Server Upgrades Now

Starting tonight, our prototype server will be offline while we begin the processes up upgrading to new software. It could be down anywhere from a few hours to several days but if it takes longer than a few hours, assume that's good news because it'll mean we got our new server system online on the first attempt and that the old system is now un-needed. If we can't get it up and running soonish, we'll bring the old server back online until it's time for the next stage of upgrading the software and hardware.

Revealed Professions List and New Weather System

A lot of people have been asking me "Exactly what professions are available in Divergence" and I've been really vague about it simply because I can't say with certainty which ones will be included at final retail... However I can say what are included right now, and it's a lot. A real lot.

It's no secret that we've tried to make Divergence: Online the spiritual successor to pre-nge Star Wars Galaxies. That has always been the goal; as was th take those original systems and expand on them to a great degree. This is why we've kept true to the vast majority of professions players can remember about those golden days and also added a ton of our own such as:

New Base Professions:

1. Hacker - This base profession allows the player to build up and improve on their ability to manipulate both computer hardware and software. Even with regards to their opponents cybernetic enhancements.
2. Mentalist - Mentalist is the profession of being an intellectual, which helps the player strengthen and build up their mental resolve and resources toward a variety of advanced professions. Mentalist also leads up to one of our most controversial professions "Psychic" which trains the player to harness pure psychic energy to inflict damage and manipulate both the world around them and other players.
3. Operator - A base profession that allows the player to improve their ability to both command and operate vehicles, as well as maintain and repair them.

The first thing players will probably notice is just how many original SWG-inspired professions we've been able to cram in so far. While not all actually provide adequate skill mods and abilities, this is part of the "filling out" process once "they are all in". Below will be a list of all current professions.

New Weather:

People loved out day/night cycle in the prototype and thus we've expanded on it even further to include a fully-functional weather system as well!

In addition to bright days and starry night skies filled with nebulae, players traversing the world will also occasionally be confronted with light rain, torrential alien thunderstorms with thunder and lightning, or even blizzards in some locations which dip below the freezing mark.

While still in it's infancy, the system is based on a complex formula which creates realistic probabilities for specific types of weather events based on factors such as temperature, season, longitude and latitude.

Below is a list of all current professions. Please take with our thanks and keep an eye out for more improvements over the next two weeks :)

Basic Professions

• Artisan: Crafting of all objects.
• Brawler: Skills that include hand-to-hand combat and weapons.
• Entertainer: Skills relating to music or dancing.
• Hacker: Skills relating to the use and specialization of computer hardware and software.
• Marksman: Skills relating to the use of ranged weapons.
• Medic: Skills allowing the player to tend wounds.
• Mentalist: Skills honing the players mental abilities.
• Operator: Skills relating to, and modified by piloting land, sea, and air vehicles.
• Politician: The management and utilization of civic structures and civil management.
• Scout: The negociation and utilization of terrain and survival skills.

Elite Professions

• Architect: Allows construction of houses and other buildings. 
• Armorsmith: Crafter specializing in armors.
• Carbineer: Marksman specializing in carbines 
• Chef: Crafter who can manufacture a wide range of foods. 
• Creature Handler: Scout trained in taming and controlling animals. 
• Dancer: Entertainer with increased healing abilities through dancing. 
• Doctor: A skilled surgeon with the ability to make medicines.
• Synthetics Engineer: An engineer who builds robot and synthetic bodies.
• Fencer: Brawler trained in all manner of one-handed melee weapons.
• Image Designer: A character capable of changing nearly anything about another character's appearance.
• Musician: Gains healing through music and access to more songs and instruments.
• Psychic: An individual skilled at dominating others and affecting the world around them using the power of their mind.
• Pistoleer: Marksman skilled at using blaster pistols and other small firearms. 
• Ranger: Adventurer well-suited to travel, tracking, and defending others in combat. 
• Rifleman: Marksman who is skilled using rifles and other large firearms. 
• Tailor: Crafter specialized in creating all types of clothing.
• Tera Kasi Artist: A master of unarmed combat.
• Weaponsmith: Artisan who has become a skilled weapons maker. 

Hybrid Professions

While Elite Professions indicate specialized training in focused areas, Hybrid Professions provide a broader base of skills. Because they are complicated career paths, Hybrid Professions often require some degree of proficiency in two other related professions, and may call for Master titles.

• Bio-Engineer: Excels at producing and harvesting organic resources.
• Bounty Hunter: A mercenary who earns his living by hunting down bounty marks.
• Combat Medic: A healer who also has some field training to increase his odds of survival in battle.
• Commando: A hardened soldier trained to use and craft heavy weapons. 
• Smuggler: An adventurer able to sell contraband and collect narcotics. 
• Squad Leader: A soldier whose very presence in a group provides benefits to all group members. 

Hope - For The Sissies Who Need It

6am and I'm finally close to being able to lay my face on a soft surface for a few hours before getting back to it.

We've had great progress which I have zero desire to jynx, so all I'm going to say is that Divergence has been officially "adopted" by our recent software switch (which i hope to fully announce at some point in the near future) and it's ambassadors have been bending over backwards for us these last two weeks. It's a long-needed breath of fresh air both for myself personally and the project.

The goal was to make the switch while retaining the quality of architecture and graphics we had previously, but i'm pleased to announce that, now with the full pipeline open before us to all of our dark purposes and all roadblocks swept away at last, we have no exceeded previous standards. Some things will require some tweaking obviously, but overall we will no longer need to "sell" this move as an upgrade - as one can see in the image below, it is apparent to all.

Normally being flat broke would find me in less than top spirits, but right now i'm feeling good enough about our near future that it isn't weighing me down.

New stuff to come soon.

-Ethan

Under The Hood

Well here we aren't aren't we. October came and went.

There's nothing more I would like to do than post up a big fat devblog with new images of this fantastic new structure we have, but the truth is that just can't happen right now as much as I want it to.

Everyone involved knew that we were about to be saddled with a crap-ton of boring "under the hood" work until anything like "new flashy stuff" emerged. I'd be lying if I said i didn't foresee us through that by now, but at this point I think placeholders for the most important features can only hurt us and I'm opting out of that.

We worked in the placeholder inventory once before. Remember how that worked out? People running around undressing each others characters without consent? I won't go down that path again.

Don't I have any good news at all? Well some as it turns out at least.

During the course of "porting" from one renderer to another, we gradually came up with an answer to one of our most frequent questions; Will we be able to retain the existing world?

The idea we have currently is that, while in the interim of working out the new systems with the new software, indications are that there is a way for us to copy or duplicate all of or at least parts of the existing game world into the new one. What this means is that, if we can pull it off, there's a good chance the nice flashy client we have right now can be used by contributors as a sort of "world editing tool" whereas data made to that world is semi-automatically (once every hour or so) copied over to the new world.

It's something at least and i'm always on the lookout for ways of giving people something to entertain themselves while the real work is being done.

Hopefully I'll have more on this within this coming week.

Thanks for being understanding as always.

-Ethan

October Changes

It's been almost a month since our kickstarter campaign ended.

Out of the $19,626 people think we got from that campaign, the truth us that the project only netted maybe 11K of that. The reason is the difference between how kickstarter handles payments as opposed to indiegogo. More specifically, payments through kickstarter (because it uses amazon payments) aren't actually billed until after the campaign is completed, and because of that, can actually bounce. In our case, a huge percentage of those contributions bounced. Creditcards over their limits and so on. The whole time I've been noticing other peoples kickstarters in the past I've always thought, "Wow they made $20,000?". I had no idea that the reality is evident that you don't actually get what you think you will. There's a huge amount of letdown that occurs when someone pledges $1,000 only for their payment method to bounce and you get literally nothing.

Also, our policy of "you get your access immediately when we see your contribution", while well meaning, basically ended in a ton of people getting free access the whole time after they played for a month then their creditcard on file bounced for the contribution they set.

And now to the biggest issue which we've spent the better part of September smashing our heads over and the eventual resolution that came of it.

We have no choice. We have to do a graphics renderer switch. It's the last thing in the world I wanted to do but the issue is that the one area we did not have access to was the data stream itself. It wasn't necessary to utilize the kinds of crazy features our players have enjoyed thus far, but as insane as it sounds, the initialization of the most basic feature you can imagine, such as a functional inventory system required to finish itemizing the game, is more or less impossible.

The Cons:

1. There will be percievably no new or future updates to the existing game unless something changes. It stays as it sits aside from the fact that i may add more assets such as the new OSI parts once they're ready.
2. It's going to set us back at least a month, which means setting back the date we can throw up an Indiegogo campaign for the sales of turrets and defensive structures by an equal amount of time.
3. Less new assets than I had anticipated because of the manpower it's going to take to do the conversion.
4. We (temporarily) lose the specific effects associated with our day/night cycle. The graphics won't look as nice for the first month or so, especially with regards to grass and foliage.

And now the Pros:

1. We'll finally have open access to our own shader pipeline and able to create our own, paving the way for improved graphics in the future. Although they will look more primitive for now, as time progresses our shaders will continue to become more complex and elaborate until they eventually surpass what we already had.
2. Actual support from a business, not just one guy on the other side of the planet.
3. Divergence goes from 1/3 of a programmer to 3 full-time coders including for the first time, our new Lead Programmer, Steven.
4. No "hacking" required to integrate the features we want in the future.
5. We keep our existing server accounts system. If you had access before, you have it now and at the level appropriate to your past contributions. If you could log into the prototype, you can log into the "real game", even at the same time if you wish.
6. 100x quicker and easier integration of our character customization system.
7. An even larger game world... I know this will surprise a lot of people, but the fact remains that the lack of occlusion was one of the only limitations of the prototype and with our new renderer, that limitation is now removed.
8. We're leaving the prototype up 24/7 for people to play in as long as they wish. It's our goal to, while working out our system for packaging area contents (houses, buildings, etc) retain a consistent data storage language on the server so that, in theory, what you do in the world of the prototype appears in the "live game" simultaneously.
9. Higher resolution terrain with better resolution textures. If you had land, it looks better now. If you had an island, it's even more detailed.

In the end, it is a positive move and will certainly cut down our time to a somewhat finished product in the long term.

Our guys will continue to be on teamspeak every week, in our channel, doing our work some days beginning at 8am pst and ending as late as 5am. I want to thank everyone who has stopped in to teamspeak to offer their words of encouragement.

W're going to be working like madmen to have something amazing to show the community at the end of October.

Announcement: Ability To Package Area Contents Into "Pre-Made" Duplicatable and Transferable Assets

Sorry, had a bit of a crisis earlier which delayed the announcement.

What was previously a mere speculation of a long-term "possible" goal has been made possible;

The copying, duplicating, or otherwise replication of world area and it's contents, laying the foundation of features such as the ability for players to create their own "pre-made buildings and structures" for trade or sale.

Thanks for the help community.

Major announcement later on today, evening PST.

Major announcement later on today, evening PST.
A few people have been asking me about the possibility of functionality that would, in the distance future, allow for something very specific to take place and up until a few minutes ago i've been saying, "No... No do you have any idea how difficult that would be to pull off? Maybe in a couple years we'll investigate the possibility of that."

I got the godamn thing WORKING at 4:50AM...

People keep telling me I should sleep and this is precisely why I don't... Too many breakthroughs happen that you never expected at ridiculously late hours. Anyhoo. Going to TRY to sleep for a few hours now and keep the secret through additional testing for a few more hours until tonight ;)

-Ethan