Hello all!
Previously, Actinate and I were aiming for a July 1st opening date where Open Beta testing would begin. Unfortunately, we are going to have to push it back a bit to July 6th instead. We need some more time to finish up a few last areas around Tralisia.
Thanks and hope to see you soon!
Dayrinni and Actinate
Hello everyone!!!
For those of you experienced with A Tempest Season’s early incarnations, welcome back! For those of you just tuning in, we hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us and have as much fun playing ATS as we had creating it.
I remember my first experience with a RPG. I was pretty young, and I was begging a friend’s older brother to let us play Dungeons and Dragons. After many temper tantrums, name calling and overall diaper pooping, I was allowed to join in on the festivities.
I don’t have all the details, but I remember being shuffled through a quick character creation process and immediately came face-to-face with a red dragon; it promptly took a flaming dump on my face.
I was dead…
I left the game pretty irritated and thinking that it would be much better to make my own game, one where other people could play and have fun. Dayrinni and I talked about the idea and began building a fantasy world with simple (and broken) mechanics that were similar to video games we’d played, movies we’d watched and things we thought would be cool to see in action.
Needless to say, those early incarnations were VERY bad in terms of design and mechanics, but the seed was planted and the framework was built. All it needed was a little love and care, and after twenty-five years of friendship, Dayrinni and I are still working on that process.
ATS started as a game called “The World of Gaia.” Later, it evolved into “Magical Seasons” and finally “A Tempest Season.” The game had a failed sequel, “Shattered Ages,” which introduced isometric art and a visual world to explore. It was a neat endeavor, but it was very time consuming. Both Dayrinni and I learned a lot from our failed experience with “Shattered Ages” and our experience with “A Tempest Season,” the first time it was in MUD format. We’re hoping to take what we’ve learned and apply it to this new incarnation of ATS to make a richer and more entertaining experience.
We encourage you to please visit our forums to help us build a community of gamers, and we implore you to read the lore on our website, which is in the process of being updated.
Ultimately, we want you to have a good experience, and we want you to have fun. So come join us this July as we re-explore the world of Eihydia! See you there!!!
– Actinate
They cried for abilities to further their rise to power.
POWER!
The cries were heard and their abilities were delivered!
April was started with a great challenge and one that was met! We wanted to complete the Focii abilities (80 abilities, including 20 of which had to be designed for the Mage Class). This was successful – all 80 were completed. Then, we went further: completed the 5 Fighter Styles (45 skills). Still, we were not done – all of the weapon skills and armor skills were completed. On top of this, additional, misc type skills were made. All told, 171 skills were made!
The ability editor was extremely successful in making it possible to add this many skills so quickly. The time investment in creating it has already paid off. The only issue is the complexity – it takes a bit to figure out how to use. However, that’s a small price to pay I say.
The Price.
On top of that, we’ve been having the players test portions of the game and that’s going quite well. I’m been tweaking character creation based on the feedback from the testers.
We’re making good progress in reaching our goal for opening in a few months. We shall complete many portions of the game including the rest of the abilities and the manual. The lore section will always be a work in progress.
Until next time…
Hello!
For the past month Actinate and I have been working on the game and made some good progress. We spent time adding a bunch of features to the ability editor. One of them deals with having abilities require and/or consume items for use. This will be a feature used for the Rogues.
Pouch System
But what I spent most of my time on was coding up the character creation system. This is another very large system. My goal was to use the old system and then make it more consistent and add a few new features. The old system looked very nice and had a lot of flavor to it. Here are a few images:
Name Selection
Class Selection
I suspect that I’ll be finished with this in the coming weeks. After that, a lot of time will be spent on making content for the classes and races.
Finally, I’ve been slowly editing/adding to the manual on the website. This will be a work in progress and it’ll make sure that we have a better manual than the previous version.
Until next time…
