This has been an exciting summer! A new baby for me, born on 9/11/09, and the release of my third solo game (Arcana: Spell Duel) on 9/12/09. I'm quite proud of both It also marks the time when I decide to get a team together to work on a game that we've been wanting to make for a long time. The timing is perfect. I'm between updates for Arcana and CastleGuard2. Working alone is great sometimes, but you really miss having some help when companies like Gameloft are cranking out really nice and well-polished titles. My art skills are somewhere between non-existent and horrendous after all, and I've had a rough time getting by on my own. It's time to raise that bar, a thousandfold. It is therefore my pleasure to announce: New 3D iPhone MMO in Development A new MMO with the working title 'Gryphon' is currently in development. This MMO is being built from the ground up as a cross-platform MMO. This is not the "text and pictures" style game that is prevalent in the App Store now, but a full 3D real time online game: with everything you would expect from (yesterday's) and today's Massively Multiplayer Online games, and more. massive areas to explore quests immersive and strategic combat brilliant spells and spell effects skill-based character system full array of stats and leveling to create a unique character online chat and emotes diverse crafting: perfect for casual play or long term play investment property ownership thousands of inventory items build your own section of the world and influence the main story unique gameplay elements not found anywhere else staged releases, with new features being added with each new release A key differentiator for Gryphon is that it is being developed from scratch with an iPhone client and casual gameplay in mind. So, while you can play at home on your Mac or PC, you can also play using your iPhone using 3G or WiFi, your iPod Touch using WiFi, or even your favorite web browser! There will be additional platforms developed in the future. This cross-platform design will let you take the game as seriously as you want to, wherever you want to! The development team is using a rapid prototype and development release cycle which will facilitate an organic growth model in response to user demands and overall story arc vision. This means frequent releases and content updates focusing on key gameplay features in a manageable way, giving the players something new to look forward to each release. Who is the team behind Gryphon? They are a motley band of foolhardy gamers and Indie developers who have created a secret club and handshake to do something which moves quickly and sweepingly into your daily life. Small, but powerful. Like Yoda. If forced to answer the question "What is the game going to be like", they might say something like this: "Our unofficial Gameplay Influences are games like Asheron's Call and World of Warcraft, and the art team is heavily influenced by brands such as Lego, Dr Seuss, and the Muppets.. which are trademarked and copyrighted of their respective owners, of course." What is the Story of Gryphon? Rumor has it that the design team has accidentally discovered an interdimensional window to a parallel universe and is focused on recording and making drawings of the things they see going on there, which serve as inspiration for the game. There's no telling when the window will close, so this is a very busy time indeed! One thing is clear. This story has never been told, and it's going to take quite some time and many episodes to do it. You..the player.. will have a part to play in it As in the thread for my previous game Arcana: Spell Duel, I will keep this thread fresh with updates and screenshots and info as we progress. Right now we are about at the point where we're deciding what will go into the initial release and plotting out the map to get to initial release in early November. The World/Story Team and the Art Team are about formed up, and the Development Team is close behind.
will it have single player? any screenshots/videos at this point? if not, how soon will you be able to post some?
this sounds pretty interesting! it sounds like you haven't started it yet and plan to release in November? Or did I read that wrong? Anyway - looking forward to it!
Will it really look like a combination of Lego, Dr. Seuss and the Muppets? I'd like to see a photoshop mashup of that!
Yes, it has begun, if unofficially. If you are familiar with any of my previous games, you could maybe put together that I've been developing RPG elements all year... combat, weapons, quests, NPCs, spells, special effects, networking code, etc. So I actually have quite a bit prototyped already. The initial release will contain a core amount of gameplay (focused around online PvP probably), and we're using a short development cycle for each subsequent release. My previous experience with Indie dev teams is that sometimes life gets in the way, so it's best to keep it going in short bursts. Our first development cycle starts October 1st, and will be focused on the set of features that can be finished for a November release. In the meantime, we're designing and planning while the world team is peeping into the alternate universe. I've got a clean codebase up and running, and realtime multiplayer engine is up and running. I *will* put up a screenie/vid soon.. it will be a hoot to watch a game being built from square one to a finished product, like I did right here for Arcana. Fun for us anyway
Yes, it was actually a pretty *freaky* thing. It wasn't planned this way, and in a truly bizarre twist of subconscious numerology, the 9:11 time has been standing out on the clock for me quite a bit all year long, whereas I never really took notice of it before. I looked into it, and it's a fairly known phenomenon of numerology and your subconscious mind or some such. I always joked that the baby would be born then (early) but I didn't actually think it would happen. I'm glad it did though, a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day and all that.
Dave as always you have my support, I am consistently impressed with your work, especially since I see where at least part of the influence is coming from. I have a question about the realtime multiplayer aspect. How did you solve the carrier based connectivity issue? Or is it going to be mostly wifi/bluetooth?
This is an excellent question. It's definitely a forefront technical design consideration and pretty much the first problem I needed to overcome. I don't mind sharing that I experimented some to find a solution, because I actually kind of did it 'out loud' here: Blog Post 1 and here: Blog Post 2. To sum up... the iPhone as an online gaming device (and this is an online-only game) can't support both reasonable amounts of networked objects AND playable network usage. So I am experimenting with a click-to-move style of movement combined with fine-tune movement controls. This comes with the major advantage of freeing up screen space used by movement interfaces as well. The network usage of this system is dramatically smaller than one driven from keys/joystick, is much less prone to error over the network, and leaves lots of bandwidth for other things. So far it feels fantastic, especially on the larger terrains and inside buildings.
Wow, this sounds great dave! It'll be cool to see everything you've been working on culminating into one awesome sounding mmo game. Can't wait to hear/see more about this p.s. It's doubly awesome that Lego is part of the inspiration for the art
Just a quick update as to what to expect and when: this week I'll be delivering most of the over-arcing game vision to the teams and we'll be finalizing the feature list for the initial release. There will be wild speculation and grand posturing as well no doubt. Many folks are inquiring about alpha/beta access, and I assure you that I or someone else on the team will clearly announce it here when we are ready for that. I'll also Twitter about it I can say that there will most likely be a decent-sized fan beta for the web-based client, and then an even more closely held beta for the iPhone client itself.
You are always the one to make 9/11 jokes, lol. May I ask why? Are you secretly working for Al Quaeda, investigating US people's lifestyles, and planning to devastate the world's population by hacking into the App Store and deleting all the apps? Then demanding money, weapons and ultimately freedom to the people of the middle east, in return for apps? Is your name 'Akmed Mohammed Abdellah Sanjib Khalid' by any chance? ..... just a thought
Yes, of course! It makes it easier that I already have your device information, *and* that you actually participated
