Patch 043 Resource Harvesting Arrives In Divergence!

Version 0.043

Day/Night Cycle & Environment

• Improved overall cycle performance
• Added Aurora Borealis - You will see it begin to come into view at night based on your latitude (north/south). Normally you'd need to be much more northerly or southerly regions to be able to see it, but since this island you're on now has been temporarily placed at the equator to make development easier for us, we've reduced the latitude requirements to see it in the night sky. Enjoy!
• Added 3D positional cumulus clouds. They swell and dissipate (albeit a bit too fast right now which will require refinement) and once we're satisfied with them, we'll bring back the pre-existing stratus and cumulo-stratus clouds to add them all together.
• Added Atmospheric Fog to the existing basic distance fog.

Game Features:

Added Resource Surveying!

New in Alpha 2, version 0.043 is the backbone of the game's entire economy - Resource Surveying! After choosing Novice Artisan as a profession, players will now be given their first Multipurpose Survey Tool in their inventory for use. Covered in a future video detailing the process, the surveying tool will allow the crafter using it to locate pockets of exactly the type of resource(s) they're looking for, it's location, and relative concentration in the game world.

Added Resource Harvesting!

In addition to being able to locate resource types of your choosing, you can finally start to build that stockpile of ore you've been dreaming of by also pulling the resources out of the ground directly. "Resource Sampling" is how every newbie crafter get's their start - Locating pockets of good resources and drawing them out of the ground directly with use of the Multipurpose Survey Tool. Once you've improved your skill in the Artisan tree, you'll be able to implement automated harvesting rigs (Harvesters) to continually draw materials out of the ground while you're away.

Added Resources:

New Resource Types:

• Inorganic
• Mineral
• Metal
• Non-Ferrous
• Copper
• Aluminium
• Ferrous
• Steel
• Iron
• Gemstone
• Crystalline
• Amorphous
• Low Grade Ore
• Sedimentary
• Siliclastic
• Carbonate
• Igneous
• Extrusive
• Intrusive
• Radioactive
• Solid Petrochemical Fuel
• Chemical
• Fibroplast
• Malkavian Fibroplast
• Arabastian Fibroplast
• Inert Petrochemical
• Liquid Petrochemical Fuel
• Gas
• Inert Gas
• Reactive Gas
• Water
• Salt Water
• Purified Water

Added Resources Containers:

• Energy Gas
• Energy Liquid
• Energy Radioactive
• Energy Solid
• Inorganic Chemical
• Inorganic Gas
• Inorganic Mineral
• Inorganic Water
• Organic Food
• Organic Hide
• Organic Hide Bristly
• Organic Hide Leather
• Organic Hide Scaly
• Organic Hide Wooly
• Organic Structure

Skills Panel:
We've completely stripped out all the placeholder code for client-side-only "messing around with the panel" and as of today, you can actually begin to choose real professions from the menu that persist to your character indefinitely. This required us to completely remove the profession-selection from character creation (seeing as it didn't really do anything useful) and now you can choose a profession simply by opening the skills panel, finding it on the list, and clicking "learn". Right now, we're focusing on the foundations of the economy, so Novice Artisan is the only one that lets you do anything, so feel free to check it out! Additionally, the game now stores and recalls actual XP given from actions, such as sampling materials rewards you with surveying XP which you can use to purchase additional boxes in the Artisan profession tree.

What's Next?
Now that we have the absolute "ground floor" functioning in the game, the next step is to provide the tools necessary for players to combine those materials into crafted items such as clothing, weapons, homes and other types of structures. Therefore, in addition to regular bug-fixes and improvements on existing stuff, our focus is now on creating the actual crafting tools and schematics required for item assembly.

Additionally I'm working on new land masses that will be introduced once we've finished these two tasks and can move onto enabling the mass transit (vehicles) required to traverse open ocean and visit (and plunder) other continents as well.

As always I want to thank everyone in the community who has contributed to make this incredibly undertaking possible. The alpha has already surpassed the functionality of many "launched" game titles out there and we've never been more confident that one we've improved what we have and finished the crafting tool and the foundation required for basic combat, we'll be ready to make our presence truly known on the internets.

January Progress!

It's been a crazy three weeks since our initial release of Alpha 2. We've gone up from version 0.001 all the way to nearly version 0.03, nearly 30 updates in less than 30 days! Here are some of the highlights:

1. Complete implementation of humanoid inventory and management.
2. Added Complete OSI Armor Suit 1 in three pieces; Chest, Arms, Legs,
3. Added VRTek Tactical Recon Suit 1 in one full-body piece (Individual parts to follow)
4. Added social clothing options in several pieces, shoes, pants, jacket, gloves, belt, hat, even shades.
5. Day/Night cycle now set by server (now it's actual day and night where everyone sees the same time of day!)
6. Day/Night now calculates latitude and longitude based on your locational coordinates and positions suns, planets, stars, and moon cycles based on your location on the world itself! (the further from the equator you get, the shorter and longer your days and night become, as well as totally different atmospheric scattering of light colorization and intensities)
7. Social animations now play across the network, so players can see you mocking them :P (list is still being generated as more are being added currently)
8. Many new structures, houses, other buildings added (This will be covered more thoroughly in an upcoming devblog post)
9. Player Housing and Cities Basics

Player Housing!

The first steps went in the week of the third and over the course of the last couple weeks we've drastically improved prefab-housing. To those unfamiliar with the project, there are two primary means of player housing and civic development (player cities) in Divergence.

1. Design and construction of homes and structures out of parts, such as individual wall modules, doors, etc.
2. Placement of whole-structures within the game world itself, AKA "Prefab Houses" those familiar with SWG will no-doubt recognize immediately. These structures can have anywhere from one to up to 20 individual rooms within them.

Our primary focus has been on first implementing prefab-houses since that is the less complicated of the two solutions and finalizing it paves the way for the first method of building via parts.

This system is now complete!

For testing, we've added several structures to the game and basically went around throwing them everywhere we could and then ripping them back down to see how the world reacts. Results are completely solid and reproducible! 

So where does that leave crafting these things?

That's where we're focusing now. "Resource acquisition and implementation". In order to build the stuff, you first need to get the materials out of the ground by way of harvesters. No "node clicking" In our game!

Over the next several weeks we'll be implementing and refining a server-wide system of resource locations for common materials such as ores, organic and inorganics and so other materials that will, once ready, allow for the very first crafted objects in Divergence to finally be constructed.

In addition to resource acquisition, i'll be simultaneously furthering the development of our "parts" system; The one that everyone was so happy with during the prototype :)

ADDITIONAL to the additions, all new artwork showcasing new ships and even guns will be incoming in the very near future as they are completed, preparing all the different aspects to be completed in time to be included into the game at last.

I want to thank everyone who contributed to get us to this point. With your support we'll be able to continue this streak of progress straight on through to our last few "bare minimum" features including basic harvesting/crafting and basic combat!

At Long Last... Divergence: Alpha 2 NOW LIVE

What a long, crazy voyage it's been.

In September 2013 with two small yet successful crowdsourcing campaigns under my belt, I remember thinking that surely 2014 to come was bound to be my best year yet.

What ended up happening was 12 months of backbreaking labor that, at the end of the day, didn't result in a game that was superior to the damn prototype that I had in 2013.

How is this possible? I'd like to blame one single factor or individual, but the truth is there isn't one. Rest assured, there was zero laziness. If you heard me say i was pulling 12 hour days, what i really meant was 15 and hoping my pancreas wouldn't shrivel up before it got released. However there are many games that one person can make, and this just isn't one of them. IF... I, or the community, were ok with settling for a game that needed to support only 100 people or less on a series of servers, or IF we were ok with drastically reducing the amount of customization, or perhaps going with tab-targeting instead of live combat, there would have been a game in 2014.

But the mandate the community gave me when they invested themselves in this project was there is to be no compromise. None. This is the pact that we agreed to at the beginning of this voyage, and if you're angry it's taken this long, then at least you'll be pleased to know that no such "watering down" has taken place.

This is the real McCoy.

And finally, the turning point came...

What had to happen was a long time in coming. I had to basically become an even bigger prick than I was already and start cutting ties that, by even the most gracious measurements, just plain weren't doing shit. Free help isn't free, if it costs you a year of your life. After much heated debate I ended up putting all my cards on the table and devoting to a radical new approach: To scrap the half-finished work of others and create our own networking system from the ground up so what I/we would never again be trapped under the rotting carcass of "someone elses black-boxed code".

I had no money left but my two best programmers Ana and Dan were so entirely confident that this was the right approach that they volunteered to work with me every single day for one month pro-bono to get this new alpha version of the game launched.

The result is this: Divergence: Alpha v0.001

The game that exists right now doesn't look like much, but in just one month's time we've already conquered mountains that we struggled to overcome for an entire year with the old system. It's sleek, lightweight, and most importantly 100% tailored to our specific needs because we built it with our own hands from the ground up. Nowadays we don't have to spend even one second trying to find a workout to some pre-existing system that stood in our way for literally months at a time before.

For the most part, the community was far more understanding than they should have been. If I gave some assclown $100 expecting to be in a new version of the game in a couple months and it took a year, I'd be one mad sumbitch. It's because of this incredibly supporting attitude from the community that anytime anyone did "turn on" me or the project, I took it really seriously and it was basically because I felt like i was letting someone down simply because i couldn't duplicate myself and have 5 me's all working on the game instead of just the one. In actuality, If we waited another month to push the game, it would absolutely, absolutely be even better than it is now.

However, i just cannot risk losing even one more friend I made back in 2013 to the ravages of time; This has to happen now. Now, damnit.

Special Thanks To:

My two guardian angels for this push were Dan and Ana; Putting in 14-18 hour days for the past month to make this launch happen. We literally all worked back-to-back rising and sleeping in shifts. If you see anyone by those names on our forums, please shower them with praise.

Also a huge thank you to Austen Lindsey for keeping us afloat when we hit rock bottom, as well as Corey, Mattis and all the crazy people who contributed financially to the cause from out campaigns and web store. It literally wouldn't have been possible without you.

And so without further ado, I'm releasing the first new version of Divergence in over a year to the general public for immediate (and hopefully ravenous) consumption by the masses.

This is NOT an MMO that exists in a series of dozens if not hundreds of servers. The game world you're going to be entering is the only one in existence. If you know anyone else on planet Earth who plays this game, they're in the same server. It's because of this feature that anything we do in this game is exponentially more difficult to accomplish than it would be in (what passes for) an MMO of today.

Harder, but absolutely worth it in our opinion, because the things you will do are undeniable to everyone else in the world.

Who can play?

Right now, anyone can download the game, make an account, log in, make a Homo-Sapien character and enter the game world. Alpha/Gold level contributors, rest assured, you aren't getting screwed over, because that's all free-users can to is "look". You're still the only ones who can actually affect things in the world.

Species and race permissions are LIVE. If you bought the Ennie perk, guess what, you can be a tiny lizard. If you bought a killer Vindicator, you can make that character as well. If you're gold, you can make synthetics, lokri, all that stuff. 

To gain these permissions, all contributors need to do is drop me an email at ethan@divergence-online.com with the name of your account and we'll hook you up just like in the prototype game.

In the future, i'd love for that to be automated but as it is right now, it's lower on the totem pole than "actual game features" so guess who get's to do the bitch work and add all those permissions by hand? ;)

Also this is the 64-bit version of the game. If you have an old crappy computer running 32-bit windows, you're going to have to chill for the time being until I have the time to deploy for that platform when we start building for linux and mac os as well.

Here are a list of things you shouldn't bitch about:

• The patcher looks like suck.
• I have to click the X after i make my account to get back to login and login with it.
• What, no music in the login screen?!
• I clicked a million keys at once and fragged character creation! (just restart it fool!)
• Some of the game windows are grey instead of  cool-blue like they should be right now!
• I paid $5 a year ago and i can't kill people who paid $1000 yet?!
• Some animations aren't 100% perfect.
• Sometimes, to open the chat window, i have to hit enter TWICE!
• It's too dark at night!
• It's not dark enough at night!
• I walked for ten miles then fell into the ocean and now i can't get out.
• Between 5:50pm and 6:pm in the game world the water looks stupid!
• I can't catch the birds.
• I stared at the sun and now i'm blind.

This version 0.001

Everything is going to be much, much better before we even consider considering any kind of release on Steam or otherwise. You're only reading this because you're an early, early adopter.

Will there still be another campaign and if so when?

Absolutely there will be. My original promise was that there wouldn't be a new campaign until one very simple thing was accomplished: turrets that players can place to defend their homesteads from interlopers. Are we there yet? No. Are we at least on the game-board? Absolutely. What was once a "Here's how we might be able to do it with the current system" is finally "We know exactly how to do that".

Let The Games Begin!

As always, thanks so much for your support guys. I'm very glad to say that you'll be seeing new updates on a regular basis as we push newer and bigger versions of the game each week.

The next thing i do will most likely be to start describing the actual instructions on how to play and make things happen, so check back here soon!

Download Here!

Divergence: Online - Alpha 2 Installer

New Major Update Coming

Short update just to say that I've been planning on making a major update for the past two weeks but still waiting on one update to our internal system that'll allow me to show it functioning which I expect will be ready around Tuesday of next week if all goes well.

Keep your eyes open!

New Divergence Wallpaper: The Northstar

Just a quick update to disseminate a new image to everyone following the game.

What I love about this scene is that players of our prototype game will recognize the actual in-game geography of the setting, such as the "twin peaks".

They'll also finally understand why I went to such great lengths to convince people not to build houses in the area surrounding the actual crash site, so that their stuff wouldn't be smashed under the weight of a falling ship from space ;)

Here we have DC personnel, lead by Ennie guides, showing soldiers the crash location of other "offworlders"; In this case, the Omicron capital ship "OSV Northstar", Shortly after planetfall, OSI survivors are already busy trying to assemble some semblance of a base camp outside the wreckage of their ship. They should work fast, because who knows how long until survivors of other rival organizations (such as DC) will discover their location and find them in a quite vulnerable state.

Enjoy!

First Player Vessel and Community Contribution Opportunity!

So the plan was originally to make our big showcase all about "This is what a player-owned ship looks like in our game" and make a big deal about how the players themselves actually obtain and express power in Divergence.

This ship was designed and implemented for a gentleman named Austen Lindsey who made a large enough investment to keep our doors open for a good period while we worked on the rest of the game.

Please note that, as Austen is aware, that there is no sum of money that would convince us to deviate from our core strategy of "hardcore". In this case, and as the case with the islands we've created for players and many other unique objects, management and protection are entirely the owners responsibility. For example, Austen's character is a clone of the ship's existing actual (see-also "captain"), however he knows full-well that this is an actual role-playing game and his character is no more than a heartbeat away from having some young upstart take him out of the equation to seize this seat for themselves. That's why, after much discussion, we came up with an idea.

We talked it over and decided to make an event out of allowing the players to propose a name for this, their first base of operations on Rook. It's a sly move on his behalf, I'll admit, getting his roots in deep and early, cultivating loyalty in those fellow faction-members who step aboard this massive ship for food, shelter, crafting, repairs, or whatever their motive.

Therefore, we're opening a new thread on the forums purely for proposals and discussion of this matter.

Below I've included as much relevant data I can think of that might help you clever people come up with your own ideas for a designation.

Just as a final bit of info, so you have some idea of the general formula this faction usually follows.

1. Names of influencial people, designers, engineers, financial supports. "DVSC Yashimoto" or "DCSV Tom Jones"
2. Names of notable places, such as "DCSV Saratoga"
3. Nebulous names such as "DCSV Nostromo"

Thanks for reading and good luck with your ideas!

http://www.divergence-online.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=486

-Ethan Casner

Make: Darius Conrad Space Vessels
Class: Logistical Weapons Platform
Prefix: DCSV
Length: 638m
Lifespan: Current In Service
Range: <1 Light-year from mothership

Armament: 6x Missile Batteries, 2x Heavy Rail Delivery Systems
Shielding: Kinetic + Reactive Shields
Propulsion: 3x Soren Mk3 Heavy Ion Drivers, 8x Vental Repulsorlift Emitters (For Planetary Flight)

Primary Role:
The Darius Conrad Logistical Weapons Platform serves primarily as a troop and fighter carrier with it's 300m of internal runway and maintenance-bays. Additionally this platform allows for emergency planetary landings via 6 extendable pillars and a large ventral loading ramp. This platform, while primarily of use as a carrier, is also fitted with six missile batteries and two enourmous rail cannons, each capable of delivering a one-metric-ton aluminum payload at ultra-high-speed, making it ideal for sub-orbital bombardment.

Condition:
This platform sustained heavy, yet salvageable, damage on both re-entry and crash-landing just above the polar cap of the moon. It's survival, despite the destruction of three other DC vessels which were also pulled into the planetoid, was largely due to the fact that this series features eight ventrally-installed repulsorlift emitters, normally allowing for planetary flight. While crushed on impact, along with the existing landing support struts, surviving DC personnel have been working day and night trying to restore the ship's hull and systems.

Status:
This platform, currently under repairs, now serves as Darius Conrad's first and foremost base of operations on Rook. While a makeship city is slowly appearing in the snowy bluffs surrounding the ship, the other factions know one thing about DC, "DC does not stay put". It's believed that from this frozen tundra, once established, DC will make efforts to spread to other, more hospitable parts of the moon.

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...