Monthly Development Update - Oct 1st 2012

[Vurtuoso]

Hopefully Funcom will release another failure game, then I will be able to buy 50% the company's shares from my monthly salary. I'll kick out everyone except the AO team if they try to cover the losses of those games from AO!

Will you then have them model a statue of you in borealis?

[Mastablasta]

You should have merged the servers years ago when I said so .
You are doing that for those same reasons now: AO does not work with a low population.

Ideally, separate AO from FC, financially and decisionally.
It should not pay for problems on other projects... that is how you end up with nothing working and a couple smiling and overpaid fat cats. And, in the words of Tatcher: we want our money back... reinvested in ao.

Now, for the few remaining bucks the ao team is allotted by those people:
- focus on getting the engine out. I see you are playing with new rig points. I love them, I really do, but we now got a new deadline of 6 months or more... that is the same deadline we received about 10 times now. Get it out. What is important is for the game to use the gpu. You can paint it pretty after. But people will believe in the game again. And it will be less laggy and some stuff you already have will make it prettier already. If it's going to steam soonish, it needs gpu.
- 2 clients? Really? Scrap that. 2-4 developers shouldn't be maintaining 2 clients. Eniac belongs in a museum.
- lower the mensualities or reinvest highly in ao. Could be as simple as no money for fc for a year.
There is no reason to pay such mensualities for such a small team, however dedicated and competent they are.

NB: I know, I write like I believe to be an expert in finances, management and so on... which ofc I'm not .

schloops <3

[Divalicious]

Steam is FC saving grace for AO. If they get it wrong everything they did would be a fall. Steam has lots of potential for any game developer company if done right. I wonder when the alpha is out when would the beta then the final be out. There only 2 months left before end of year. Hope there are no vacations and AO team works hard on this.


" Come on Ole Schreiner make me believe in FC" I want to bump into you at PAX or GDC or at E3 Expo and shake your hand and say a BIG Thank you

AO on steam. I love that idea. It could be something big.
This producer is a badass, i love his updates
Make it WORK.

[Mastablasta]

Pretty sure Ole Schreiner has nothing to do with it, and as CEO he doesn't show up at consumer conferences

[Onkelolsen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYE8b...eature=related

Sing - singaling ding,,- sikken en lang tung ting... ;D - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bafjJcCM9_c

[Harios]

You should have merged the servers years ago when I said so .
You are doing that for those same reasons now: AO does not work with a low population.

Ideally, separate AO from FC, financially and decisionally.
It should not pay for problems on other projects... that is how you end up with nothing working and a couple smiling and overpaid fat cats. And, in the words of Tatcher: we want our money back... reinvested in ao.

Now, for the few remaining bucks the ao team is allotted by those people:
- focus on getting the engine out. I see you are playing with new rig points. I love them, I really do, but we now got a new deadline of 6 months or more... that is the same deadline we received about 10 times now. Get it out. What is important is for the game to use the gpu. You can paint it pretty after. But people will believe in the game again. And it will be less laggy and some stuff you already have will make it prettier already. If it's going to steam soonish, it needs gpu.
- 2 clients? Really? Scrap that. 2-4 developers shouldn't be maintaining 2 clients. Eniac belongs in a museum.
- lower the mensualities or reinvest highly in ao. Could be as simple as no money for fc for a year.
There is no reason to pay such mensualities for such a small team, however dedicated and competent they are.

NB: I know, I write like I believe to be an expert in finances, management and so on... which ofc I'm not .

Halleluja!

[schloops]

Thx Mastablasta and Harios. That is quite an endorsement for my lil posting, thx .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UncdysBv-U

[Cogline]

Love the new update format. Very clear as to what's going on. As to the planned Steam launch: better start putting more ads for AO-Universe on billboards so the screaming masses know where to look stuff up...

[mishikato]

Could I also please ask that you stop neglecting the AO's front page? From a new player's perscpective who knows nothing of the forum it must really look like this game is dead and not worth pursing when the last posted update is from August. Even if it's just a link to a post in the forum. ANY recent activity would give it a more livelier appearance.

[Gunfytr]

Could I also please ask that you stop neglecting the AO's front page? From a new player's perscpective who knows nothing of the forum it must really look like this game is dead and not worth pursing when the last posted update is from August. Even if it's just a link to a post in the forum. ANY recent activity would give it a more livelier appearance.

August? Of THIS year?? I'll call that a win....

[ByLogic]

You should have merged the servers years ago when I said so .
You are doing that for those same reasons now: AO does not work with a low population.

Ideally, separate AO from FC, financially and decisionally.
It should not pay for problems on other projects... that is how you end up with nothing working and a couple smiling and overpaid fat cats. And, in the words of Tatcher: we want our money back... reinvested in ao.

Now, for the few remaining bucks the ao team is allotted by those people:
- focus on getting the engine out. I see you are playing with new rig points. I love them, I really do, but we now got a new deadline of 6 months or more... that is the same deadline we received about 10 times now. Get it out. What is important is for the game to use the gpu. You can paint it pretty after. But people will believe in the game again. And it will be less laggy and some stuff you already have will make it prettier already. If it's going to steam soonish, it needs gpu.
- 2 clients? Really? Scrap that. 2-4 developers shouldn't be maintaining 2 clients. Eniac belongs in a museum.
- lower the mensualities or reinvest highly in ao. Could be as simple as no money for fc for a year.
There is no reason to pay such mensualities for such a small team, however dedicated and competent they are.

NB: I know, I write like I believe to be an expert in finances, management and so on... which ofc I'm not .

Bump.. Every thing you said is correct! I see no reason to have 2 clients, its just a time sink, nobody would care about the old client if the new client is working like it suppose to with option to lower rendring technics.

And another thing, if you get the engine out do some marketing you might not need to merge server due to returning players and new players.
Anachy Online is one of the best mmorpg where things you do have a meaning and reward.

[Ilaliya]

Could I also please ask that you stop neglecting the AO's front page? From a new player's perscpective who knows nothing of the forum it must really look like this game is dead and not worth pursing when the last posted update is from August. Even if it's just a link to a post in the forum. ANY recent activity would give it a more livelier appearance.

I wouldn't call the front page neglected The last post on the front page was from the screenshot competition, which just happened in August. I debated putting up a post every month linking to the letter, but I thought it would seem like shameless self-promotion. In any event... we'll have a new post up there for Halloween.

[Ilaliya]

Bump.. Every thing you said is correct! I see no reason to have 2 clients, its just a time sink, nobody would care about the old client if the new client is working like it suppose to with option to lower rendring technics.

We're planning side-by-side support for the existing client alongside the new client for a transitional period only. But trust me when I say you don't want us to just flip the switch one day with no fallback. AO's playerbase as a whole is on some seriously diverse and different hardware -- it spans probably a good 12 years and every variety of CPU/graphics card imaginable! It's not possible to catch every crash/severe render bug out of the gate.

[ByLogic]

If you guys need help on new webpage design or even a system (i see the current one is made in cgi ) and outdated html / css and very simple. I be glad to help for free. PM me if interested.

[Tanisthonus]

I wouldn't call the front page neglected The last post on the front page was from the screenshot competition, which just happened in August. I debated putting up a post every month linking to the letter, but I thought it would seem like shameless self-promotion. In any event... we'll have a new post up there for Halloween.

If you don't want to shamelessly promote your own posts, tell someone else on the team to update it. Monthly dev updates are exactly the kind of thing that belong on a front page.

[ByLogic]

We're planning side-by-side support for the existing client alongside the new client for a transitional period only. But trust me when I say you don't want us to just flip the switch one day with no fallback. AO's playerbase as a whole is on some seriously diverse and different hardware -- it spans probably a good 12 years and every variety of CPU/graphics card imaginable! It's not possible to catch every crash/severe render bug out of the gate.

Yeah i understand that Italya, i know AO is one big beast, its good to know that the backup client is only for the transitional period , because i can see many issue by supporting 2 clients in the long run. I am sure you can see this with your new world builder tool also.

Bump any ways for all the work you guys doing now with smaller team.

[Lazy]

We're planning side-by-side support for the existing client alongside the new client for a transitional period only. But trust me when I say you don't want us to just flip the switch one day with no fallback. AO's playerbase as a whole is on some seriously diverse and different hardware -- it spans probably a good 12 years and every variety of CPU/graphics card imaginable! It's not possible to catch every crash/severe render bug out of the gate.

it'll be fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. what could possibly go wrong!

[Gimpeline]

I wouldn't call the front page neglected The last post on the front page was from the screenshot competition, which just happened in August. I debated putting up a post every month linking to the letter, but I thought it would seem like shameless self-promotion. In any event... we'll have a new post up there for Halloween.

Mabye update the featured content too or remove it. Last post there is from 2007.
And the coming soon page is empty.

[Lazy]

And the coming soon page is empty.

confirmed: new engine is not coming soon.

[Lheann]

it'll be fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. what could possibly go wrong!

Hmm lets speculate how wrong it could go:

Option 1: You load AO with the new client and all your toons get reset to level 1.

Option 2: All your credits get removed. FC secret method of fixing the economy comes to light.

Option 3: You can no longer PVP because the new client does not report gas levels as lower than 75% anywhere.

Option 4: You find out the new client is actually TSW and all your toons are converted and there is no way back to AO.

Option 5: Same as Option 4 but it is AoC vice TSW.

Option 6: New client turns out to be a text based version of AO in which uber leet speak is the only recognized vocab. I know we already have this it is called the forums.

Option 7: New client releases and works without errors from the get go. FC is praised for the smoothest client upgrade transition in MMO history resulting in a flood of new users to AO in such vastness that the new single server melts down and FC finds out all those back ups they made are bad. Thus ending AO forever. The dev team sits around the burning server and sing "kum by yah" while drink cheap beer.

Option 8: New client releases and works without errors from the get go. FC is praised for the awesomeness that is AO now and the flood gates of new users is opened. Macrosun and Vhab are called in at 3 AM one morning to figure out how to fix the 4 tera-byte limit of the database as the flood of new users has overwhelmed it with data. Macrosun looses it after remembering the mess the 2 giga byte limit was and gives rat poison to the gerbil on the wheel keeping the servers up. Vhab stands quietly by holding a lit candle in memory of the gerbil. Thus AO comes to a fitting end and FC is praised by PETA for ending the suffering of the poor gerbil.

So while this was all humor there are all kinds of possiblities that can happen when mucking with something as big as the client. Though I do have faith in the team, I have been there as systems engineer/software lead when we changed the entire GUI out on a system. And from that experience I think we need to send them all comfort food and caffeine drinks. They gonna need it.