Keep your eyes peeled!

So you've had a look into our new in-depth character creation system from our last post and some of the bugs that were listed have been purged, one of which was the animating error. All networked animations are playing nice with each other which is great.  The second bug to iron out is a huge one that deals with character equipment and we are currently putting the final nails in that coffin.  Keep an eye out for our next update where we'll show off a bit of this equipment in action!

I'm also going to try and update this blog a bit more regularly to kind of clue you in on what goes on in the development cycle as it happens.

Oh, and I'm Brandon by the way...

Massive Customization Upgrade Live

Well it took longer than I'd hoped, but we're finally at the point where we can begin to show the fruits of the last several months of labor.
The speed of progress is directly linked to the fact that it's a constant struggle for me to hold onto reliable help, and that is directly linked to the fact that I can't pay them much.

So what am I doing to rectify the issue?

The goal has always bee a new crowdsourcing campaign, but when I brought it up in a poll on the website, the most vocal people not insisted, but demanded that I finish this leg of development with what was available, so that's what happened and this is the speed things get done without the financing the grease the wheels.

So you keep saying how you don't have money, but wasn't the kickstarter a success?
This is the common misconception that I fully admit to having misunderstood myself at the time. The goal of the kickstarter was a success, but how much did we actually clear out of it? Less than $11,000. No one explained to my the multitude of ways you can get cheated out of money with Kickstarter and everyone assumes (as I assumed) that "what you see is what you get", although the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

The result was, what most people perceived as a success, but the reality was I now had less than $11K to spend on the entirety of the game. This is less money in a year than the average person would make as a sandwhich artist at Subway, and yet i had to find some way of salvaging the situation. Undoubtedly, any other entrepreneur would have just declared the whole thing a flop and walked away at that moment, but that isn't a possibility for me. This game must happen. Not just for myself, but for there to be any hope for the mmorpg genre itself. That's what I believe.

So I started taking private contracts and dumping that money into the project. Thankfully I've built up enough of a positive reputation people are still willing to hire me to do custom assets, models, and other work for them, which has helped. Additionally, I opened up a web store on the website, while only making a few hundred dollars each month right now, again every bit helps when my ability to keep progress like this video going is directly related to when the two guys working for me perceive we're flat broke. It all helps. It's not enough, but at the very least it's a mechanism for helping us glide across the finish line of this milestone into a new financing campaign (you can bet your sweet ass we're going back to IndieGoGo) in the future. In the meantime, I'll be continuing to return emails and entertain all offers for independent work to keep these wheels turning. If Divergence needs blood, it'll be my blood that supplies it.

What is the technical state of the game?
The prototype has been online for a good long while now, free to play to all contributors past the $100 threshold and will remain to until it's no longer relevant. In addition, our current unity-powered incarnation of the game (that you see in the video) is also running nearly 24/7 on the same server, more or less solidly.

• The nice pile of clothing and armor models we have created need to be equippable to the character via inventory. The commands appear to be successfully being sent back and forth but the visual change is taking place. We need to find this bug and crush it.
• People don't see other people animate. Find bug. Crush it.
• The ocean creates a weird effect with the sky. Find. Crush.

These are the primary things I'm devoting myself to conquering with the help of a couple guys i've convinced to help finish this part of the game with the promise of future profits. As you can imagine, this is nearly impossible on it's own, so any and all revenue we can generate in the meantime will be immensely helpful in making this happen.

Hello there.

Hello, I am Travis (LordVe on the Forums.)

I am the Lead Programmer for Divergence, and the one you all need to take your ire out on.  It is my insistence that the Game is Stable before we allow players in, it is never fun to see all your hard work disappear due to a bug.  You will have to forgive yet another Soon^TM, but it will be Soon^TM.  With great luck, it will be Really Soon^TM.  We are not far off from being able to allow all the wonderful backers in to play around, you will be rather amazed with the game when you do. I would love to follow Ethan's Example and show some Nice screenshots, or give Detailed information, but I can't since it would ruin the surprise. Just know, we are working as hard and as fast as we possibly can and will give you what information we can.

I hope you all have a wonderful day, and I hope to see you all in game soon.

Community Input: Tell Us What Tattoos and Markings You'd Like To See!

As we we begin to tie together the finishing touches to the limits of our customizability we're at the point just beyond things like eyebrows where bodily markings are getting realized. while putting together all the existing ideas and turning them into usage tattoos, birthmarks, and other designs in the game I thought it might be fun to give the community a chance to get involved and recommend a few designs they'd like to see in the game if possible. I'll be posting this on the official forums hopefully today where people can post images they've either made or just found for reference and give us their ideas about what kind of engraven images they'd like to adorn their character's bodies with.

Website Update and Remaining Tasks

I've had so many people emailing me personally who just recently found out about the project saying "I was going to contribute but I can't find a way to do it" that I decided to add a shopping cart to the website with some of our previous perks.

I'd still like to spend a bit of time filling in the descriptions on the perks but I think at the very least now this should help a bit and keep me from having to spent a lot of time away from the game filling out custom orders on paypal.

So if you have any friends or family who are still looking for a way to get in on the ground level, this is that way :)

Turrets. Yes, turrets are still missing from the shop simply because I had to take a lot of time away from developing their mechanics to focus on some super secret stuff for the game before our next push. I think by now that when I say "we have super secret cool stuff coming" people will recognize that when that happens, it means there really is something great coming... ;) We're a few weeks away from pushing it out but hopefully less than that before we can let people back into the game.

Our issue is, believe it or not, there is no game patcher right now. I know we had a kickass one before but that was in a different programming language and to be blunt, Unity is incompatible with it. My goal is to have that functional before we open the gates again, but worst case scenario, although i will hate to do so, if we just can't get it going in satisfactory time i may have to resort to distributing the game client the old fashioned way and patch it up as we go.

Another big thing is that for the first time, your account will actually reflect the contribution level you're at and unlock only those species/things you've contributed for. I know... BOOOooo right? Well cry me a freaking river you got to run around as a Veli for free for like four months during the prototype you poor babies. Don't despair though because with the website finally able to take orders for these unlocks, you'll be able to "buy in" for a contribution level appropriate to the amount of stuff you want very easily.

Again, sorry it's taken a couple weeks longer than I wanted, but without a steady source of income I'm just glad my guys haven't walked yet.

If you want to make it happen sooner, believe it or not our balance in the bank directly determines when that happens because I have to be able to keep people on just this project and not splitting their time working freelance to pay their bills. And even if you already contributed, don't be afraid to do so again because it really helps out and the main thing to keep in mind is that you will get something for it. We're a small and agile enough team that when people email us and say "I put in $50 already but I just did another $100, can I get something for having a total of $150" we actually can look it up and make certain that person get's an appropriate reward for the amount they've put in over time.

Anyways, enough "selling". Thanks again for not melting down and we'll talk again soon. Hopefully the next thing I post will be "here's the TS info - see you all there" :)

www.Divergence-Online.com

New Teamspeak and Land Grab Event Coming!

What's up with Teamspeak?

Even though I maintained a teamspeak account on Darkstar for many years, the server never got better. Anyone who spent time on our TS remembers it going down for minutes or hours virtually every day, so we finally junked it and moved to a new TS provider.

Since we're really close to being able to open the server back up after our overhaul to aspiring settlers, I figured why not go ahead and open them back up around the same time. This means we'll be announcing it's server address probably within a day or two before we open the gates to players.

What is still left before players can return to the world?

• Game Patcher. Before, we used a proprietary patching system that streamed the game contents to the end-user on demand. While no system is 100% unbreakable, it was pretty damn solid. What we have right now might allow connections, accounts, players, etc, I can't just zip it up and give it out to everyone on the internet or.. They'll have our raw game files. Therefore this is one major thing we're hashing out before we can open the world up again.
• Server State. While block placement are once again working in the game, they don't persist when the server restarts and you can imagine why this isn't something we can glaze over. This is our "for real" version of the game and people will expect  that the creations they give life to this time around will be there for all times. For this reason, we still need to solidify the new server's ability to save and retain this data in the manner required.

Divergence Land Grab Event

It's been a long road, getting from there to here. But we're finally on the horizon of being able to open up the Land Grab Event to those who bought it as a perk. What this means is that anyone included in this event will be granted a 24-hour early access to the game world to strike out and find that piece of land that appeals to them.

What races and breeds will be available this time around as opposed to the prototype?

Once the server's go online players (depending on their contribution level of course) will be able to choose from all five breeds of human for both male and female, Lokri male and female, Vindicator, Verrator, Ennie and Synthetic. We're even investigating the possibility of having DT in at launch.

What all options for character customization will be available as opposed to the prototype?

In this final version of the game the player has a ton of customizability. This is of course based totally on their choice of species. Synthetics have the least in that they merely inhabit a piece of machinery. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Humans and Lokri have have up to nearly 100 individual sliders to tailor their character's appearance exactly as they like. In addition to the options available at character creation, we're engineering the Image Design profession in-game to offer customization-levels beyond you can even accomplish in character creation.

What all professions will be functional?

This is something we're going to be building while we're moving. Meaning that at first, most likely only a few basic ones. The focus right now is to simply get people back into the game world playing and having a good time, then over the course of each week and month introducing more and more profession functionalities.

What's up with the new IndieGoGo? What happened with that?

I still plan on doing on in the near future but it will probably go live near the opening event. The reason being we plan to offer some collectors pieces such as unique tattooes or markings for a small fee to try and finance the game.

So last I heard you were flat broke? Is that suddenly not the case anymore?

It is, trust me it is lol. The only income we have right now is a couple paypal sales per week of early access to people who just recently found the game and are interested in contributing, so for any and all potential contributors, definitely keep those emails coming in :)

Holy crap, does that mean my chance to own a Vindicator or Verrator are up? What about the Ennie I wanted as well?!

This is going to be included in our IndieGoGo. We'll be giving one final chance to buy one of these breeds before saying "That's all..." Once that happens, barring extenuating circumstances, The number of living Vindicator and Verrator will be tallied and displayed for all to see, finally bringing into the forefront their struggle to resist the tides of extinction.

At that moment, the Veli story begins.

Thanks for your patience!

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.