We have had a busy last couple of months and we are working hard on providing the baseline version that everyone expects from the early access version of Factions: Origins of Malu. Things are moving along nicely despite our less then desirable circumstances.
We have been very busying getting this to up to spec and we are pleased that we have made some major strides here. We have not pushed a new build in a bit because our focus is to deliver the initial content in August.
Once Bender is behind us, we will release professor, we will be inviting people back to review and start to push the game as we will be at a feature set we will be comfortable with.
The next patch will focus on the following:
Player Building
Crafting
Malu!!! - You will get access to the actual planet of Malu which is very very large and wonderful place... (Wastelands first)
More to be announced
Moving forward we are very active in acquiring the means to bring people on full time to enhance and speed up our development. We still very much believe in our vision and we are committed to delivering it in its full form.
Purchase Warning If you are committed to the ongoing development of the game, please wait before you purchase. This is NOT a full blown game yet.
Also if you read this far, for the people who stuck with us and purchased the game, you can expect some goodies that no one else will be able to get ever. We will adding two new price tiers once we have Bender taken care of and with the release of Professor these rewards will come into effect.
Thank you for patience and support without it we would nothing at all.
TK
The struggle continues but there is light at the end of tunnel
The Brass Tax
We have been working hard in the background developing and getting ready to bring the goodness of Malu that our community has been waiting for. We have been slowed down more than we would have liked and so some updates have been pushed a little back. Going to be honest here it is going to take us a little more time than we hoped however we will be sure to keep pushing updates and communicating our progress.
Progress We have made our main develop branch live due to us switching our systems from the BG to the Zeta Scenario that community will need to solve to leave the moon and travel to Malu. There are some clues in the world right now and more on there way. Quests are not far behind we hope to get them in sooner rather than later.
Highlights - Core engine updates and upgrades
- Too many to list (If you really want it, we can post it)
- Performance Improvements - %30 Improvement across the board
- New abilities being readied to be brought in for testing.
- Lore objects have been continued to be added into the engine preparing for the leave of Zeta to Malu.
Timeline We aiming for the 1-2 months to get the remaining systems in and back into the fold, unless we are able to acquire more resources for development and get this baby back into proper ear. Remember we are a small indie with very limited resources and until we can people in a full time capacity we have to deal with this most unfavorable circumstances.
Target Scope - Quests
- Loot
- Lore Content
- Zeta Storyline
- All AI Functioning
- Finalized integration with Steam Accounts
Why so slow, well and I feel like a broken record, we lost a key Dev to which cause a massive delay in our ability to push out changes. We are a team of about 10-20 people which few are Devs. We are still working on fixing these issues but it will not be fixed until we get a proper marketed release or have secured funding to do. That is the cold hard reality that we are living in and our hands are tied, we could just throw up our arms and quit but we are behind this idea and 99% of our issues have been not able to secure full time dedicated resources due to funding.
Something Extra Over the course of the next month, we will putting out an Art book and Official Soundtrack to the paid folks a little treat while people to appreciate the world. For the people that have stuck with us and patiently waited and supported, I can say that a special armor set will be available for you once we hit this milestone and will only be available for the people have stuck by us.
Price Changes Once we are ready to get back to marketing and the baseline criterea is met we will annouce 2 new price tiers. For now please do not purchase unless you want to support the team.
Reviewers Waiting We are currently no accepting any press keys at this time (it is in a cue and once the game is ready for review will accept it.)
So there you have it, we will are here working away and within the next couple of weeks, we will be back to update on progress.
*Side note, we are very happy steam is offering refunds for people who buy this title without reading as they can get there refund back.
Thank you for your support,
TK
May 2, 2015 - State of Development
PROGRESS!
We are happy to report this time (honest!), we have our build working MMO wise and we have brought two more devs onto the team to help us speed up the development and they are doing a awesome job. It does take time because you don't just simply decide to jump on board and everything comes together easy, it takes a long time to get a understanding of the true glory we are working towards. So this is a long way of me saying this why its been dead last week here because we have buried in code / issues / tears and banging our heads against justice beaver records...
So why the delay, well let me tell you exactly why: - We were having an issue going from our character creation into the world, yes it worked on our little mini test environments but once we put it on steam things got messy. We were able to fix this 4 hours from when I am writing this.
- Due to some of these more pointed network and server development issues we did not want to say anything cause I hate giving dates and not meeting them and we were hoping to have some of these issues solved sooner but alias when you lose a main developer who was working a certain system and then you bring new people in it takes time.
So how long?
Well I will be 100% upfront, if things continue on this path and speed we should be able to start to push things out next week. Our biggest goal is getting to a patch every couple of days and so far this has been prevented (on purpose as we are not using our battleground build at all, refer to an older update were we explain why). They will be small patches but we will FINALLY be in a spot where we can bring in feature at a proper pace and fix bugs.
What else?
So we basically stopped all of our Promo the minute we decided to fast track the MMO and have politely asked our respective streamers to not check out us just yet so we can stabilize the insanity but once we are at a level where the people who purchased the game to date and our development team feel happy we will get this back out in the world. We have some solid plans for this and we will announce them soon or talk about them on our weekly streams. We will do a stream sometime next week and we will be sure to give you a couple days notice before.
We want to talk about Lore / Mechanics and Housing and Crafting so bad but we need to stabilize first before we go any deeper.
Mini-notes - Wastes is looking awesome
- Our first feature in a real print magazine, once its out we will share where and with who!
- A whole bunch of art and sound work is going
Should I buy now?
No, don't.... Please don't buy unless you want to support development. Broken or fixed this new MMO build we will be getting out to the folks who supported us to date very very soon. We want to be SUPER 100000% upfront in this regard because as much as we like and appreciate the money as it helps speed up we would prefer our integrity stays sound.
So back to work, we are almost there, yes I said that last week but damn it we are!
Thank you,
TK & The Many Many people working on the project!
(I know my spelling and grammar is terrible, but I was left in a dark alley as kid and all I had was a vic 20 and dog named lemons who taught me how to type....)
Servers & Tigers Oh My
As we prepare to start rolling out the MMO client of Origins of Malu, we will be restarting the game servers over the next couple days. We are starting to catch up now and almost back on track here. Once we have everything solid on our end we will announce a date for MMO to be pushed to people who purchased the game early. We are also aware of the wait and some of the delays in getting here and so something in store for all the people who stuck with us.
One other side note, for press keys we will not be sending them out until we get to the MMO phase.
Cheers,
TK
State of Development - April 17th, 2015
We have been busy developing the MMO side of things and progress is coming together nicely however with one unfortunate issue that came up this last week. We have lost a senior developer due to a personal situation. We send our thoughts and well wishes and hope for a quick resolution to their issues. A side effect of this has cost us some development time which is beyond frustrating for us as we want to get this in your hands and soon as damn possible.
We have always tried to be as honest as we can and sometimes we have had to be vague but that is only when we legally can't tell you why. I think it one of our best strengths that will tell you exactly what is going on good or bad....
The good news is though that because of your support, we are actively bringing in new Devs to the team with the Early Access earnings, so we have our plans in progress to speed up development and turnaround time and keep a forward momentum.
Now to the brass tax....
The Good
We have successful have the MMO world working, this means you can login with your account and create a character and logout and then come back in the world with your saved character.
The testing we have done up to this point have proved the servers are stable
We have got the majority of the creatures in with base level AI, meaning more mobs and NPC's for you interact with and destroy!
We have started to add clues and things you can interact with in the world. The part will be mostly clues but it will transform quickly into a more featured quest system over time
You will start to have to work together as a community to get of the Mountain Siege Area, the storyline that is about to take place once we get the new build out.
The not so good <*> One of our main programmers as stated above is currently away, this hurt our progress and has set us back a bit, we do have new people on board to fill the gap but no matter how you look at it, it’s a set back
<*> We are working on steam integration for the MMO and we have a couple solutions that we are testing but its taking a little more time then we thought
<*> We have implemented a lot of features about month before we were going to implement them so we are testing and fixing
<*> We gotta update the patch notes which we will this weekend
Understanding expectations We will be in the position to push out early builds next week and the patching going forward will be happening daily. This will improve in time to bring the proper full set of features as we progress. We just want to state that features will come in basic and quickly get better in small increments.
For the people who are still on the fence about buying, wait until next week and can you see what is coming and what is in, if there was a way to turn off the store until next week we would but we can't ;) However if you want to support the project and you understand what you are getting into then by all means buy away!
Community Mission: Get out of Zeta Zeta has a time limit on its usefulness and that limit is close to running out, once you get it into the world (mmo) it would be wise to talk to some of the elders in the village as time is short for Zeta…
[B] Stream Tomorrow – Delay until we resolve an issue. it will be rescheduled.
So ETA... We will put something out next week to start the roll out of the MMO, we will also put some more info out as the weekend comes to a close but rest assured you will get into the new build (and not its not a patch it’s a whole new build) next week. We will say at the latest end of week (Sunday April 26th, 2015) and best case early next week, say Wednesday April 22, 2015.
So in short, thanks for being so damn awesome, I swear its been nothing uphill and painful for us but every step brings us close and no matter is through at us, it may slow us down but it will never stop us...
Thank you,
Origins of Malu Team
Development Update - April 7th, 2015
Things are going extremely well and if things continue to keep going at the pace we are currently going we should be able to hit our target date of April 11th, 2015 to get people into the MMO. We appreciate the patience a lot of people have shown us while we execute these changes.
There seems to be a couple of folks who bought this and excepted it to be an MMO off the bat which kind of saddened us a little bit because we tried our best to be clear as possible. So as we have said in our last update we are bringing the MMO into play as fast as possible and you should not be waiting much longer.
We will update the upcoming patch notes tomorrow (April 8th, 2015) to reflect our current progress and what you can except to start out with for the 11th.
We did a little stream a Q&A with a couple of devs last Saturday and we are planning on doing another this Saturday with a focus on lore and the world. So stay tuned for more info on that event.
State of Development 25th, 2015 - The Sandbox a Cometh!
Now that we have had a couple days since release and had a chance to gauge community reactions, we have identified some more specific goals for the next phase of development.
Our biggest goal, and the thing you are all waiting for, is the rollout of the sandbox gameplay which will be our main focus over the next month or so. For the initial taste of this, we will make use of the current siege map, which I’m sure you’ve all noticed is already as large as an entire zone in most MMO’s you might be playing. At the end of this development cycle we will release a persistent sandbox map with the following gameplay elements:
Persistent named characters that will be tied to your account and available on login
Persistent world states
Loot system
Inventory
Basic housing system
While this will be our main focus, we will also continue to make improvements to the current FFA battlegrounds. Some of the things you can expect to see in the coming weeks are as follows:
Smaller map/maps for closer, more intense PvP action
Minor fixes to creatures
Improvements to chat
New/improved character abilities
Continued bug fixes
UI improvements
So what does this mean? We will keep you updated with more solid dates for these features as the time approaches. We will also create an additional branch of the game as we develop the sandbox features that will allow those brave souls who want to see things in the earliest state possible the ability to do so before it gets rolled into the main release. Stay tuned for more info, and as always, thanks for the great community you have all started to form around here.
So to sum it up we have re-adjusted our weekly sprints to bring the MMO to you much faster. With in a month (the later part, starting now) if you purchased Early Access you will be able to get into the MMO side as it develops.
Cheers,
Origins of Malu Team
Come Join Us Now
We are ingame name, may answers some questions as well ;)
Jump on in!
Cheers,
TK
2nd Day Of EA Launch - Status
Hello Folks,
First for the people who purchased early access, a warm personal thank you from the team. Please know that you investment this game is going straight back into the dev to bring on new Devs and work hard and smarter to bring the game to life.
We have had a mixed results with the release so far as people have trickled in and be unable to experience the proper experience we had planned. So to combat this we are organizing a couple events over the next couple days to get people on at the same time here.
Event: March 24th, 8:00pm Pacific - Siege Battlegrounds
We have also come to a realization that our core audience wants the MMO and is waiting for that (which is good). So we have ramped up production to focus not delivery that sooner. We will be finalizing the plan tonight and we will update some timelines after said meeting tonight but that will be mean a couple things.
Stay tuned, because loot, inventory, persistence and better fights are coming...
Cheers,
TK
3/24/2015 - Update 2 -> The Creatures have arrived !!
Update 2 - Change List
So we have been hammering away on some bug fixes, some content additions, and just attempting to provide even more things for people to do.
With that said below is a list of current items we are attempting to squeeze into this next update coming later tonight / early tomorrow.
- Creatures (We have a few different creatures that should be making there appearance in the next patch.)
The Azurestraka a small wolf like creature that is waiting to claw you to death. They are aggressive and will attack you on sight if you attempt to close in on them.
The Chochobi will be making an appearance. They are passive creatures that wander the lands, they are passive creatures and will not attack you.
The Luachupi are passive creatures that also wander around checking out all the fun combat going on around them.
** The AI atm is fairly basic and there is the chance that they may get stuck on objects at times. This is something we are actively working on and effort will be ongoing for making the AI better overall.
- Siege has been populated with a fair number of creatures and spawn points. (The number maybe increased / decreased depending on how our servers handle it.
- Swamps has been populated with some Azurestraka's.
- Targeting camera has been lowered some to help with our smaller playable characters.
- The ability spawn location has been raised for the Qulinta so that its a littler easier to shoot without hitting the terrain.
- Qulinta Cast Abilities can now damage Faction Nodes :) (Sorry missed this one in the first patch)
- You can no longer sprint backwards
**Additions**
- Slightly reduced the Energy Regen Rate (No more endless energy pools)
- Increased the amount of damage Charging an ability can do.
- Slightly increased the beam abilities so that they are not completely useless.
- Jolah Ability Apex no longer does large 400-500 hits.
- Some network Culling tweaks to help reduce the network load on the client side due to the addition of Creatures to the maps.
- Camera collision has been turned back on so that it will no longer clip through buildings, terrain and other objects.
- Lighting on the Swamp map has been built. (Yay for good lighting!)
