Per recommendation, I personally uploaded the Character Creation video to YouTube for those who maybe don't have the bandwidth for the original video.

The original can still be viewed on our website here.

Enjoy!

We had a lot of fun this year at IMGDC, met a lot of new people, shook a lot of hands and generally had a great time. Among the folk we were fortunate enough to bump into were Rusty and Paul from PX Interactive; makers of their own MMORPG Server middleware. After a lengthy conversation at lunch involving the complexities of our engine and their server architecture, we all ended up blowing off the next workshop entirely to whip out our laptops and try out the software right there.

I'm relatively certain the people frantically clearing off the tables around us were at least mildly annoyed by our presence.

The very next day while showing off our demo to a group of onlookers including Bioware Austin's Gordon Walton, PX CEO Rusty Lee and I signed an officially binding contract licensing their groundbreaking new server software for use in our online game, "Divergence", shaving nearly half a year off of the development time of our game.

This week will be spent modifying our current schedule of improvements and additions to accomodate the adaptation of said server platform to C4 engine and Divergence.



( Left to Right )
Ethan - SGL
Rusty - PX
Paul - PX
Stephen - SGL

I know there hasn't been much word from us lately and Just a quick pop-in to say that everything's cool and on track for the big update. We're still expecting to have it rolled-out before IMGDC in about 1-2 weeks.

Thanks for not turning into a ravenous mob so far.

Sprint 6 is now complete and we're beginning immediately on build 7. A short list of things we added/fixed in todays build is now up in the classified section and will be made available to the public in the next couple weeks.

During the migration to our most current website it became necessary to begin rebuilding the contributor database manually. The reason for this is the same reason why we needed a new website with the most up-to-date security available; Too many h4x0rz injecting their logins as contributors without having contributed.

Therefore we have two announcements regarding Contributor status and the Classified (Contributor-Only) area.

1. Everyone who should rightfully have contributor status will have it within the week.
2. The contributor-only area will be getting a dose of new content. This will include a regular update on where exactly we're at with the game from a user friendly standpoint. Think of it as early access to patch notes. Also Contributor status has been hard-coded to the $50 it should have been. Occasionally an error was reported where paying only 10$ got you in. Anyone who paid $10 and got in has been grandfathered in (meaning you don't have to pay more).

...do it yourself.

So we got tired of waiting for the site to be updated and took matters into our own hands.

What you see here is what we wanted to show you about a month ago with the exception of thigns what still need polihsing off such as updating the game into and replacing the placeholder static JPG banner at the top of the site with our flash one.

It could take them days weeks or months to get that finished (despite the fact two people made this entire site AND integrated the original SQL info from the forums in two days flat) but we wanted to get SOMETHING back up as soon as possible so here you go.

There are a ton of things that as of yet don't work right or aren't finished, however assume that we do NOT know about it and post whatever you can in the WEBSITE area of the forums.

I'm going to get some sleep and hit it again tomorrow.

P.S The shoutbox is back =)

Hey gang.

Today it looks like we're going to be updating the site. It could be down for an hour it could be a week. They tell me "instantly" but I really hate telling the community one thing and another happening or not happening so;

Hope for the best expect the worst.

There is a slim chance that we might lose login information in the process. I wanted to keep the data we had at all costs but the new database might not accept it. Worst case scenario if people have to remake their logins I want to assure everyone that we do have contributor stats on file and we can easily give back any contributor status that might be lost during the process.

Thanks as always for being cool in the meantime.

In addition to the new Lokri, Combat Synthetic and Vindicator images, today we finally showcase our first real look at the Ennie race.

Enjoy!

Alright.

Following Sundays newsletter regarding the closing of the website enough emails came through the pipe to give pause and reflect towards maybe going a different route.

Here's the new idea.

The likelyhood of anyone attached to this project helping a bag lady across the street and finding out she is a multimillionaire and has always wanted to pewn nubs with her grandchildren is for lack of a better phrase, hellaslim.

As the residing money... person... my biggest obstacle has always been the lack of more or less anything at all to show potential investors. Oh I have very pretty ideas! ... And a couple sketches! And a white shirt and tie! But nothing to put in front of someone[s] and say, "This is what I do. Your dodge stratus outside PALES in comparison to that which is Divergence!"

And so we reach the crux of my quasi-witty little spat. We're basically going to dump what money we have left into a modicom of 3d assets which we would need in the end regardless of the engine anyway instead of busting hump to get the engine license requirements first.

It pains me to say this, but the next step it looks like is to take said art and plug it into an engine we already own to create a "demo" so to speak purely as a data dump for preexisting special abilities, factions, whatever, and to begin chucking out screenies. At least then we'll be able to say, "Well I can't show you any of the cool and dynamic scripted content we want to have until we get the new engine... but you can at least see all the different "types" of things we have going on.

This "demo project" will be the culmination of as much content as we can pack into it, but confined to an area of about 5km x 5km.

The programming portion will begin imediately. The art they tell us will take roughly 6-8 weeks for the first batch to exit the oven and be ready for importing AND after we've slid them a few thousand dollars. It will all be pre-rigged to a skeleton of our design and feature all of the artistic touches which will be present in our finalized game such as multiple texture layers for markings, color patterns, a scratch and scuff layer, a damage layer and so forth. What it won't contain is a plethora of animations like we would like to have [those things will come when we have the monies] but they will have the basics.

Personally, I would love to have this "demo project" contain at least enough content to where possibly people would be willing to pay a few dollars to check it out. Mainly because [and this is a rough rough breakdown] if we could get even half of the 500+ people signed up on this site to chip in for something they can begin playing, at the rate of 5-8K per finished playable race model that equals a lot of content!

That's just one of the ideas we're kicking around at any given time.

A new newsletter will be sent out in the next couple days directing people to this post and more information will be posted by either myself or Ryan in the next few days.

Keep your chins up guys [and gals].