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| Sun 7th December 2008 | Growing Roma Victor
The development team has spent most of its time in recent weeks on creating and enhancing the free trial experience. The free trial will run alongside Roma Victor as we know it and will consist of two separate islands that are not directly connected to the live Southern Caledonia (SEC) playfield. The Attending process will take place entirely on these islands for both guests and full participants although only accounts that have participant status will be able to transfer their characters to SEC. Neither items nor sesterces can be transferred between the trial islands and SEC. Also, skill development is capped on the islands and once a character has left it will naturally not be able to return.
We believe that one of the most significant barriers to Roma Victor really taking off is its rather modest population - many features would be much more fun and self-balancing if the population were a bit higher. We therefore feel quite strongly that making the game easy to get into is the most important thing to tackle first. So we've been spending quite a lot of time really trying to make this trial/newbie/attending process as smooth, fun and easy to learn as possible. As soon as the free trial is live, which might even happen before the end of this month/year, we will invite existing participants to create a new guest account, check out the process and let us know what you think because we are of course most keen to solicit the opinions of the real experts.
One of the added benefits of moving the Attending process into the trial islands is that we'll be able to clear up much of the low-level junk associated with learning the ropes from the starter settlements, which should actually make quite a significant performance improvement for extremely busy places like Corstopitum - particularly for those with older or lower specification computers.
Also, as some of you have noticed, I've recently been spending some time away from development in an effort to try and grow RedBedlam, which we need to do in order to expand our resources. We're a small independent developer but we still have great ambitions for Roma Victor and stepping things up a gear is important to all of us. To that end, and among many other things, we've taken on some extra help and in the coming weeks and months we hope to be providing more regular and concise communications, improved moderation and some long-awaited feature updates.
We really do appreciate the continued support of all Roma Victor participants and contributors. At times it may seem like some of the development team aren't listening, or are perhaps distracted by other priorities, but please take it from me that our devotion and commitment to this project has never faltered. On a personal level I have been pouring time, money and countless sleepless nights into this project for well over eight years now and I will go on doing so for as long as I continue to be inspired by the dedication, loyalty, patience and support of all of those who have played and worked on Roma Victor during that time.
And on that note, let's take a brief and non-exhaustive look at the changes implemented since my last SotW and some of the other things we've got to look forward to:
Recently Implemented Server Changes
- Facepainting
- Global mail and graffiti
- Access levels for guild warchests
- Jobs and the Labour Exchange
- Rumours
- Villages
- Patrols
- Territorial conquest
- Much more too numerous to mention - please see the server changelog thread for further details
Upcoming Server Changes
- Implementation of the trial/starter islands and free trial accounts
- Shifting the Attending process to the trial islands
- Both aesthetic and functional improvement to Elysium
- Improvements to cooking, diet and its effects
- An improved construction system paving the way for more structures including streets and fortifications
- Line, net and rod fishing
- Combat rankings and battle reports
Other items planned and underway
- Boats
- Injuries and injury treatment
- Improvements to animal handling and domestication including breeding etc.
- Battlecries
- Guild alliances and further support for guildwars
- Furniture
- Combustion
- Player music
- Hair and beards
- Tattoos
- Mounts
Client changes and fixes due in an imminent update
- Fix for third-person character animation bug (partially taking on other character's animations)
- Improved client-side buffering
- Significantly decreased chances of both the 'missing building' and 'jump' bugs occurring
- Limitations on climbing very steep slopes in order to add realism and increase the strategic importance of gradients including bridges, fords, ramparts etc.
The subsequent client version will include further optimisations and fixes including, among other things, an improvement to the dynamic lighting system.
Thanks!
Posted by KFR,
on behalf of the Roma Victor development team at RedBedlam.
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