Over the Ages of Time(TM)

[Kevin]

Howdy, y'all! My name is Kevin. I'm a Developer for Mortalis Victus. I also do most of the graphic work for the client, maps and so forth. And now you know. I'd tell you a lot more about me, but... you probably don't care that much. You probably want info! Which is what I am here to divulge.

While I'm not sure if this has been mentioned in the previous threads, I do know that it has not been gone into in detail. I believe it's an important thing for the future players of Mortalis Victus to know about. And if I think it's important, it must be *nods*

Mortalis will come to the players in ages. What does that mean? It means that we, the developers, will unveil an age at a time. Age -1, which will be our alpha phase, will be somewhat small. Playing this phase will be by invite only and will, mostly, be a test run of our systems and environment. It will test things like factions, combat, building, skills, etc, etc... It will also be a fun time for us to see what players do with what we give them.

What will age 0 be? It will be an expansion of the alpha, but will be beta. Using the same area it will mostly be improvement and additions to the systems in place.

And age 1 will be launch.

What will age 2 be like? Well.. wouldn't y'all like to know? You'll probably have to stick around. Most likely it will be the finding, from the age 1 area, a hidden way to the new and improved climate. It will unveil new and improved skills, sytems, etc, etc...

I'm sure by the time age 10 comes around we will have this game smoothed out and so full of options, skills, etc, that it will be endless fun for all.

Hope to see y'all around!

[Kalle]

A few additions to Kev's post above;

We've chosen to internally call the alpha-stage, the beta-stage, and the post-beta (launch) stage for ages, where age 1 is the first real game (post-beta/launch). As such, it somewhat naturally fell into place that age 0 was beta, and age -1 was alpha.

The difference between age -1 and age 0 (except obvious system improvements and such) is that age -1 (alpha) will be ran private and by invitation only, and age 0 (beta) will be available to the public for testing of the game.

It is also important to note that anything that takes place during either of these ages (-1 and 0) will be undone before the real game is launched.

After this, the game will (probably) never be reset again.

-Kalle.

[Asmod]

One concern i'd like to know is between the later ages (ages 1, 2, 3, and so on...) as improvements are added and the systems are changed and tweaked, what would be done should something be implimented that would drastically change the mechanics, such as a new system that would affect the characters data?

Say the skill system is changed and updated in some way between two ages, how would you prevent having to wipe all of the characters and have them remade so they could fit with the new mechanics update? Is this an issue that is already bieng thought of, or is it not even an issue or possibility?

Im not sure if im explaining this coherently enough, hope you understand what im getting at.

Wow i ask you guys too many questions dont i? :P

[Kalle]

Originally posted by Asmod
Say the skill system is changed and updated in some way between two ages, how would you prevent having to wipe all of the characters and have them remade so they could fit with the new mechanics update? Is this an issue that is already bieng thought of, or is it not even an issue or possibility?

Well, there's always the wonderful world of update scripts that modify the user data recursively. :)
I very much doubt we'll ever have to wipe anyone because of updates alone. It might be because the world has gone wrong, but I'd much rather have the gods deal with that.

Originally posted by Asmod
Wow i ask you guys too many questions dont i? :P

Nope. ;)

-Kalle.