I’m back from the Netherlands to see that my fellow devsters have been hard at work in my absence. They’ve figured out how the event will end (finally) and both satan and fyriole have been doing their fair share of coding wizardry.
I know it’s been a slow month, and I’m very glad so many of you are sticking with us. I can promise you all that before the end of the month, the even will end and my shiny new relic will be up. I recommend that you cooperate in figuring out the many combines of my relic, otherwise you will take quite some time to find it. And don’t forget to message me the moment you find it.
In other news, Holland was great. Discworldian was the hostess of the dutch meet, she made sure that everyone who was meant to be there was accounted for. I was around for before and after the meet which added up to a whole week which I might as well let you know what happened.
Thursday: Arrived in Arnhem, met up with Discy and her house mate Ifor (he forgot his KoL name so we call him Ifor as in, I forgot). Both of them are good people. They showed me around Arnhem and generally had a good time with them, also got acquainted with the cute little things which are Discy’s rats. Slept in a hostel which turned out to be a 30 minute hike away and was on the ONLY HILL IN ARNHEM. Go figure.
Friday: First day of meet, met some dutch KoLers, some for the first time, others I had met in KoLondon. All of them where bilingual except for me, they had fun watching me try and fail to understand dutch, so a good day all round. Slept in a hotel with two other KoLers, we ended up juggling until 4AM.
Saturday: Went to Nijmegen, spent the first part of the day playing general games in the dungeons of a game shop (like any good nerd should) then sat in the park with my fellow KoLers, did some more juggling and recorded the show with all of them contributing.
Sunday: Went to the Hague (or Den Haag) to meet up with another KoLer who we never actually found in the end, spent the day at some sort of festival, we hung around up until the point that it became a trash heap and decided the leave before the seagulls got nasty. Ate some falafels for the first time, their like vegetarian kebabs, I ruined mine by accidentally putting too much hot sauce on it and pretty much destroying my tongue. By the end of the experience, I had to throw it away, though after that, the mexican restaurant we went to was a walk in the park in terms of spiciness. Said goodbye to a lot of people since the meet had ended. Slept at Discy’s place due to running out of reservation at the hotel and not planning far enough ahead to get the hostel more reservation.
Monday: Discy took my to the sweet shop in town, bought a lot of delicious aniseed flavoured bears amongst other things. Didn’t do too much as discy was shattered, helped her pick out songs for her radio show on tuesday, and by help her pick out I mean suggested songs to her and have her say they were overplayed, and by that I mean axe. Slept at the hostel again, yay for 30 minute hikes up hill…
Tuesday: Went to Amsterdam with Zwing AKA Tonks, wondered through a very fun museum called NEMO which featured such things as giant bubble making and some other strange devices, I accidentally got electrocuted there, it took me a while to figure out why my hand was twitching and in pain. Wondered through the red light district (naturally) and past the brown cafés to get to a very good pancake restaurant which was near the Anne Frank house.
Wednesday: Went to the Hague (Den Haag) with Discy and Ifor to go to a concert of an artist that discy loves, before hand we walked around the Hague, I ate the most delicious herring that I ever dangled in front of me. The concert was a lot of fun once it got going with the main act, the drummer was extraordinary, he really knew how to keep the energy up and had a lot of fun doing it. It was a long cold trip back to Arnhem, and then a lonely walk through the cold misty road (uphill) to the hostel, I may have caught a cold walking up there at night, but meh.
Thursday: Said my final goodbyes to Discy and Ifor, bought a lot of aniseed confectioneries and started to get home. Slept in my bed which is in my room. I thoroughly enjoyed my trip and I can’t wait until the Glasgow KoL meet.
-Enemy Lasagna
At least it's not a Good News Week, someone's dropped the bomb somewhere, contaminating atmosphere and blackening the sky. It's good news week, someone's found a way to give the rotting dead a way to live and go on and never die.
But anyway, we're not having that kind of week. Just a quiet one with most of the SR dev team on vacation, in pain, without internet or presumed dead. Which means that I've had quite a bit of spare time on my hands and yeah, even if I don't have anything official to draw, I'm still drawing. And here's the latest:
A Goth Warrior.
Drew it for kicks and rather quickly. I think he looks a bit petulant for a goth and less aggressive then I was aiming for but I ended up liking the coloring on the face too much to change the expression. And we don't have an axe in the game... yet, so no spoilers. So, enjoy, and have a nice weekend.
If anyone wants to know what song I was quoting:
Good News Week by Hedgehoppers Anonymous. Just a little 60s protest music for flavor.
-
evilmetaldork
I'm kidding,
it's horrible. I am an unmitigated mess!
Here is my desk, it's here somewhere. Warning, ugly 70s wallpaper.
I just collect papers, so many papers. I mean, I have a countless number of sketchbooks that are empty cause I grab some computer paper and start drawing and then abandon it on my desk where it piles up.
Notable things: my tablet. The pen for my tablet is in my mug along with um... some gloves for some reason. The sketches on my desk are actually covering more sketches that you can't see cause they're SR maps. My monitor is blacked out cause it was open to chat where the dev team was having a very serious business discussion. Basically, this whole space is unexplainable and I am a hobo.
But! I'm going to make it up to you. Faithful blog readers, do you ever wonder what I'm doing when I'm not drawing for Soul Raver?
...I'm drawing...for Soul Raver...
I'm trying out a new style. I'm trying to use fewer lines and also to speedpaint. I'm working on some other random stuff and to get my people not look so stiff in Photoshop. We'll see how this goes, keep watching the blog for more random art.
Hey all, TAC here.
Sorry that the development team has been slower then a bunch of turtles drowning in molasses, but it has been due to personal and other issues that the team has been down for the count. By the start of next week, most of the team should be ready to go for some serious work.
For me it's been school and personal issues that I've been SR-asleep, but oh well. I'll be officially ready to work on Monday (will be stranded from the internet over the weekend, and school ends tommorow). I want to not only finish the currently stale event, I want to do some major content addition and rewriting. The old descriptions for most things lack funneh, but some stuff I do plan to leave. Also, I'll be writing up a new event (but it probably won't go in for awhile).
Hey guys.
Serious work has been done in the past few days. Fyriole's back and seems either not sick or well enough to work on the combat revamp. This combat revamp will (hopefully) include the ability to have non-combat adventures which will progress the qwerzog extinction event along.
Unfortunately, my epeen item has been put on hold for a while due to a few of the items involved with its creation being unobtainable for now. Though they may come back at the conclusion of the qwerzog event.
I'm going to see if I can update these pages more often, though only if I see a few more people commenting. Do you know how off-putting it is to write things in a blog and have no one comment on them. It's like you're talking to yourself. Ok, that's enough begz0ring for one blog entry.
For now, you guys enjoy beating up coupon counters, collecting items and contributing to the forum community. I can guarantee that the things on the horizon are almost right in front of you.
-Enemy Lasagna
Hey guys.
I'm guessing that most of you are busy collecting coupons to try and get your name in lights on the leader board (despite all the robots taking the glory). Though I'm quite sure that it at some point, it gets a little dull and monotonous. So I've been working on something else. A brand new epeen!
This epeen item will be a lot more complicated than the previous ones. It will involve a lot of the current items in the game as well as over 30 new ones. Needless to say, it's unlikely you will be able to do this one in a day. Note that the items that create this new epeen have not been implemented yet. Everything is planned out and all the pictures are drawn for all the new items involved. Though a couple of things need to be settled (spindler stuff) before I can start putting this in.
Don't worry, we will let you know when everything's in, and hopefully I won't bugger it up as I navigate the shiny new interface satan has made for us non-coders to play with.
Let the hype begin!
-Enemy Lasagna
(Let me just note that I will single out no one in particular. Even to those that botted that made me make this, I hold no grudge and am not mad (right now!))
According to Urban Dictionary, botting is defined as:
Name given to the ****** practise of holding the ***** in the ***** between the ******** and ********* until ****** is achieved. At no point is the **** *********.
Er... actually, according to Urban Dictionary, botting is defined as:
Automated gameplay. Generally by using programs to play games for you.
Lately players have taken to botting the game. Now, this isn't a huge problem. We've got bandwidth to spare considering our popularity. You're not cheating anybody either, because items get wiped all the time. Heck, you're even helping find bugs. But let me say this now:
DO. NOT. RIGHT. NOW.
We will only allow botting after turns are implemented!
The few
and only people ever allowed to bot were warned never to do it again when they did it. Although they did produce some good things for us, if we make this the rule to allow botting, we'll run out of bandwidth faster then a greased up gaggle of gamers ganging up on youtube.com to get gargantuan views on videos they have. One day we'll be able to handle. Today is not that day, month, possibly year.
IF we make exception cases it is for devsters. But,
IF we made exceptions for non-devs, everyone would do it, and then it would slowly go up. 1 adds up to a 100 quickly. So don't do it, please.
Thanks for listening to this public announcement funded by the Federal Goverment Agency of No Botting in Soul Raver, Thank You (FGANBSRTY).
In Soul Raver, things are happening. Let me just take the time to inform our loyal players and fans what is going on in right now.
As it looks right now, an LLC is likely being formed for legal purposes and later ease when we decide to start paying our most prominent developers. This will likely only happen if we make a profit from donations later on, but right now this is not a big concern.
I would just like to take a stance on income. In Jick's words, it would be irresponsible not to consider the bottom line when it comes to this. Right now, our hosting fees are minimal, but eventually we will need to move to a server (with the exorbitant fees that join along), we may ask for donations. But I want to note, the only benefit this will have on the player end is that, like KOL, it will give a decent item if traded in, but it won't open "donation only content" or start a "subscription service". This will remain free, but only as long as we get support when we need it most. I understand it is a touchy topic and just want to make it clear that Qwerzog, LLC. is not exactly going to be a faceless corporation anytime soon.
I would also like to discuss the state of the game. One too many comparisons have been drawn to the Kingdom of Loathing, and while I must agree, at this point these comparisons are unimportant, mostly because you must consider the state of the game. We are in SUPER, SUPER early alpha. Almost everything you see today might not exist in 2 months. So anyone saying the game isn't original or is a KOL clone is not on the dev team and does not know what the final game will be like. At all.
The game will be unique in a lot of ways. Not just time traveling, but overall in story progression and whatnot. And let me assure you that any "speed game" this game will have will be quite a challenge. Spades will love it, too. In general, we will not be KOL. We will not be it's shadow. I don't want to say bad about KOL - it's great, and hell, we were inspired by the creators, for gods sakes. But we still don't want to just make a game by KOL players for KOL players (although there is room for that).
I'd also like to say that again, we will not be wiping accounts in the future. Only items. And when we declare ourselves in Beta (when we have some... basics.. set down...), the wipes will stop. So please don't make duplicate accounts. Oh, and if you're not Bashy or Boozerbear, stop making accounts in the names of KOL celebrities. Unless you can claim you're the real deal, you will be banned fast.
Right now in the game, we are working on our tools to make sure the development enviroment is ready for the large amount of content the game will receive as we work towards releasing in beta. The way we're working right now, we're offering content for the players but will work on finalizing things like the College Campus and some quests!
So please, enjoy the game, but take its content's finality with a grain of salt. We're not done yet; not even close.
-TAC
