push out patch 15.10.1. And there’s probably no reason to panic about the ultimate fate of the game. Smith offered this reassurance:
In the event that the worst case scenario does happen, we still have outs.
http://massivelyop.com/2015/11/06/black-deserts-north-american-website-and-forums-launch/
Black Desert’s English-language website has just gone live. It’s a bit bare right now, though Daum is hyping videos from Paris Games Week.
The site includes user registration and newsletter signups, but official forums have been slightly delayed. On Reddit, Daum CMs told players,
There is always that last minute bug. I see our devs are working hard to bring back the new forums online. If they manage to rapidly squish the bug, I’ll high five them for you! I’ll post again here once I have an update about the forums.
As you can imagine, there has been much going on in the past four weeks here at the Sandbox offices. We found the time to sit down with our Art Director Marcus Koch and Game Director Robin Henkys to give us a little update what their respective departments have been working on in the past weeks to bring us smoothly into the Closed Beta.
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Our Game Director Robin Henkys joined Sandbox Interactive in March 2014. Previously he was with Bigpoint, where he was the Lead Game Designer for Drakensang Online. Before that, he was Lead Level Designer for Radon Labs‘ Drakensang series. |
Before we delve into all the new things we can actually show off, let’s mention that there has been a lot of work put into the technical side of things. We have put much work into improving the performance of the game, and particularly into some of the animation handling – that should feel much more balanced.
With all the feedback from the Summer Alpha, we have worked on rebalancing certain aspects of the economy. We had a good look at the statistics and where we wanted to go and implemented some changes. The biggest of which is the complete removal of crafting costs in clusters to have a stronger focus on actual resources rather than silver. Along with this comes a rebate on resources used when crafting in clusters.
Our farming and consumable system has also been rebalanced. In our Closed Beta, the need to re-buy seeds after a successful growth cycle has been removed. You will always get a new one after harvesting your crops. With the removal of Silver from anything but the initial seed-purchase, the value of crops, and thus the consumables, is based solely on yield and time needed to grow them.
With the inclusion of the new armor types and all the other changes made to the skills, we needed to overhaul our Destiny Board as well. While we were at it, we made sure to make it more compact, readable and understandable.
We have finished working on the Land Auction System. This is a new system in which you will have to compete in auctions for city plots against other players which brings a touch of economic PvP into the game.
After the feedback on our Summer Alpha – and with the new possibilities our larger development team has opened up for us, we naturally wanted to take a good look at the core of our game again – the combat. We have introduced a new weapon, the Quarterstaff, and revamped abilities and spells on all other weapons. While at it, we also reworked some of the animations and sounds, to make combat an even better and exciting experience.
| Marcus Koch is the Art Director for Albion Online. He has been with Sandbox Interactive from the very beginning and is responsible for Albion Online’s unique art style. At 38, Marcus already has 20 years of experience in the areas of game-, cartoon movie-, and comic-art in 2D as well as 3D. |  |
In the art department, we’ve been busy producing the graphical assets needed for all the great new features we have in our pipeline for the start of our Closed Beta.
First and foremost, the new login screen has been finalized and animated to introduce your character into the world of Albion. A cozy camp fire, leaves moving in the wind, flying birds and drifting clouds, just to name a few.
With the introduction of the Laborers came the need for new characters and their visual outfit – as well as the introduction of new icons for journals and trophies.
Icons have been a large task in this past month in general. With the complete overhaul of our combat system, we introduced a vast number of new spells – which, in turn, often needed new icons. And with the new armor system, all the new sub-types need visual representation as well.
Discuss the State of the Game on our forums
Additionally, we have collected questions from our community again and want to answer at least a few of them:
FlufferPope – Will both the old continent and the new continent be accessible content in the beta at game start?
With the increase of player numbers we will see in the Closed Beta, there was the need for additional lands to conquer. Explorers have been, well, exploring, and discovered an additional continent. It’s comparable in size to the old one, and ship routes between those two continents have already been established. New colonists will end up on one of the two continents.
Luci – Are there going to be changes in the way resistance is applied to the armor pieces?
As you might know, in the Summer Alpha it was possible to have armor combinations that gave you an overpowered amount of resistances. We changed this so that now only the chest piece of your armor determines your resistances. This comes in conjunction with the new armor system that introduces Light, Medium and Heavy variations of each armor material – also bringing way more variation when it comes to armor abilities.
Splinter – Will there be new abilities added to the new armor sub types to allow for more varied builds or will it be the same as before and will the armor differences only be about resistances ?
The combat system and the items have been entirely overhauled and reworked and you should see characteristic abilities for each armor sub-type, as well as a vast array of new ones. For example we have now a total of nine helmet abilities, compared to three in the previous Summer Alpha. Thus more and entirely new combinations are possible.
Grimfest – With the recent changes to silver and its uses, can you give us some more detail as to what silver is now used for?
With the rework of the economy, Silver is now mainly used for repairs, upgrades of your Private Islands, transmutations, usage fees for crafting stations, land auctions and reforging. And, of course, to buy items from the market.
HCN – Are we going to have the client fully translated for the CBT?
Yiss! The client will be available in English, German, French, Russian, Brazilian-Portuguese, Polish and Spanish. It might not be right from day 1 of the Closed Beta, but it will definitely happen.
http://massivelyop.com/2015/11/04/eve-tweaks-its-scanner-interface-and-solar-system-map/
EVE Online launched its Parallax update this week, but CCP isn’t done disseminating information. The firm’s latest dev blog covers improvements made to the sci-fi sandbox’s probe scanner interface, the solar system map, and the directional scanner, so it’s probably worth reading if you’re one of those galactic explorer types.
The probe scanner interface “retains its former functionality,” but some things have been moved around to bring it up to par with EVE’s “UI modernization efforts.” The solar system window, on the other hand, has been decoupled from the star map and now shows up in its own window. CCP says it will become easier to access once “the feature leaves beta.”