Shards Online

[Satellitemind]

http://mmos.com/editorials/interview-wi ... rds-online Lots of good information here

[Satellitemind]

https://www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/v/54007465
March community roundtable showing off more of the Catacombs + new weapons/armor

[Satellitemind]

https://www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/v/65111489
Some GREAT news in this roundtable; sometime after the initial alpha release the developers will release a basic toolset which will allow players to begin building their worlds to give folks a head start even though being actually able to host them will come down the line later as part of the introduction of custom assets. Other things shown off include moddable collision, second floor of the catacombs map and a preview of a new GM view mode.

[Satellitemind]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =694714097
Shards Online has now launched its Steam Greenlight campaign with an amazing trailer, if you have an account please consider voting. For those of you who do not like STEAM not to worry Shards wont require it to play. Also, a video was released of one of the player run server's custom systems to show what is doable with modding right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... qeGC_EsSC8

[Satellitemind]

Shards Online is having an alpha preview this upcoming weekend, if you are interested in trying the game for free to see where it's at in its current state click the newsletter sign up link here http://shardsonline.com/newsletter-signup/ or email contact@citadelstudios.net

[Satellitemind]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5uiOpLJaw0 Latest community roundtable

[Sab1]

I've done a little bit of Lua scripting at work.

However, as a rule of thumb, getting 100 lines of code to production quality (bug free etc) is around 6 hours' work.

So you're looking at something like 12,000 hours of work that has gone into the Arelith codebase.

I don't have a good feel for the area side. A quick check of the codebase tells me that we have 876 areas, of which probably 50 are system areas, DM areas and duplicates, on the main server alone (FL has another couple of hundred, plus shared ones). A skilled builder could build one of those areas in 6 hours or so to production quality (some less, some more) - but that's using the NWN toolset. In NWN2, the estimate would be a lot larger, and Shards will probably be more NWN2-like in terms of options and hence work. It could easily be 10 hours per area in the new tool - so another 9000 hours or so.

Add to that creatures and items. Here I have the most hope for automatic tools to convert one to the other. But if not, there's probably at least 1000 more hours of time to remake the 4000 creatures and items we have, and fix the mistakes made while doing so.

So, rebuilding Arelith from scratch in the new system is probably more than 20,000 hours of work. It's taken > 10 years to build it to its current state. If Arelith starts over in Shards, it won't be anything like the same for a very long time.

Guess our Devs better get working then, Are you saying we aren't worth about 20000 hours of work?

[Satellitemind]

On the area side of things; Shards Online will be able to have significantly bigger areas than NWN allows. The main map Celador is about to grow 3-4 times the size that it is now (you can see it in the roundtable above to get a sense of how big it will be) In a cluster where there are unlimited amounts of maps you can link together you should be more than able to have as big as a server without having hundreds of linked maps although you can if you want to.

[Remember when]

The poaching game is real here.

[gilescorey]

hmm, ok then

[Stath]

Skynet is rising

[Maladus]

I'm not sure what is happening in this thread...

[Irongron]

I wish those making Shards every success, as at the end of the day we're one gaming community, and if this project succeeds they may have much to offer our own players.

As Mithreas stated above I just don't see that Arelith would ever move to another platform, but that shouldn't prohibit promotion efforts on our forums, or any of our players form giving it a try when complete.

For myself I actually also really do like NWN, and though dated I think the graphic are not to be too heavily lamented - with the right lighting it can look just wonderful, and I wouldn't be so interested to play, or indeed build for another engine.

Though yes, as long as nobody is directly asking our players for money I really am fine (and interested!) to read these posts.

[Fallout]

I been looking a lot into game dev. Of late also learning unreal engine and blender for modeling and truly to shift something huge as Arelith into something new is lions work and would be years to complete in half what we now have with this smal group od devs. Simply idea is not real-however to build something new from start is another thing and would support it. Graphics of NWN are for current indy game dev world still great. I would rather let nwn community to work on rework so when most of its i done maybe give another considering with larger dev group, until then project is not realistic to undertake.

Shame Legends of The Sword Coast didnt deliver what i belived they would, but that says actually how huge this work would be.

I also wonder how many people on this forum have experiance with unity, unreal and other game engines?

[Satellitemind]

https://www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/v/96729605
October Community Roundtable laying out Alpha release and walking through the newly updated roadmap here; http://shardsonline.com/development-roadmap/ TDLR; Game is will be complete in summer 2017.

[Satellitemind]

https://www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/v/108068980
December Community Roundtable, alpha 1 release for the public is scheduled the weekend of January 16th.

[Satellitemind]

Shards Online has officially gone live with its first alpha release; a few more months and then STEAM launch is here which will make modding and server hosting open to everyone plus a x25 larger map and mounts. When the summer hits custom assets will be available and we can start making our own worlds. We're almost to the home stretch its been a long time coming.
Here is the community roundtable this month
https://www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/v/114720644

Live Stream from the developers MMORPG.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwV-QNv7opA&t=3530s Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qZIl-NTaQk&t=2600s Part 2

[Satellitemind]

So it took longer than everyone had thought but it looks like we are getting closer to the end. Today the developers announced Legends of Aria is launching on STEAM early access this December. There is a new trailer which highlights the recent graphics update to make the game less cartoony. https://www.legendsofaria.com/legends-o ... -december/

Additionally, while modding tools will not be made availabile to everyone until full launch the team has opened up their community admin program to those who wish to apply; which now includes support for custom maps. The 5th edition ruleset is still in the works and will be released to the greater community upon completion.

[strong yeet]

Three years and he's still shilling. The boy's dedicated

[TimeAdept]

he still shills on the amia forums too, for as many years

it's extreme dedication

[Irongron]

Sattelitemind is more than welcome to promote their game on these forums, and I'm more than happy to do what I can to help.

This is clearly a small studio attempting something extremely ambitious. From all I've read they're basically trying to do something that hasn't been successfully realised since nwn.

Prior to EE, reaching out to communities like our own was a shrewd move. I wish them the best of luck with their launch, and in such a market as this I suspect they might need it.

[Vrass]

He wastes his time... Amia has been dead for years and i highly doubt its ever coming back nwn ee or not.

[Satellitemind]

Thanks for the support Irongron, for the record I have played NwN for about 13 years and have dabbled with Arelith and Amia from time to time. I had hopes for EE honestly in terms of seeing a full scale revitalization but following the beamdog server population lists over the last couple of months hasn't been encouraging save for a couple PWs. Legends of Aria offers way more potential in the ways of customization being able to write rule sets from scratch to building entire worlds with the capability of hosting more players than NwN ever could. Plus the duration of official support is most likely going to outlive NwN which was already seeing it wane as early as 2006. LoA is offering its own vanilla MMO experience on top of being a platform so updates and expansions will most likely be something which continues as long as the game as life and if its predecessor Ultima Online which LoA is in the spirit of is to be any indication that is going to be a very long time. I dare say UO private shards are on the whole probably faring better than its NWN counterpart despite being twice as old. For example take this shard: https://uorpg.net/en/news
This shard started in 2010 and the current number of active players at the time I post this is 1,862. It's 8 years old and on a platform almost twice the age of Neverwinter Nights. This is just *one* private UO shard, the company itself is still releasing expansions and content updates which gives it an advantage that a game like NwN or Divinity Original Sin 2 which was the closest thing we had to pin our hopes on after Legends of Aria for being a successor. Furthermore community servers have been supported from the very get go, while the ability for server admins to make custom assets (maps, creatures, equipment etc.) have not been available until recently server admins have been able to basically script what they want since the beginning of the project. One of them Legends of Ultima already has a pretty sizeable playerbase. A 5th edition ruleset is already being written and will be released to the greater when its finished saving us NwN players a lot of time. This is the first video in the series of a few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxujIWHXRyw
Bottom line yes Arelith for an NWN server is doing great arguably it might be the only NWN server aside from Ravenloft not to fall stagnate even with the release of EE but the prospects for everyone else look bleak and we have a platform on the horizon which promises to do everything NwN did and more on a magnitude that I don't think any of us could expect even a Neverwinter Nights 3 to give us not to mention years of support that we would not otherwise get even from an AA studio. In short I am only keeping the remaining NWN communities in the loop because A) this game has been a part of my life for quite a long time B) I think there is real potential to be had with Legends of Aria that we couldn't even get with NWN and I think there are real advantages for PWs such as this one to consider being an early adopter of this platform.

[Aodh Lazuli]

While Irongron may well be polite and supportive, it is worth noting that his position at the head of this community requires that he maintains good PR by welcoming people such as yourself with a smile and allowing you to promote your vaguely related (and possibly very good - I have no idea) product.

However, I find it interesting that you can respond to this by laying down a case for the death of the platform on which Arelith operates and heavily implying that the platform should be abandoned in favour of the one you promote. Is that not somewhat questionable? It doesn't feel like the politeness of your host is quite being matched.

[Satellitemind]

Fair question; let me ask though; If it was suddenly announced that Neverwinter Nights 3 was in development and due out next year would it be bad to keep the community provide updates on its progress? I imagine there would be quite a few people in the community would be at least considering the possibility of creating a version of Arelith on it with the potential for a new engine and abilities. Creating an Arelith world on LoA doesn't necessarily mean Arelith on NwN would die, I admit that my post was written in a way which assumed such since people were thinking the same thing when NWN2 came out. But a LoA port of Arelith could be done while keeping the NwN one functioning for as the community wants it. The team who is writing the 5th edition ruleset is looking for additional coders as it would speed up the process. For any interested their email is palanai.server@gmail.com