Flashlights, Fix For Black Screen Woes, and New Videos

We're aware that as time goes on, it get's harder and harder for some people to get into the game world and we know why it's happening -

Too much stuff has been built directly outside of the starting cloner in the woods and if you see the black screen for an extended period, it simply means your internet bandwidth bottleneck is insufficient to pipe it all into you before you time out of the game.

We'd planned on optimizing the data stream even more as time went on but we didn't realize how quickly people would start building really big things right in front of where you spawn.

To rectify this, we're doing two things;

1. Optimize all data coming to and from your client and the server.
2. Move existing structures (I mean the really big stuff, like that half-finished castle right in front of the starting area) to a newer, more open area until we can optimize it even more.

To keep this kind of thing from disrupting play again, we'll just have GMs monitor what's getting built and where, attempt to contact the owners if they do dumb stuff (like building literally right in front of the cloner, preventing people from getting out) and when necessary, relocating their constructions elsewhere.

For right now, a quick solution until we can push out a new patch tomorrow or the day after, here's what you can do to get into the game:

When you're at the black screen with my super-cool phrase on it, you can still chat believe it or not, therefore you can still use chat commands, including our temporary "goto" command used to sneak across the world super fast.

Just type in "/goto Castle 1" exactly as it's written there without the quotation marks and caps-sensitive. That'll instantly teleport you to a location that we'd planned to keep secret for the time being; A community "sandbox" area with semi-flat ground that all contributors at or above the $100 level can start building with Ferrocrete once we have that video out.

Again, ignore the fact that it's ugly, it's just a GM testing area, but that should get you ingame at least.

We'll update you again with a more permanent solution in the next few days :)

In addition to this, new in the game is a highly requested "Flashlight". We're adding these as actual craftable objects in the game in the near future, but for right now, night time pisses people off so just press L on the keyboard and voila, let there be light :)

In addition, for those who don't already know, we've uploaded new videos detailing the working of several game features to help you get started. Our next video, detailing factories will be released either today or tomorrow if all goes according to plan. Help spread the word!

Divergence Announces new PVP-Optional Server Stretch Goal!

We've had so many articles come out wherein hundreds, if not thousands, of people make mention in some form that they "would contribute if it weren't for the open-pvp", that we've completely re-evaluated the situation and came up with a potential solution that could benefit everybody!

The game, as it sits right now, has no PVP. Remember, that's the point of this IndieGoGo; To add top-shelf combat to our top-shelf crafting and other awesome features.

We've decided to officially announce our first stretch-goal as an additional "PVP-Optional" server. The new server will have some PVP, but it'll be consentual unlike our primary server. Players on the new server can either spend their days harvesting, crafting, dancing, playing as non-combatants, or flag themselves for PVP with a "TEF" and engage in an afternoon of RvR fun.

What's a TEF?

A "TEF" or "Temporary Enemy Flag" occurs either intentionally, by flagging yourself via chat command, or by performing certain actions. A few of those are:

• Healing or buffing factionally-combative players in a state of PVP.
• Killing or harming faction NPCs, such as town guards of an opposing faction.
• Being forcefully ejected from a player city or establishment where you are unwelcome.

Essentially, if you're playing just to craft, harvest, dance, or even if you're healing or aiding other players (so long as they are not recently engaged in PVP), you can no longer be harmed, debuffed, or otherwise negatively affected by other players.

Won't this require your current game code to be changed, and how soon would this be available?

Running a secondary "PVP-Optional" server will not require significant changes to combat, since that's already the focus of our IndieGoGo, there is none! It will simply require more resources to be directed at developing the aforementioned "TEF" system. This is something we're more than prepared to do for the players, so long as we don't have to detract money from the overall development of the game to do it. Therefore, what we decided to do was add a brand new stretch goal to invite the players to make it possible for us to develop this "optional PVP".

What we hope this'll do, is give all those people who write us and say "I'd contribute but... Open PVP" a way of putting their money where their mouth is. while simultaneously funding both the game itself, and the style of gameplay they prefer. We could bring it online even before our Steam release for testing.

Will there be any other differences between the Primary server and the secondary "PVP-Optional" server?

There will be a few minor differences between the two geared mainly to gently nudge people towards our primary server, such as story events, and GMs playing notable NPCs and faction leaders on the primary server, but as far as game mechanics and features are concerned, they both get the same content. Additionally, we're experimenting with the idea of allowing characters to transfer between servers if they meet certain stipulations and even keep their character names, so long as it can be done in a manner that neither rewards nor penalizes the practice.

What if people contribute specifically to make the PVP-Optional server happen, but then it doesn't meet that stretch goal?

In that case, depending on how close it comes to the goal, we'll either elect to do the PVP-Optional server regardless of that fact, or we'll offer refunds to those people. Basically in either scenario, you can't lose :)

Thanks again for all your support guys, and let’s make this damn game happen!

-Ethan Casner

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/divergence-online--2

Divergence Stage 3 IndieGoGo is LIVE!

After more than two years of backbreaking labor, Divergence's Stage 3 IndieGoGo is finally live!

The first video ended up being over 16 minutes long after we'd already condensed it down as much as physically possible, so we hope there's enough in there to tide people over until the next video goes live tomorrow :)

Thanks again for all your help and support guys; we couldn't have done it without you.

Check back tomorrow for the first of many instructional videos, and remember you can always download the latest build of the game at www.divergence-online.com/download

I'll also be bringing the game forums back online within a day or two and make an announcement on that, just as soon as the latest PHP is finally updated on them, as well as our public Teamspeak server info!

-Ethan

New Continents and Ferrocrete Coming!

Late July and Early August have been spent doing a multitude of things. Among the biggest and baddest:

1. Full-integration of our high-res blocks-building system known as "Ferrocrete". You know, the one everyone loved in Alpha 1, only four-times the resolution of our previous blocks, allowing for intricate design work not seen in any other game!
2. Adding two totally new and huge continents!
1. Akkhera - A vast desert of red quartz and sand, for those players who want a lot of empty space to build upon unobstructed by potential geographical and natural formations.
2. Malkav - A huge, mountainous continent, containing both grand snow-capped peaks, mountain valleys, and rolling hills, inundated with rich and dense woodlands.
3. Total upgrade to existing screen effects, including a new volumetric fog solution that just looks ridiculously good.
4. A few new assets that we believe old SWG fans will appreciate, including the "Kash" trees shown below ;)
5. Numerous bug fixes.

What's left for August?

1. Fix a ton of bugs.
2. Move Arabast to the polar region where it's supposed to be.
3. Create a mass transit system to allow players to travel from one continent to the next. Originally, this was meant to be accomplished by the use of boats traveling over the ocean, but due to time constraints, we may just settle for a teleporter for the time being.
4. Fix the issues associated with conflicts between our day/night system and new effects that are causing artifacts, such as bright fog at night.
5. Create functionality allowing players to craft their own ferrocrete so they can get started building that skyscraper they want to!
6. Build the whole IndieGoGo page.
7. Capture, edit, and narrate several new videos for the aforementioned campaign outlining all this cool stuff we've done for the game and also how to play it.
8. A few other odds and ends.

Our next big patch will come once Ferrocrete is functioning 90%, which will also be the patch where we introduce the new continents and hopefully a method to traverse them.

Thanks for your support!

Patch 07 Goes Live!

Push 007 is absolutely our biggest content addition to date and, we believe, marks a major milestone, not just for Divergence, but in the lineage of true MMORPGs to date. In this commit, we're pulling the project not just a few steps, but one full mile closer to that long-awaited finish line at long last. While still in upwards of a month to two away from being able to launch our third and final financing campaign, we're at a point where our confidence about being able to make a truly big impact is at an all-time high.

And thus, although I'd like to say a lot more and give every person individually who go us to this point a shout-out, it'll have to wait because I'm sure those same people would much prefer us to be working instead of dicking around blabbing on a dev blog. Therefore, without further ado:

Divergence: Online

Alpha 2

v0.07

Known Issues:

1. First-Gen Solitus eyes don't display the color they should. This is do to the replacement of their unique shader and the fact that we have to modify character customization code to compensate for it now.
2. Something's up with Androids, so don't try making an Android for the time being because it won't work, and I don't have time to "fix" people who tried it anyway.
3. You'll notice that the vast majority of craftable items require a very small amount of raw materials, and in many cases, the same materials. This is purely for ease-of-testing and very temporary. We can modify and assign any crafting schematic for any item at any time to be as simple or complex as we choose to allow for those items to be quickly made and tested in game. So feel free to play around with them and the crafting tool, but don't get spoiled because when Divergence launches, you won't exactly be able to build a starship engine out of five pounds of copper.
4. IGNORE THE PLANTS. We're fully aware that crazy amounts of grass, trees, and flowers aren't meant to be springing up from tundra. However, we needed to test our upcoming foliage system in a live-game setting and didn't want to wait until after we were ready to unlock the other continents, so we just threw some down here purely for testing.
5. Previously, the game patcher would CRC check every single file individually front to back. This resulted in wait times of up to ten minutes and was totally unacceptable. Although the patcher has been completely upgraded to reduce that time to less than two seconds now, it is, on occasion, forcing the player to re-download the entire game. Therefore, the likelihood is high that we're going to just have to replace the whole stupid thing with something that won't give us so many problems. Therefore, if you choose to install the game now from the updated installer, be forewarned that you may also be required to re-install the game entirely if we do, in-fact, replace the patcher in the coming weeks.
6. Some of the new items in the crafting tool appear up in the air or otherwise not perfect. Some of these needed to be re-oriented but we didn't feel like further delaying this update just for minor cosmetic blemishes so we'll be cleaning those up after the fact.
7. You must uninstall the current game in its entirety, as the above line mentions the entire patching system has been re-worked, and re-install via the link below.

In essence, it still needs some work, so if you choose to play the game at this moment instead of waiting, you have been forewarned of these issues.

Download Current Build Here

Having gotten that out of the way, what follows are the official patch notes!

Patch Description:

Originally, we'd planned on making it all about the addition of one major feature integral to the game; Automated Harvesting Machinery. However, once we began that process we realized that it really would be best if we, instead, built a system of powering devices first that would, in turn, be used to power objects such as these; Generators.

But... Once we'd gotten into that, again, then did we realize that it would also be beneficial to go ahead and create our desired system for managing all electrical devices in your area; A system of creating and managing power grids, or just "Grids" for short.

While this originally sounded like the kind of infrastructure that could take up to six months to develop, it became obvious early on that our ability to maintain a six-day workweek (and 7 for some) of no less than ten hours each day was resulting in rapid progress that grew steadily more efficient as time progressed.

It's that Goldilocks-zone that professional project managers regard as their white whale; Desperately trying to obtain but always out of reach. So when I looked around and realized we were in that valley, my job became overwhelmingly apparent; Stay in the god damn valley at any cost.

The result was that as of yesterday, we have functional, in the current version of the game, not one or two but all three features released in a single big patch.

What we're talking about is a fully-functional structure that allows for, as far as any of us are aware, the most advanced and expandable system of local and civic management in any MMO to date. It surpasses Star Wars Galaxies in its prime in many regards which will all be outlined below.

Coupled with our advanced crafting system already released what this allows the player to do is:

1. Locate resource locations throughout the game world of varying characteristics.
2. Survey, sample, and draw those materials from the terrain.
3. Use those base materials to craft fully-automated harvesting machinery, each item with vastly differing stats of its own based on the what resources you fed into its crafting, such as its energy efficiency, its maximum durability, the rate at which it can draw resources from the ground and other characteristics.
4. Use those same materials to custom-make your own power-generators and reactors with complimentary stats of their own, such as their own strengths, efficiencies, and capabilities such as how much power they can output at maximum.
5. Feed one, or several of your power sources into a centralized power-grid system.
6. Use a power-grid interface item, placed in the world, to manage both incoming power sources and outgoing power-consuming devices in realtime.
7. Turn on and off many devices, or even whole structures throughout your town from the grid interface, such as street lamps, cloning buildings, reactors, factories, and harvesters.

Power Generators:

Power, in the form of electrical energy, can come from many sources. The primary source being electrical power generators.

These generators, themselves can come in the form of anything from a small appliance-sized portable generator, or a large starship reactor such as the (pictured) Komatsu Series-8000 Starship-Grade Reactor.

Generators may also run in a number of modes of operation. Currently in game, they have two possible modes;

1. Power-Cell Charge Mode - This mode allows the generator to, when empty power cells of the appropriate size (small, medium, large) are placed inside the generator's input hopper, the generator can then charge these cells at a rate illustrated in it's inspection panel and controlled by the quality of components which went into it's construction. The purpose of this mode is to charge portable power cells which can then be used in other equipment which is desired to function without the need to be connected to an external power source, such as a generator or grid.
2. Grid Mode - This mode allows the general to feed into virtually any local power grid of which its manager has adequate permissions to do so. This allows the generator to power anything as small as a single overhead lamp to an entire structure or array of structures.

Power Grids:

Crafting a power grid item, placing it in the game world allows you to, through the use of it's Grid Interface Panel:

1. Display all connected power sources and their current online/offline state in the left panel.
2. Monitor all incoming and outgoing power demands, and sources, displayed in figures representing how much power you have available, compared against the maximum capacity of that hopper and also the total required load of connected devices on the right.
3. Turn on and off power-demanding devices to manage and balance your total input and output, on the right.

Automated Harvesting Equipment:

"Harvesters", are automated machines, deployable from your inventory onto the world's surface, that when activated and provided a power source, will continue to draw a specified resource (provided that resource exists at the specified location) from the ground and place it, in stacks, into the harvesters' output hopper where it can then be transferred to the player's inventory.
These devices, like others, can be powered by two means:

1. Internal Power - This mode allows the device to be powered solely from internal power, which comes in the form of pre-charged power cells placed in its input hopper. When brought online, the installation begins to produce the specified resource while slowly (or at least, at the rate allowed by its quality of components specified during crafting) drains the power cells.
2. Grid Mode - This allows the installation to draw its power from an external power source; A grid. This grid can be either a personal one you have set up yourself, or even a large, shared communal source fed by a multitude of individual power souces for you and your friends to use.

Visual Upgrades

• Added totally new tonemapping method, replacing the old "built-into Unity" standard with a new system that creates a much more cinematic visual experience with regards to color grading, depth, luminosity, and saturation.
• Added simulated retina-dilation effect. This effect simulates the expansion and contraction of the eye's iris when moving between areas of low and high brightness.
• Added totally new bloom method which replaces Unity's built-in system. Our new method isn't based on a simple brightness threshold like most "cheap" methods of bloom and instead is based on the way bloom actually occurs in real life; simulating bloom based on an overly-bright object or surface relative to it's surroundings.
• Added new dirty lens affect which becomes visible when looking into, or at, a very bright object or surface.
• Added a completely new and state-of-the-art method of SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) that totally replaces out previous method of simple ambient obscurance. This new method, in addition to accurately reproducing a much more natural and realistic effect, also brings to Divergence a brand-new experimental feature of color-bleeding; Which reproduces the known phenomenon of bright, or very richly-colored objects or surfaces bouncing some of their colored-lighting information to objects in near-proximity
• Enhanced Depth of Field effect has temporarily been disabled because some users reported it being "annoying".
• Improved all lighting on distant tree and foliage objects (billboards) to correctly shade these billboards based on the time of day.
• Increased default view distance to 3km (3000 meters) !
• Replaced night-time sky with our beloved night sky from the previous prototype.
• Reduced number of Malkavian Cormorants (The Birds) as they fly overhead by 50% of improve framerates. New separate flocks will be added in the future to create the same effect without hampering framerates.

Items

Added 37 new craftable items, including:

• Power Generators
• Harvesters
• Terminals (For Grids and ETC)
• Structure-building items such as floors, ceilings, walls, both internal and external.

Important Additional Notes:

This is some heavy stuff, and we're the first to admit that without some tutorials, very few people would figure out how to utilize all this crazy stuff on their own, so we're fully aware that videos explaining how to use all these features are a necessity.

The reality, however, is that we're flat broke and have been that way for a long time. And ecause we're flat broke, and several key items still need to be addressed, such as basic combat, the plain truth is that we're relying incredibly on our next and final financing campaign to provide the funding we need to finish the game and make it ready for Steam and an official launch. We need to make a maximum impact, during that campaign, and that means holding off on new videos until the time is right to do a "big unveil" to the whole public.

What we will be doing though, are several more blog posts, demonstrating, through imagery and instructions, how you navigate this system should you choose to have a look at it as-is instead of waiting.

What's next for Divergence?

The next few weeks will be spent on the following four tasks:

1. Streamlining, squashing bugs, and overall cleaning up all of the features we added in this push. Many parts of the interface alone need to be improved to allow for an enjoyable and user-friendly experience.
2. The long-awaited re-introduction of our popular blocks system from the original game prototype, but completely upgraded and re-imagined. While you're certainly able to build an entire civilization out of crafted items in Divergence, players loved the simplicity of building with blocks as well. Additionally, there are many benefits of using blocks to blueprint or construct a skeleton of a building before actually committing to it's construction. Re-introducing blocks into the game, we believe, will be one of the final steps (the other being basic combat) required to take the game from being a proof-of-concept piece to an actual game,
3. New blog posts outlining the actual processes and steps required to use all of these crazy awesome tools we've just put into the game.
4. Deciding on a more permanent solution to the patcher situation.

Thanks for reading this far and for your continual support. We couldn't have made it this far towards creating a truly revolutionary mmorpg without you!

Patch 07 is coming and it's going to melt your face off.

Just a quick update to let everyone know what's going on with the game this week.

Version .07 is on its way and it's going to be big.

What's in it?

Without giving out the surprise, what I can say is that we had originally intended on making the next patch all about "X", but development went so well that it's actually going to include X, Y, and Z all in one patch.

• Many, many new items, item types, and new actions for those items.
• Many new additions and improvements to in-game camera and world object effects.
• Many improvements to existing character and object models, textures, and materials.
• Our biggest addition of new game features, in one single update, to date.

All-in-all, with these and more massive upgrades coming to the game world, Campaign 3 is looking to be our biggest, baddest campaign to date.

Ok, I'm still waiting for a video on harvesting, and now you're doing all this advanced stuff? When can i/we expect to see some actual video demonstration of these features?

We really, really want to put those videos together but the simple reason why we've only been sharing images thus far is because, although undoubtedly they would, and will, generate considerable buzz for the project, the truth is that would likely not result in that buzz generating any kind of financial income for us to continue with development. As much as I personally am looking forward to making those videos, with as "not yet on the global radar" as Divergence is, we really have to suck it up and wait until our next campaign as ready. That way we can use the unveiling of all these new features to help fuel our next campaign and see that it reaches its goal.

And as always, anyone who has contributed at or above the Gold Alpha level can simply log into the game at any point after this week's patch and try out the new stuff whenever they like. If you want a personal tutorial, you're just going to have to wait a little bit longer ;)

Thanks again for all your help guys, and please feel free to check the devblog this coming week so you'll know right when new content is added as promised.

The Breakup - It's Not Me, It's You... (Plus Hoppers!)

We've been a part of each other's life as far back as i can remember. We watched the turn of a new century unfold together.

But you're kind of a shithead.

The issue people have been having with patching is because my host, who I've been with forever, instituted a "filter" a while back to keep people from using "too much bandwidth". What this basically entails is, if any IP address draws too much data, it locks out that IP and you get that "NEGATIVE CAPABILITY: Can't download stuff" error that has been pissing people, including myself, off as of late.

I've given them over two months to successfully remove us from this system but even after dozens upon dozens of emails and phone calls, it still happens, so I'm saying the hell with it and moving on.

The entire contents of our host, which means many files required for the website, the patcher and all files, forums, and databases, will have to be migrated to a new host. I've already set it all in motion and solidified a battle strategy, so now it's just a matter of switch-flipping.

This will not require the game itself to be taken down and will remain online through the entire process. It will however, prevent the game from downloading new patches, so we're trying to get as many updates as possible out for you guys before the site is taken down pending migration.

Also, since the forums haven't been used much as of late, I'm going to be taking this opportunity to do a much-needed update to their database structure for security-sake and probably wipe them - Or at the very least, archive all the threads and posts and start anew with a fresh system once we're ready to begin our new campaign and new users begin to flood in.

Now onto the updates!

Alpha 0.062 :// Hoppers!

Keeping with the spirit of the breakneck pace we've been able to chuck out updates over the last few weeks and months, 0.062 was completed, as usual, ahead of schedule, releasing the basics of an innovative new feature that we hope will help put us on the map; Hoppers.

What is a "Hopper"?

In Divergence, "hoppers" are one of, if not the, most important item or structure that exists. They provide a linking point between the actual game world and your character in that, unlike some other games, in Divergence, you can build on any land you damn well please. No ridiculous "zones" or "areas" that are pre-flattened and space-determined. If you like that spot on that hill, make it your home. No bullshit, just do it.
But how does one get from "I've made walls, how do i make them into a home?" to a respectable property?
The answer is with a hopper.
In the world of Divergence, a "hopper" is a piece of electronic machinery between the size of a PC tower or even a home itself that, when online, allows any and all objects placed within it's range to become one with it on a molecular level.
The item itself is contained within the hopper on a molecular level - Condensing every atom down to a fraction of what it was within the hoppers internal storage.
When you pack up a hopper, removing it from the game world and placing it back into your inventory, the hopper compresses all objects within its responsibility down to mere fractions of what they were before so that an entire property-worth of possession can fit into a space smaller than a washing machine.

The only limitation is mass. The more mass the hopper must compress, the more energy it must utilize. Additionally, merely reducing the space between subatomic particles does not reduce the actual mass/weight of an object, it merely makes it more compact, so there is a limit to how much each hopper can manage. The better hopper you make, the more stuff you can have and at a cheaper upkeep rate.

Am I limited to just one hopper per character?

No, you are not. Right now, you can have as many as you like but keep in mind that again, they will, very soon in the future, require upkeep; money. If you let your hopper's upkeep or maintenance pool drop to zero, it will begin to take damage to it's condition, which when it reaches zero, will explode, taking all contained items with it.

What types of hoppers are there?

Hoppers come in four sizes:

1. Small (The size of a PC Tower - This one is used rarely)
2. Medium (A size suitable to contain an average-sized home)
3. Large (A size capable of hosting a large home and surrounding property)
4. Civic (A huge hopper used in cities to allow things such as street-lamps to be saved to the city hall, instead of the individual person's home)

Can hoppers be moved?

You bet your ass. If you'd like to move your life to another corner of the game world, all you need to do is access your hopper and pack it up with the pick-up command. The hopper and all its contents will then be reduced to a small item in your inventory that you can take with you wherever you go, and expand once again wherever you please. Keep in mind that this process eats a lot of maintenance, so it can get costly depending on the amount of stuff you have inside the hopper.

What about, can they move "in the game world" or are they purely stationary objects?

We built our systems from the ground up to be the best around, and keeping with that spirit, virtually any object in the game world can be built to contain a hopper of its own. A few examples would be:

Guns can be hoppers as well, allowing attachments to be saved to the gun itself the same way as anything else.

Vehicles such as boats and land vehicles can be reconfigured to the creators whim. Put lawn chairs on your yacht, a BBQ or remove the top and make it a convertible. Do whatever you like.

An example of this functioning right now in the game world is the absolutely huge DC ship parked on the ice of Arabast. The ship itself is one huge hopper, built to allow its owners to completely designed the interior as they see fit. Don't believe me? Fucking log in and see for yourself.

Am I the only one who can add and remove stuff on my property or can my friends help?

As of patch 0.062, Divergence now has a fully-functional "Admin System". This allows you to access and add or remove the names of any character currently in the game world that you'd like to also have the ability to add and remove from your property. You and your friends can collaborate on that big base just the way you were hoping, but be forewarned, the temptation to stab you in the back and steal your stuff will be great.

What's next?

Now that we have this beast wrangled, we're already knee-deep into developing functionality for both power generators (to power your fancy lights and base defenses) and automated harvesting installations. Expect to see those features outlined in our next devblog post.