A few important things of note have been implemented lately, specifically the Trade and Synthesis systems.

Trade
The Trade function allows you to transfers items in real-time to another player in the game. Additionally, you can also transfer Gold and Platinum to the recipient. The system is request-based and fully real-time, meaning you can see what items and currency the other player adds and removes as it happens.

Synthesis
With the Synthesis Shop, you can finally make use of all those “useless” items you’ve been collecting. Various items can be combined to make new items, including armor, weapons, and even food. Each recipe has a base success chance that can be improved by adding Catalysts to the synthesis table, which will improve your chances of success. You can discover new recipes via Recipe Books, which can be found in some shops or as monster loot, or by experimenting and discovering recipes on your own.

Stat Foods
A new type of food has been implemented that will increase your stats for a duration of 15 minutes. This food can only be made through the synthesis system or found as rare drops. Some food may do more than just provide stats, however.

Improved Card System
You can now view the cards that have been applied to an item by clicking on the appropriate icon on an item’s information popup. Items that have previously had cards inserted can now be modified again, if their Aetra balance is high enough to allow it.

Personal Stats
The Personal Stats page shows how many monsters you’ve fought, your arch-enemy (the monster you’ve killed most), and several other interesting statistics about your character.

Visual Update
Over the past month, the UI of Empires of Arcadia has received a major overhaul and is now cleaner and easier to use (not to mention it looks better).

There have been dozens of other large changes to the game recently as well, and too many smaller changes to make note of. If you haven’t yet received an invite to the game, please feel free to respond to this post and one will be sent your way shortly.

Eden

Alpha II invites have been sent to all registered users of the blog. As always, if you have any questions send me an e-mail at admin[at]herorpg[dot]net.

Eden

As of today, all of the items scheduled for implementation in Empires of Arcadia Alpha 2 are complete. All that remains is content creation, which I estimate will take another two weeks maximum. Following the completion of the content creation, I will send out e-mails to all current blog subscribers and all current players of Legend of Arcadia for invites. If you’re interested in an invite please make sure you’re registered on this blog.

Eden

Up until now, everything I’ve revealed to be part of Empires of Arcadia has been an extension or an improvement over its predecessor, Legend of Arcadia, in some way. Today, however, I’d like to introduce a brand new feature not found in any other game. This feature was the original founding idea of Empires of Arcadia, and the game is only just now reaching a point where it can be implemented. In Empires of Arcadia, you as a player have the responsibility of rebuilding the once-great empires of old.

Throughout your travels in the lands of Arca, you will come across many different locales; some of which are civilized, others of which are ruined, and still others yet that have never been touched by human beings. These unexplored or destroyed locations were once great cities in millenia past, but have been reduced to nothing more than shambles and ruins as time has worn on. When you enter these locations, there will be no hospitality, no merchants, no inns to keep you comfortable. The human race is expanding once again, and it’s up to you to rebuild these cities in order to accommodate its growth in population and technology.

Enter the second core element of Empires of Arcadia, Discovery.

The system of discovery allows players to visit undeveloped locations and construct civilizations where none exist. Only the first two regions in the game will have pre-established cities for players to use. Every city thereafter must be constructed by players. Each building and service in the city will require a substantial amount of resources to found, thus it is very important that players collaborate in order to establish them. Battle, trading, and teamwork will all be core requirements in the founding of a city.

In order to establish a city, one must first request a charter in the capital of the player’s current kingdom (Alunis, on the first continent). The charter will grant all players permission to commence building a city in the location specified by the charter request. Traditionally, a charter takes anywhere from 3 to 5 days to process; once it has been granted, construction may begin immediately. If construction does not begin on the city within 5 days, the charter will be revoked.

Construction of the city itself is a bit more detailed. Players must take into account which services are most necessary in a city prior to building them, as some services cost more resources than others. In addition, the first facility that must be constructed is the Town Hall. Until the Town Hall has been built, none of the other Cornerstones can be activated. Each city will contain between 5 and 10 “Cornerstones”, each of which may be turned into a building or service. When a Cornerstone is activated, it will display how many resources are necessary to construct the building or service that was selected. Only the player who requested the charter may activate a Cornerstone, but any player may contribute resources to it. When resources are contributed, it will take a certain amount of time to commit them to a building, based on the amount of resources committed.

Resources required can be any of the following: Stone, Wood, Iron, Fur, Cloth, or gold coin. These resources can be obtained from a wide variety of places, but most prominently can be found on monsters. Different grades of resources are required for different regions. For example, one region may require “Oak Wood” in order to build a Shop, while a higher-level region may require “Balsa Wood”; there will be a certain amount of cross-over, however, so as to promote trade between developing regions. These resources cannot be stored in a player’s inventory; instead, they must be stored in a player’s Storage Cart. Looting these items from a monster will cause them to automatically go to the Storage Cart, if enough room is available.

There are some character skills which will improve the rate at which city facilities are constructed: Gathering skills (Woodcutting, Craftsmanship, Hunting) and Construction. Gathering skills increase the amount of Materials one receives as loot from a battle or from Exploring; Construction decreases the time it takes to commit these resources to a building in progress. Both of these skills have a maximum level of 20 and take much longer to train than conventional skills.

Once all the resources necessary have been committed to a building, it will take an additional 24 hours for the building or service to become functional.

It is important to note, however, that developing cities are not static and safe from harm. Cities will also require protection: initially, by you. Developing cities are subject to bandit raids, goblin sieges, or other disasters. When a building is attacked, the amount of resources contributed to it decreases by a percentage. If left unchecked, a city will be demolished in a short amount of time unless players take action to defeat intruding enemies. Once a Barracks has been constructed in the town, permanent guards may be hired for a fair amount of gold that will defend the city from further attacks.

It is my hope that the Discovery system will promote trade, cooperation, and a diverse economy amongst the players of Empires of Arcadia. In addition, it allows players to be recognized for their deeds in the world of Arca; the top players who contributed to the construction of a city will be displayed on the Founding Stone, a special module which will appear in the Town Hall once it is built.

While being somewhat in-depth on its own, the Discovery system is only the first component to my vision for this game of growing complexity. There is still much, much more on the list.

You can expect the Discovery system to make an appearance late in the Beta period.

Although augmentation has already been coded and fully implemented, I wasn’t satisfied with the simplicity and unoriginality of the concept, so I’ve decided to do away with it and put in a new and innovative system for customizing items. Enter the Rune Card.

Rune Cards (referred to as RCs from here on) will be the primary medium for customizing your items in Empires of Arcadia. Each RC has a set of stats, skills, and/or abilities of its own that it can bestow upon your items, much like augmentations. The difference, however, lies in a mechanic called Aetra. [Refer to the Wiki for lore details]

Most equipment you can obtain in EoA will have an Aetra value that is dependent on the item’s quality, type, and rarity, though it will usually range from 50 to 100 on normal items. This quantity of Aetra will determine to what extent an item may be modified.

The modifiers in this system are supplied by RCs, which have a value of Aetra that they will consume when the card is used on the target item. This value is almost always a range (e.g. 30~50). For example, if a card consumes 30~50 Aetra and the target item has a cap of 100, the remaining Aetra on the item could end up being anywhere from 50 to 80 after the card is applied.

In this way, you may apply as many cards to an item as will fit within the item’s residual Aetra balance. If an item has a balance of 100 and you have 4 cards that consume up to 25 Aetra, all 4 cards may be applied to that item. Cards may also be applied at separate times, should you be unable to consume all of the item’s Aetra at one time. You cannot, however, remove a card from an item.

If a card’s maximum Aetra consumption is greater than the maximum Aetra capacity of the item, you may attempt to apply the card to the item anyway – but there is a chance that it will fail (depending on the difference between the card’s maximum Aetra consumption and the item’s remaining Aetra balance). If you fail in applying a card to an item, the card will be lost forever.

Most common cards will bestow effects like enhanced stats and skill bonuses; however, rarer cards will grant things like abilities in addition to stats and skills. More powerful cards will consume more Aetra, thus you will likely be unable to apply exceptional cards to mundane items. The good news is that nearly all items (including boss drops) can be modified. Exceptions will be unique items [Heirlooms] and quest items.

Empires of Arcadia Alpha 1 has concluded as of today. The test was very successful in finding bugs in the first alpha build and improving on existing features. While no new features were added, I feel that I now have a solid foundation upon which to add new features to the game.

My thanks go out to everyone that helped, and I apologize to those that did not get an invitation. Rest assured, Alpha 2 will have a broader scope and will require many more players. I will be sending out a few dozen invites for this phase.

So what can you expect to see in Alpha 2? Here’s a quick list:

• Adventures for the first two regions (Lyran Plateau and Shelt Lowlands)
• Content up to level 20
• Additional spells and abilities for all characters
• No Classes (yet!)
• Special Skill Grids
• Boss Encounters
• Explore mode
• Town Hall (Mercenaries, [Possibly] Tasks)
• Augmentation Rune Cards
• Buffs and Effects
• Regional travel (with Adventures)
• Factions and Faction points/shops
• Passive abilities/ability mastery/temporary abilities
• 100+ new items to collect
• Dozens of new monsters

Remember to keep an eye on the task list at [http://eoa.herorpg.net/task/public.php] to see what I’m currently working on. I will post periodic blog entries that detail new features as they get added to the next alpha build.

I look forward to your continued assistance with developing Empires of Arcadia. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to send me an e-mail at [admin[at]herorpg[dot]net] or leave a comment on this post.

Eden

Earlier this year I explained the Adventure system and how it will function. Adventures are non-linear quests that can yield a variety of rewards based on your decisions. However, only one person can participate in an adventure at a time – this problem is answered by the Dungeons feature.

Dungeons are located in every region; there will be at least 2 dungeons per region. These special areas are reserved for group-play and will require that you have a group before entering them. When a group is formed, a dungeon-master will have to be designated. This is the player who initiates all of the events in the dungeon and who decides how the dungeon rewards will be divided.

Once you start the dungeon, you will be presented with a series of events. These can range from encountering a group of goblins to finding a treasure hoard to encountering a legendary boss. Each dungeon has a set amount of events that may occur while you are there, though the set of events will be random and there will be a rather large pool of events that can occur. Events cannot be skipped and must be completed (whether successfully or not) before you can continue your adventure.

Each player who is participating in the group will need to be on the Dungeon screen in order to see updates to the adventure. Anything that happens during the adventure will be reflected on the screens of every party member, however only the dungeon-master may respond to the events, such as opening a treasure chest or initiating a battle.

Any items acquired from a dungeon, whether from a battle or from an event, will go into the Item Chest, a page where items can be divided several ways: Roulette, in which the loot is divided randomly, Master Loot, where the dungeon-master gets all the items and decides how to disperse them, Round-Robin, where the loot is given out evenly to every party member, or Free-for-All, where players may take what they like. Loot cannot be dispersed or taken until the dungeon is complete.

If every party member dies during a dungeon adventure, the adventure will be considered a failure and the Item Chest will be reset, thus it is important that every member utilizes their roles in order to successfully complete the adventure.

Within the next few days I will be detailing the first dungeon, the Tower of Mirrors, including some events and enemies you may encounter within.

A more-or-less complete task list of everything that will be implemented into the game before release can now be found here. I will probably be adding things to this list every week (if not every couple of days), but this list includes almost every major feature. If I’m forgetting anything, please let me know and I’ll update the task list.

As a side-note, you’ll notice many of the items have a due-date of June 10th 2009. This is the most recent tentative alpha date. Around this time I will be sending out e-mail invites to players I would like to participate in the alpha test.

As many of you know, Empires of Arcadia is drawing very close to an alpha build. For this reason I’d like to address exactly where I am in terms of development. As of now, the current build has (or will have) the following features:

• Battle System
  • Spells/Skills
  • Attacking
  • Escaping
  • Looting Items
  • Winning/Losing Battles, Gaining Exp
  • Parties
• Inventory
  • Equipping/Unequipping/Discarding
  • Viewing Items
  • Managing carrying capacity
  • Multiple item categories/tabs
• Skill Grid
  • Purchasing tiles
  • Earning GP
  • Advancing Classes
• Traveling
  • Travel events
  • Local travel
  • Branching travel events
• Towns/Cities
  • Inn
  • Buying/Selling
  • Town Hall
  • Tavern
• General
  • Stats
  • Gold
  • Chat
• Skills and Spells
  • Skillbook
  • Casting spells/skills outside battle

As you can see, this is not a very long list. You may also notice that some things are crossed out – these are things that I have not yet finished, but are a work in progress and will be finished before alpha. I expect, at my current rate of coding, that all of these things will take about 2 more weeks to complete. When this list is exhausted, I will be sending out e-mails for alpha invites.

In addition, I’ve added some new screenshots to the gallery. Please feel free to have a look.

One aspect of EoA I haven’t touched on yet is the My Home feature. This is something I’m pretty excited about implementing and I think it will improve the game in a lot of ways. So, what is My Home exactly?

You can think of it as your personal house, but it’s a little more than that. While it doesn’t make much sense to have your own “house” in a text/web-based RPG, your Home serves as a hub for many services that your character can make use of.

First and foremost, in order to obtain your Home, you have to do a little work. Houses don’t just appear out of thin air, so in order to acquire one, you’ll have to build it. Luckily, you can find most materials you need in the wild. You’ll need a hefty amount of wood and some raw metals to get started. But of course, these raw materials are no good for building a house – they’ve got to be refined first. Lucky for you again, there are good samaritans in your nearby town that would be glad to refine them for you for a nominal fee.

Once you have the materials you need, it’s time to find a place to settle down. You can place your Home in any town you like, so long as that town is friendly with your Faction (more about Factions in the future; you wont have to worry about this restriction when you first start the game). be careful which town you select – it’s not easy to relocate. When you’ve selected your town, you’ll need to visit the mayor or leader of the town and request a deed before you can settle in. Once you’ve requested the deed, the town leader will issue the construction of your house. And now the waiting begins.

It will take 5 days of real-world time before your house is complete. When you try to visit your house in town, you’ll see a progress bar counting down to the finish date. When this progress bar is full, your Home is finished.

The first stage of your Home is pretty simplistic. You have a place to rest (for free, of course) and a storage bin that holds 100 stones worth of items. Don’t fret, however. There’s much to be done still.

Your Home, while starting small, has the potential to become a nexus of utilities available to your character. While I won’t reveal all the potential upgrades to your house in this post, I’ll detail the first one.

Orchard
The first thing you may want to add to your Home is the orchard. Once you have gone through the process needed to get one, a grove will start growing in your back yard. This process will take a few days of real-world time. Once finished, this grove will produce magical fruit for your character to consume. This fruit has the ability to heal your character or bestow special effects such as increased stats. Keep in mind, however, that fruit isn’t simply produced from thin air. You must plant the proper seeds in the orchard and wait for them to grow. You will find many different types of seeds during your travels, and each one may yield several different types of fruits. You may plant up to 5 seeds at once in your orchard; it will take varying amounts of time to produce fruit depending on the seed(s) you plant. You can increase the amount of seeds you can plant later in the game.

The Orchard is only one way to improve your Home. There will be a handful of other modules you can add to increase your Home’s functionality, including a smithy and a workshop. In addition, each module that you add on to your Home is also expandable, including the amount of storage in your storage bin.

Stay tuned for more details about the other modules, which I’ll hopefully be posting about within the next week or two.