Greetings to all of you out in the land of anticipation. It has been a while since the last update and you will have to forgive the lack of eye candy recently. There has been news from the volcanic city that the denizens are preparing for the first wave of newcomers. Special care has been taken over the past months into preparing the city so it has a multitude of visceral elements to engage, overwhelm and envelop ALL players into the game world. We say ALL for reasons of efficiency. Got an older PC, or a friend that just refuses to upgrade, worry not, the game shall play. Our emergence into the art of making games coincides with the birth of 3D games and game technology. Our wisdom will show as all players move fluidly through the most visually stunning representation of the game world that their particular machine can handle.

To put that in a less graceful statement of words. The city has undone a technical overhaul. We have used the experience of our many years and techniques of the industry to put the fine technical polish on the starting spawn city and its districts.

On a bit more of the fun side, we have had our weapon smith take another view at our collection of melee weapons. The original set was done very early on in development, 3 years back, and we all felt they were lacking. While a great modular set, capable of making several hundred close combat weapons, it just lacked the punch, impact, and the art style that the game has evolved into. This will just be a teaser of what will be possible with the completed set.

I present to you the Blades. When a weapon is assembled, a blade, hilt, guard, and a large selection of accessories are chosen from. While most are basic and can be acquired at the local weapon shop, other unique items will require the effort of the player to be found. To start, blades come in your basic metals such as Bronze, Steel, Dark Steel, Iron and so on. There are more advanced machined blades to be found out among the game world that pack a much more striking visual pinch, not to mention the impact to whomever may attempt to bar its path.

 

 

Delving has begun into the phrase “Bring the Hammer Down” and we are bringing the hammers down hard. Here another slight taste of some of the Hammerheads sprinkled about the world.

 

New MMO Update

It has been a while since our last post and we have a lot to catch the community up on. I will start with Charles's work on our modular player housing which he has been working hard at. He has one customizable set complete and more to go. The following images show some of what can be done. Once the players get their hands on the modular set I expect we will see many more.

Charles has also been working on the interiors for these housing sets. Again we will use my favorite word, modular. We are working hard to make sure that the players can set up different types on shops inside their player housing. Furnishings will also be available to fully deck out your home with just a handful seen here.

Next we will move on to our additional weapons sets. We have gone modular as usual giving the players a huge verity of customization. The images below just show a few of the configurations that can be achieved with the parts supplied. As the game grows, we plan on adding even more parts to the existing weapons sets.

Coming in next would be the armor. We have several sets completed but are only showing the heavy armor for now. Big, bulky, and massively powerful, it will get the player through many a scrape when out exploring the wasteland or trudging through one of the many dungeons.

Our clothing sets have been expanding as well but I will keep the new sets a secret till our next post. For now I give you hats. Hats are always fun and give players a great way to personalize their avatars. My personal favorite would be the fedora which I also wear in real life.

We have also been making tons of progress in areas that would be boring to our readers but will make the gaming experience all the more enjoyable. Tons of systems have been developed that will engage the player and keep them interested. We have also been toiling away at optimizations that will allow the game-play to be smooth and fluid even if your PC is not top brand spanking new. The sewer dungeon recently got a massive overhaul and we have been hitting up all the assets with the technical elements needed in today's most visually stunning games.

• we designed the Quest system and skill system for the game after some very extensive research, the interface and front end are complete but still need to be integrated onto the server core.
• Divided player characters into enough sections to be extremely customizable.
• we also integrated allot of clothing assets into the engine build and setup final shaders and materials for them, there are plenty of combinations for everyone to look different. Plus we have more hair options in development.
• reuved monsters/characters for new compression shaders to contain memory while using high end texturemaps
• implemented real-time shadowing onto the build.
• created new server item cfg to support extensive weapon customizations
• optimized and secured packet structure on server for this game
• implemented secure damage system server side

Greetings everyone. I am back again for another round on the developer blog. Today I present to you two of our clothing sets. While these are not your typical looking sets of Steampunk clothing, they fit right in with the horrors of our game world. There are many more looks and styles of clothing available, but so far, these two sets are my favorites. As with all of our clothing sets, everything is interchangeable, so you will find it easy to setup that perfect look for your character.

These two clothing sets were masterfully crafted by the artist Dilip. This is our tough guy, tough gal look for clothing. Lots of leather, zippers, studs, and stitching. The attention to detail is outstanding.

While gathering up the renders from inside the game engine I realized that my standard image size did not do the amount of detail in the clothing justice. It was decided that I would take some good close up shots of some of my favorite areas and list them along side the full view of the outfits. I hope you enjoy these images of the clothing, and there will be many more images posted of the other clothing sets as the weeks roll by. Until next time.

 

.

  For my very first development blog, I decided to write about one of our weapons sets. One of our favorite words here at ARB is “Modular” and we use modular assembly whenever and wherever possible to get the most out of the creations we make. You will see this reflected in all the weapons sets, housing, and even dungeons.

  The first of our weapons sets that was completed was the Shotgun set. We created both short barrel and long barrels for 4 different methods of distributing ammunition into the gun. Four different grips / stocks were created. To enhance the guns further we created additional charm, glam, and addons. For this we have done 5 charm style objects and 4 blade additions so far. I am certain we will do many more for this gun type as development continues.

  The goal was to have various customizable looks that would span a single type of weapon so that each player can feel somewhat unique with the weapon they choose to brandish. This modularity is not just for looks though. We plan to have each part of the weapon affect the way it behaves in game. The ammo distribution method is the most obvious since it will be reflected in reload times and how often a player has to reload. Short and long barrel variations will affect the range and scatter of the shots. Grips / stocks will affect accuracy and the time it takes to switch between weapons. The technical numbers will go a bit deeper than this with some parts having mixed effects into other areas.

  The charms, glam, addons will be the most fun as they will work as enhancements to the weapons. Some of these will be as simple as adding a basic blade to the end of the weapon gives you the ability to use it in close combat. Others will be more complex like adding enchanted properties to the weapon and even adding extra ranged attacks, like a skull breathing out an acid spray.

  The images displayed shows the base modules of the shotgun set and just a handful of the many combinations that can be created. I hope you have enjoyed my first post of many yet to come. In future blogs I will write about some of our other weapons sets like the chain guns, handguns and bazookas. Until then.

Welcome to the official Steampunk MMO (Dark Ages) Developer Blog.

Steampunk in the middle ages, set in a very old world comes a brand new First Person Massive Online adventure! The world is old, dying, a desperate effort continues to restore the planet while undead/elemental abominations wreak havoc across the land, civilization is diminishing.

Development images of some of the first Undead Abominations that have resulted from the degeneration of the world. Our deformer technology ensures every creature will look different in size and shape.

  

Heres some in game preview screen shots of the first world town.. and since our female model's clothes are in development she has been looking for them :)