f13.net

http://www.dawntide.net/info.htm



Ran into this because of Keen and Graev's blog.  Keen describes it as a Fantasy SWG (eeeehhhhh).  Could be interesting though.  There have been a crop of these indie projects that seem to be going more for the "old school" thing.   

If there is ONE thing that can get us interested in what is otherwise just another blip on the radar, there is NO NDA for this game, and you can freely ask questions on their forums.  There is even a section for "beta blogs."

It looks pretty sparse right now, and I don't know how far they are into beta.  Anyway, might be worth keeping tabs on.

Too bad they stopped taking applications for Beta 1.  A lot of the bullet points in their FAQ are items on my "If I had my druthers" wish list.  Of course, they can talk...

I'll probably try to get in Beta 2 if school isn't too hectic this semester.

Sigh. I feel bad for their chances in the US market:

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f-GsBOroSH4/SO7bhaD7QBI/AAAAAAAAAQI/W9ibjX_c9PQ/s400/tide+product+shot.jpg)

I'll be That Guy:

"Fantasy Star Wars" is always redundant.

I do wish they'd chosen a name that didn't remind me of fetapults.

I hear there is perma death and monster orgies.

I sure fucking hope not.
So you'll be playing then I take it?

I hear there's going to be vertical digging, but not horizontal. Negative ping too.

At first I was like "OMG YAY FINALLY!" Then I read this:


Sigh. Maybe this will work in Denmark?

Once you do it can you turn on the Carebears?

Found some YouTube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLm4poHqjY0 - some walkthrough of a city. Looks... totally average.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8V0fnndWBo - yes, you are sailing a boat while 'on a boat' plays, you are funny

I dunno, looks completely generic. Lets see if they deliver on any of their systems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IscdvmzqHIo

If that is not thrilling, on the edge of your seat combat, I don't know what is.

EQ1 was more entertaining to watch.

I only made it 45 seconds in.  Did the bandit ever die?

Realm crafter (http://www.realmcrafter.com/store/home.php)?

is this free?  otherwise, why not just play DAoC or EQ? 

In reverse order there are those who might consider that FUN.

I always liked "Panzer Tank" myself.

Yeah, and then he lost all his clothes, his copper penny, and his dagger. Then, they skinned him and his corpse went poof.

No, I am not joking, I read you post and decided to see.

Did he just skin a humanoid bandit? :awesome_for_real:

He also looted it by individually clicking and dragging each item to inventory.   :ye_gods:  Even in EQ you could right-click stuff to loot it, even if you had to right-click every item.

I want to frame that video, and send it to every MMO developer, with a "DO NOT MAKE THIS GAME, YOU FUCKS" caption on it.

No one could ever possibly be stupid enough to use Realmcrafter.

That was the best comedy I have seen all day.

Did they make the UI with WoW in another window? I think I know the spot in Westfall they were thinking of.  Except they forgot to copy the excitement.

Need a skinning knife equipped to skin it? Really?

I do like the moon gravity though, the hop at the end shows it off.

Beta 2 began ten days ago, and they are still accepting apps (http://www.dawntide.net/beta/). When they send out a round of invites most of them are randomly selected from the pool, so order of signup doesn't matter.

As mentioned before, no NDA, so with Beta 2 underway things should start picking up on the forums (http://forum.dawntide.net/index.php).

I can hardly contain my excitement.

This goes OB on May 31st.  (giggle)

Aw, they took down the video of the awesome combat. Now I'm sad.

Open beta starts today. Anyone else playing?

This game is hot shit.  I created a character, logged in, and got stuck with 120 other people who can't move out of starting point! 

Brilliant!

That is called "Massively Social Gameplay (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17033.msg793814#msg793814)"

That would explain why all the screenshots only show 1 character.

Oh this is amateur hour at it's finest.  reboots and more.  There's a command /fixme which is supposed to move a character 10 ft in the air to get unstuck which in actuality puts the player down halfway in the ground.  There's a command /teleme which will move a player out of the initial dogpile, only to be stuck in the ground outside of the dogpile.  Supposedly there is jumping, but it does not seem to work for everyone.  I know when I hit space there is no reaction whatsoever.  I even checked keybindings and other options (which you have to log out to access).

These people should be ashamed of themselves.  This is more than just bad.  This is indicative of serious character flaws.  Like I-beat-my-wife bad.

Yeah, I couldn't even get passed character creation, so you guys are way ahead of me.

past

I got past the char creation, but my FPS in the game is like between 5 - 12.  I could deal with 12 if it stayed consistent, but 5 is just terrible.  My computer is by no means high end and they obviously have some tweaking of the engine to do so my PC can run it better.  I know they will do engine tweaking as the game progresses (I run Fallen Earth perfectly fine and it has better graphics than this), but for now I will just keep trying to see how I do.

I got out of the dog pile, and left town. My fps was up to 40+ as long as I looked away from the town.

That many stuck players? :uhrr:

Isn't this a beta? Its kinda hard for the indies out there to get the mass needed to find such issues, so crap you would not expect in an open beta of a AAA game is found in the beta of the low budget. I would never ever look at a low budget title with my AAA game beta eyes, its asking to much. The "QA" department is most likely the development team, not a farm of 30 paid employees. Looking at the website, the entire staff is remote.

Still though, it could be just bad.

(http://www.waisoft.com/wailogo.gif)

^ Company logo ^

It's Open Beta.  As in there was a stretch of beta after which they decided, 'ok, it's time for open beta'.

For that decision to be made, at the state it is in, screams of inbred retardation.  There's no excuse beyond incompetence and delusion.

I don't condemn a game/sandbox/whatever for bugs in beta.  I expect it.  I hunt those little fuckers down and send in my 5 page report in triplicate.  But this festering shit pile is a travesty.  Vanguard, even if you took into account twenty billion wasted dollars spent on it, was in better shape than this crap.  Hell, Wurm Online is WoW next to this shit.

Eh, just trying to point out, this may be more users than they have ever had, I would cut the little guys a bit of slack.

I rarely do anything but lurk around these parts but I thought I'd chime in since I work for WAI.

The game is being developed by 16 people, 87.5% of whom are off-site. The budget is low, the graphics engine is a cow. It's honestly more of an open alpha, referring to it as beta has been a mistake, but it's too late to change that now. As you might imagine a low budget indy project going into open testing can be beneficial. We see no good reason to be anything but open in our development, we are honest about the project and it's limitations, ambitions and the challenges involved.

Performance will receive large improvements this coming week, the influx of people playing the game has indeed been a lot to handle, but we are optimizing quickly.

I hope you keep us on your collective radar. :)

Hi bill, best of luck!

At least you have something that's somewhat functional. That's more than some of your predecessors can claim.

I tried out mining last night, and the prospecting skill was an interesting addition. I was expecting some kind of amusing animation to accompany it, but only got a boring progress bar. Of course the combat has been the biggest let down so far. I've had more fun watching paint dry.

Animation is getting a bit of a revamp over the next couple of weeks.

I agree on the combat, it's not very much fun.  :oh_i_see:

None of what you said is an excuse for the poor performance discussed in this thread. Indie operations may not have the marketing budget, but they better damn well have the execution down. In fact, indies better have their execution down to a much better degree than mainstream titles or they will get placed on the shitpile with Darkfall and Mortal Online and never be thought of again.

Oh why did I bother to chime in?  :awesome_for_real:

HaemishM ,

I understand your point and I agree with you, unfortunately with a (very) low budget project like Dawntide mistakes and bad choices are someitmes made along the way.

Having been with the team for around 7 months I have seen the game improve quite respectably over time and I am very positive about its future.

I am not attempting to make excuses, I merely want to add my perspective as a member of the team. I am, after all, only responsible for the website, in-game GUI and some other minor elements of the development.