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News
  • We haven't posted a news article here recently, so we thought we would at least add an update on progress.

    1. There have been some delays in the programming of the tool set for building the A.I. net for the NPCs of the world. We got side tracked with some other problems, but work will be back on track this week. We're very excited about this portion of the game building tool. Once Phase 1 is complete we can build our A.I. nets in the world and then toss in NPCs who will immediately go about living their lives within the game world. This system will bring unprecedented realism to our NPCs. We'll release more on this when Phase 1 is completed.

    2. Animation Pipeline. We've had some success in our new animation pipeline, which is automating our system for bringing character models into the world with a full set of animations ready to go. Once completed this system will shorten the time it takes to get a completed NPC model into the game. With the numbers of NPCs we need living in our world we had to have a pipeline like this in order to quickly populate the game. This pipeline is still in progress at this point, but we have gotten the basic system functional and we're testing with the first NPC output by the system. If this works out like we hope we will soon be abandoning the old slow hand done system completely and starting to mass produce NPCs for the game.

    3. Game Design. Going along with the recent revamp of our Quest system (see earlier news post) we have been adjusting the system further. Quests are a hybrid of human written story, hand made portions and generated Quest segments. All of this within a system that allows the player's decisions to change the course and outcome of each quest to thousands of possibilities. We currently believe that a typical quest in our system will take average players between one and two weeks (real time) to complete. Don't worry about that long of a quest, there are lots of 'chapters' along the way so you can have some satisfaction in the short run before reaching the grand climax.

    4. Art continues to improve, though at a slow rate. We are not concerned with the aesthetic side of the game at this juncture, but plan to attack that at a much later date when we can assign more assets. For now the game art is certainly functional enough to play test the world, and that is all we need while we develop the game play, which IS our primary focus.

    5. We will be addressing the CoS web site with a redesign and overhaul. Not sure when this will go live, but work will get started on this soon. (It's low priority though).

    That's what's happening at MMO Magic, Inc. on Citadel of Sorcery.
  • We have finally started our internship program. This program serves two purposes; we get some talented (but usually inexperienced) help in some areas of the game creation. More importantly, we help these hardworking souls to gain some experience, insight and game credits for working at a game company on an actual title.

    We've recently started six Interns, but are still looking for a few more. We're particularly interested in artists as this is the area currently needing the most development and is where we have the least number of interns.

    Please note that Interns can work from remote locations; the Internet brings us all together.

    If you are a budding artist, and want to get some experience and credits working on a game, contact us at Info@citadelofsorcery.com. Of course, we may take new interns in programming or Level Design as well, but you would have to have some decent skills already as we have several people already working as Interns in those departments.
  • As we tested out Quest designs we found two things were true, our quest were far more involved and interesting than other MMO games we'd played, and they still didn't meet our original design goals.

    So we gathered some of our design team and had a multi-day intensive redesign of the entire system. I'm happy to report that our original goals are now met with the new changes to the system. We didn't get rid of anything we had before, we just expanded the system to allow far more player interaction.

    Where before you would have had unique quests that tied into your story, now your actions during the quest have far greater impact on the quest as it develops and builds toward the climax... a climax that will be affected and changed by what you did along the way and what you do during the climax.

    This new system also expands the quality and quantity of quests. This, of course, requires a redesign now of our quest building tool, and that is underway. More news on that later.
  • Citadel of Sorcery is now listed on one of the premier MMORPG web sites. We debated whether it was too early to list the game, but in the end decided that we should let players know that this game is coming.

    It has some forums, and in a public situation like this you always get a few flamers complaining, but generally the responses have been good or ask reasonable questions.
  • The Citadel of Sorcery development team is pleased to welcome four new artists. One is an accomplished animation pipeline specialist, another is an experienced Art Director we've worked with on past projects, the third a modeler new to us, but an accomplished artist and the fourth a Concept Artist that we've worked with on many shipped titles in the past.

    We're still looking for even more artists to join this amazing project. Please contact us if you want to become part of the most exciting MMO game ever built.
  • We have added the menu tool to the Trident3D engine and Enact Editing tool. The tool can now modify itself as well as create the menus and logic for the in game User Interface screens. Since Enact is actually inside a special development copy of Citadel of Sorcery this means that all the previously created art for the game menu system will soon start to show up in the game for the first time.
  • The entire Citadel of Sorcery team wishes you all a Happy Holidays!

    BTW: We're still looking for other talented artists who want to get in early on this new and unique game. So if you want to be part of an exciting development team, drop us a line.
  • Today our engineering staff completed a new build, version 0.2.0.71209.0 of the Trident 3D engine.

    This build of the Trident 3D engine addressed several bugs and issues to do with the physics collision with dynamic objects, as well as rendering problems. It also fixed the instanced Object appearance error, as well as building interior malfunctions, and added a static geometry cache to stop memory fragmentation with an overflow buffer system.

    In short, rendering is far more solid now with little chance of any missing geometry.
  • Today we finally moved the web dev site and put it up live on the net. www.citadelofsorcery.com This site will go through many changes as time marches on. To begin with we just wanted a site up for news and to answer any questions people might have. Later there will be screen shots, forums, interviews, game art, and other informative sections added.
  • Today we finished the new layout of Tier 1 of the Citadel. The hub and spoke design worked out well and should be an asset for players in understanding where they are in this large city.
  • We have completed several meetings where we addressed issues we'd discovered in the quest system. In attempting to give players interesting quests that tie into and are influenced by their past and that work with their personal story, we were running into several problems when it came to players grouping up for these adventures and then having the leader of the quest leave during the adventure.

    We have now solved the issue and believe we have a quest system that will handle both personal quests and group quests for the player. This is an amazing quest system the likes of which no MMORPG has ever attempted in the past (due no doubt to having to solve the same issues we went through). But, we have it designed now and plan to start implementation of the Quest building tool fairly soon.
  • Now that Tier 1 is built, after wandering round the streets and buildings of the city we decided that such a complex city needed a better layout, so that players could easily find what they were looking for without constantly needing a map.

    In order to accomplish this we decided to change a good portion of the Tier 1 city layout. Now you will enter through the main gates, go through a grand entry park and go straight into the inner city. The inner city is a very open and large area where you can easily see the five league structures and the palace out on the lake.

    From the inner city it is easy to find the District you are seeking at the moment. There are gates in the inner city wall with the name of the District you would reach by using the gate. The Districts surround the inner city like spokes on a wheel with the inner city as the hub. The Districts are:

    1) Tavern District: This is where you can find a common room to use the grouping board, or just hang out in one of the taverns looking for a group to join. Need a group member for an adventure? This is the place to come to find one.

    2) Guild District: This is where playesr can start their own Guild and where they go to enter the guild premises. Guilds in CoS are more than a spreadsheet, they have an actual physical location. Guild members can hang out there and use the various guild facilities.

    3) Carnival District: Players come here to amuse themselves with various entertainments while waiting for their friends to log into the game. Here they can find the bathhouse, fortune teller, dance hall, theaters, casino, races and pubs.

    4) Municipal District: Here players can take a tour of the city, use the post office to send mail or items, access the library to start a quest, get summoned to the courthouse or visit or supply the museum with new artifacts.

    5) Warehouse District: Players can use this district to store nearly unlimited amounts of treasure. They may also take part in real time auctions where they bid in person or by proxy.

    6) Monastery District: This is where you visit the graveyard, or get resurrected or healed).

    7) Arena District: Here you can challenge other players to do battle in the Coliseum, or bet on those battles.

    8) Merchant District: Here you can go to actual shops and make deals with the store keeper, or sell them items. You can also craft items into bigger and better things.

    9) League District: (Within the inner city) Here you can join a League and work on new abilities for your character. Or, visit the University to get information on what you want your character to become.

  • We decided to improve the standard system for character control. No, don't panic. We are not taking anything you are used to away, only adding additional controls that you may choose to use. We believe these controls improve the standard control system by allowing a player to walk, run, step back, trot back, turn left and right, look up and down and jump... all from the mouse only.

    No longer must you keep your other hand on the ASDW and space bar for these controls. Just one hand on the mouse and you can move your character around the world in complete control. Of course, you must have a wheel mouse to do so, but hey, that's the current standard.

    If you don't have a wheel mouse, don't worry, the standard ASDW and Space bar all still work for you.
  • Well, it didn't really eat them, but it affected many other system. The way our game streams textures and geometry into and out of the game so that players do not have to wait for loads is tied into this memory fragmentation fix.

    We have had to do some serious re-writes of the Trident3D engine to accommodate the fixes needed to make the game work with the LOD code, Streaming code and memory management code. This has taken several months, but is finally nearly finished. Because of this we are currently writing a new system for long distant LODs. It will fix the issue, but also add greater detail in the distant view while reducing the cost on the system to render the view.

    We can therefore show you more in greater detail further away, and keep your frame rate running smoothly. This system is nearly finished, and preliminary screen shots of it in action are very promising.
  • Tier 1 is built. That is to say, all Districts are filled in with their buildings and there are no holes in the world with nothing there. 80 percent of the interiors are all built as well, so you can go inside most of the buildings. The rest of the structures will either be locked up at the door, or the interior completed soon.
  • Objects were disappearing in the world. We tracked it down to the texture streaming system. As we stream textures into and out of the video card the memory is getting fragmented so that a larger set of textures cannot find room to be loaded.

    In order to fix this issue we have to write video 'chunk' system to guarantee that memory does not get fragmented in the future. Separate systems were needed for dynamic and static geometry. We're getting started on that code now.
  • We've decided to go with motion capture for the character animation. We tried hand animation, but the motion capture adds far more realism to the movement of the characters. We have 70% of the motion capture data ready now, and several characters, all human so far.
  • Now we can add almost any number of lights to a scene without slowing down the frame rate of the game significantly. The Trident3D engine mixes real time lighting with cube map lighting to get the effect of thousands of real lights in the scene and visible at any given moment. This allows our game to have a amazing night scenes where you look out across the a city and see hundreds if not thousands of lights.
  • Dynamic objects can now contain light, have emissive textures and cast shadows from the light. For example, if I build a lantern, place a candle inside, and put a light within the lantern, the candle will glow, the glass will glow as the light passes through. The frame and supports around the lantern will cast shadows as they block the light from within. The light picks up the tint from the glass, which colors the light that passes through. The light is in real time, so if the lantern is carried by a player, the light swings and moves casting real time light and shadows everywhere.
  • Based on the Design Guide, the User Interface screen art has been completed for the main view, and all major menus: Inventory,Character, Stats, Potions, Trades, Abilities Codex.
  • The Trident3d engine uses streaming technology to add new models and textures into the world in real time rather than make players wait on load screens. In other words, when you are in the game wandering round the Citadel or out in a Reflected world on an adventure, you will NEVER be stopped to load. Everything is constantly streaming into your video card as you move around the world, so nothing gets between you and constant fun. No loads when entering new buildings, caves, castles, dungeons, towns, villages, terrain... none. Once you are in the world, you never have to wait and interrupt your adventure.
  • The Trident3D engine has the dynamic objects system now. This allows us to place all the little items of high detail into the world. These are objects that only show when you are close enough to them, but they are higher detailed objects than static geometry.
  • In CoS when you walk into any building we do not load a separate place like most other games. All of our interiors are actually inside the building you see, like a real building. This means you never have to wait for separate loads when entering or exiting a building. In addition, it means that all the windows and doors actually are windows and doors. You can walk to a window, look out through the glass and see the outside world. Light from the outside world comes in through the real windows to light the room (depending on the time of day and (eventually) weather.
  • It took a while, but we wrote all the code necessary so that we will no longer have the issues caused by the Nvidia / D3D incompatibility issue.
  • Well, we developed a BAD crash bug in the program. It took the programming staff several months to narrow it down to the real problem. After going through several of our own systems, writing new memory management, and other fixes, we finally discovered the real problem. There is a bug in the Nvidia drivers that doesn't work properly with D3D 9. We've contacted Nvidia about this issue, but gotten zero response. We looked at other released games, and they crash with this bug as well. The publishers of those games must have just given up and let their game go out with the occasional crash. In order to fix this problem, since Nvidia isn't going to take care of it, we have to write all our own code to handle error checking issues with D3D. This will take us considerable time and effort, but in the end we will no longer be dependent on the Nvidia code to keep our game solid.
  • The Trident3D engine now supports texture Level of Detail changing based on distance. The world automatically adjusts the resolution of textures on the fly so that no matter how much video ram a player's card has, and how much texture is needed on screen, the game can always render the scene. This brings the game's target of running on a 128 meg video card possible.
  • We've added improvements the level of detail system to include real time shadows LODs. In addition, objects can now case self shadowing. In other words, if the shadow cast by the object fall somewhere onto the same object the shadows is also cast on the object.
  • We are considering five races plus human for the players to choose from in the game. We decided to create our own races rather than go with over used standards from the 'tolkien' universe. At this time we have ten races, but we're going to try to reduce that down to six total.
  • To allow us to create a city of massive complexity, it was necessary to create an LOD system to help the game handle the poly counts without grinding to a halt. We decided on a system that welds the ground and all the buildings and other large objects into one giant mesh. At that point we can alter the poly density on the fly so that as object move away or get closer they morph through various complexities of polygons, less with distance, more as you get closer. This system is being added to the Trident3D engine, and art is making the static models so that they can be welded together automatically by the engine.
  • The level building tool design is at version 1.0. This tool allows the Level Builder unprecedented control of the world. The idea was to put programming level control into the hands of a level builder, yet they don't have to know any programming. Level Builders can use this tool to create almost unlimited quality quests for the game, make NPCs and Monster behaviors and varying intelligence. They can program NPCs lives so that they live in the world rather than stand around some place. This is version one of the design, but actual construction of this tool is still more than a year away, so there is lots of room for improvment to the design prior to construction.
  • We decided to go with an NPC subject system rather than a tree system for PC to NPC communication. With our greater concentration on engaging quests, how you communicate with NPCs is important. With the subject system we're proposing players will not have to go back through the conversation tree several times to make sure they got all the information. Each subject you pick plays all the information about that subject, no branching. They will be written so that players feel it is a conversation going on, but there is no back and forth needed. Example: A player talks to an NPC, they have several subjects listed, one is "The old Mill." If the player chooses that the NPC says, "You want to know about the Old Mill, hey? Yes, I've heard that story about the ghost living there. No truth to it I tell you. All right, keep your shirt on, I'll tell you the old tale..." etc.
  • We've decided to sub divide Tier 1 into sections of city. This is due to how the Trident3d editor will handle the construction of the city. With 10s of millions of polygons planned in the city, it will be difficult for any tool to handle the entire city at one time. The game engine can handle it because of LOD systems, where the editor has to render every poly all the time. So we're keeping each section of the city to about 500,000 polygons of static geometry.

    This is also led to the idea of City Districts. Since we were dividing the city up anyway, we decided to make the divisions based on the Districts of the city. A District is something like: Merchant Disrict (for shopping), or the Entertainment District (where players waiting for friends to come into the game can go for some in game entertainment, like gambling, dancehalls, zoo, fortune telling, etc.)
  • We have an character ability system roughed out. The system is Skill Based. Players will adventure for tomes of knowledge. When they go up levels they gain study points which they can apply to any Ability books they own (representing time studied). This way the players can gain any ability they wish for their player, by seeking the tome, and then study it as much as they want to improve the ability. In addition, practicing the ability (using it) will also advance their skill in that ability. Thus there are both empirical and theoretical methods of Ability advancement.
  • The Test City has done all it can do for us. The design is far enough along now for us to start working on Tier 1 of the real Citadel.

    Art is starting work on the Tier 1 buildings. Much of the terrain for the city is placeholder, though some of the buildings are now real game assets. The city will be expanded and improved over the next two years of development.
  • The Trident 3D engine had a point light system added today. This is an early system allowing just some simple point lighting around the world, however, it is the beginning of what will be come a very robust lighting system yet to come. Shadows are cast appropriately by the point lights.
  • The first changing lighting in the world was added today. There is now a sun and moon, both casting their appropriate light and moving across the sky in a day/night cycle. Lighting changes with appropriate color shift depending on where the sun is located. It's a very realistic looking sun and moon light system.
  • Today we started work on the Epic Story. We've decided that the game will feature a unique story written specially for the game. This decision was not taken lightly. There are good reasons why games are often based on existing licenses, for example, a famous fantasy book series. However, while this helps the sales of the game initially, it can hurt the game play in the long run.

    By writing a unique story for the game itself, we believe we can make a world and epic story that has timed revelations that consistently progress the story over the long term play of a MMORPG.

    We have assigned the writing of this story to a fantasy novelist, who is also a game designer. The combination of game designer and author gives him a unique perspective on writing the story to work as a novel worthy tale, and as a game story.

    It is important to note that this is not a back story. Many MMOs have a back story that is just window dressing for the game, and once you start playing in the static world the back story really doesn't matter. Because of this most people don't read or care about the story of the game.

    In CoS we are designing the story to happen in real time for each player. You will not only 'live' through the story, but you will be a major character within that epic story.

    If this were Lord of the Rings, you would play the part of Aragorn, or Frodo, for example. Yet, you would make you own decisions and guide your own destiny. We can do this because our game is NOT static. There is a real calender, and time marches on every day. The world lives in real time, as the story progresses.
  • Real time shadows were added today to the Trident3D engine. These shadows use soft edges and work on all static geometry. Our shadow system is designed to push the envelope compared to any MMORPG so far. Shadows, though they don't sound exciting, add the ambience to a scene that can make or break the look and feel of a world.
  • Up until this point the game design was simply notes from meetings and other discussions. However, it is now time to get started on the actual Game Design document so that everyone is on the same page and because a game of this size can take a long time to design correctly.

    In fact, most developers do not spend enough time on the initial design of the game. This leads to poor designs and missing deadlines.

    In order to make CoS the best game possible, we have decided to spend a long time on the design prior to going to a publisher. We also decided to create all the risky elements, also prior to presenting the game to a publisher. The idea is simple, now we get the best game design, and we remove the main risks to the Publisher's investment. They get to see what they get prior to risking their capitol. This means we are footing the initial game development costs internally.

    Now, it is true that a Design Guide is never finished, but we plan to spend a full year just on the initial document. We're doing this to make sure we have designed th best MMORPG game possible for the players. The work on that Design Guide begins today and will continue for the next year... and beyond.
  • Due to the use of the Trident3D engine, it didn't take long before we were able to put up a test city online. This allowed us to test some network code with ten players in a small quickly built city of placeholder art. Initial tests were positive. We noticed some surging when watching one of the other players running along side your character and will be adding a smoothing system to handle this visual issue.
  • Today the programmers finished up the first version of the scene Editor. This will allow level builders to start placing models into a test world.
  • In order to deliver the Epic Story portion of the game, yet allow new players to come along later, we've decided to divide the Citadel into a spiral set of Tiers. You start at the lowest Tier at the base of the spiral mountain. As you progress your personal story far enough you will gain opportunities to earn your way to the next Tier of the Citadel.

    This advancement in Tiers is then tied to the delivery of the next section of the Epic storyline. Thus, you must ascend through the Tiers in order to gain the next 'chapter' of the story. So even if you are further along the story than a new player, that new player will start in Tier 1 where the story begins.

    However, we will not lock you within your Tier. If you want to go back down to a lower Tier and adventure with a new player, you may do so. This will not affect your story progression, only slow it down until you return to your current Tier.

    Additionally, new areas of the world will be opened up based on your Tier progression, allowing a natural progression of game difficulty with player advancement.
  • After looking at various name proposals, today we settled on the game title Citadel of Sorcery. We liked the three letter acronym CoS, as well as the shortened 'Citadel'. It also tied in nicely with our concept of a central large city that is a massive multiplayer area, called the 'Citadel'. Sorcery in the title lets players know that this is a fantasy motif game.
  • Looking at current MMORPG games we soon realized that game quests were the area where the most improvement is available. Quests in typical and current MMOs are, for the most part, boring. We call them 'grocery list' quests. A quest in a current MMORPG might be, "Bring me 32 thigh bones from an Orc". Or, they might be, "Take this apple to Bob the Inn Keeper". Again, 'fetch me this or deliver me that' quests.

    We have decided that in our MMO you will be the main character in your own amazing story. EVERY quest that you undertake will be part of your personal story, and NOT ONCE will it be a grocery list quest telling you to fetch a number of the same items or deliver some boring object to someone.

    Of course, there is a reason current MMOs don't do this, it's hard. But just because it's difficult to accomplish is no reason not to undertake the goal.

    The most fundamental reason that quests are so repetitive and simplistic in current MMOs is the very basis of their world design. Their world is a static place. This means things always return to the same state. If you kill a bear, that bear will reappear a few moments later. Any effect you have on the world is incredibly temporary. They must do this because their play area is massive multi player.

    So, we said, what if instead we took the world and made it change, every day? What if nothing remained the same, or EVER returned to the previous state a few minutes later? In order to do this we had to redesign the very concept of how the world worked for players.

    What we have decided to do is create a large Massive multi player area. Here you can do all the things that you need to do in a massive multi player game. You interact with other players, form up groups for adventuring, do commerce with other players, pick up quests and other story advancement, seek entertainment while waiting for friends, form guilds, craft objects, etc.

    However, we've also noticed that once you are on your quest with your current group of adventurers, the other players (not in your group), tend to be a distraction and at times an annoyance. They get to the guy you want to kill before you do, and kill him. You end up standing around waiting... until the monster 'pops' back into existence. Sometimes you then have to try to attack him as fast as possible so that another group doesn’t 'agro' him and make you wait yet again.

    Not only that, but because there are other players in your adventure, there are many types of interesting adventures that just aren't possible to create.

    So, some of these games make little instanced areas trying to keep other players out of your hair during the adventure. However, this is a bandage, rather than a cure. In order to have real adventures with intriguing plot twists and personalized encounters, the entire adventure needs to be in an instanced area.

    This is what we plan to do. You can go into the massive multi player part of the world any time you wish to do all the good things about an MMO, and when you want a REAL adventure, you and your group can go into a dynamic world where the adventure is built just for your group. You get all the advantages of an MMO and all the advantages of an RPG.

    Quests can now be amazing adventures. Players can join or leave your group almost at any time, yet you won't run into other groups who will mess up your adventure. However, when you want to find other players, a quick trip to the massive multi player area will do the trick.
  • Now that we have decided to create an MMORPG for our next project, our first order of business was to make a plan on how to create our as yet un-named MMORPG. Should we purchase an existing engine for the game, or build our own from scratch? After looking at what was available, and what we needed for a cutting edge game, we quickly realized we would need a custom engine. In the end we went with both ideas. We licensed an existing engine that allowed us to modify the source code and customize it for our use.

    The Trident3D engine has worked out well in our plans.

    The original form of the engine was actually started several years previously. It was then improved for two years (2002-2004) and used on several 3D programs (not games). With some additional work it was soon ready to start rendering our MMORPG world.

  • It is time to decide on our next project. We had several design concepts presented. Of these possibilities we choose to develop an MMORPG idea that has some unique design elements.

    The decision to go with the MMORPG concept was based on the fact that MMORPGs were popular, but that no other company had as yet created one that we felt was exciting and well designed for he player. This left us room to improve on what players had experienced in this genre. We also picked this project because we felt passionate about the proposed concept. We feel that this project can be a viable game that can bring in a large base of players who are all looking for an MMORPG that shows innovation and long term playability.

    Simply put, we felt we could do a better MMORPG game than anything we had seen on the market.

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