Massively http://massively.joystiq.com Massively http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/http://massively.joystiq.com/media/feedlogo.gif Massively http://massively.joystiq.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/<![CDATA[SWTOR's Daniel Erickson on pulling players' moral strings]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/12/30/swtors-daniel-erickson-on-pulling-players-moral-strings/http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/12/30/swtors-daniel-erickson-on-pulling-players-moral-strings/http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/12/30/swtors-daniel-erickson-on-pulling-players-moral-strings/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

SWTOR
BioWare's Daniel Erickson said that for the writing team, the crunch time came way ahead of everyone else since the script for the game had to be done first. As such, the team has had plenty of time to reflect on how the game's developed while it's moved on to future content. In speaking with GameSpy, the Star Wars: The Old Republic head writer opened up about the difficulties and fun of penning a game with so many personalities, choices, and plot twists.

Probably the most revealing is how Erickson admits that the writers are trying to pull players in multiple directions through a series of moral influences: the game's own light and dark side system, players' own morality, companions' own likes and dislikes, and multiplayer dialogue. Ideally, he said, one of the goals of the writing team was to make quests that would challenge players' set paths to make them want to change. "It's interesting to watch all those dynamic forces affect the player, see how they interact with the storytelling method," he said.

Erickson also says that the project got initial pushback over the notion of centering it on story, because of the past limitations of MMOs and "the expected norm" that had grown over the years: "It was clear, when you played the early MMOs, that they were trying to put as much as they could in for what was there. There were people on each one of these projects that clearly cared passionately about the lore, and were really trying to get it across to the players. So we knew that that was there and we knew from the single-player games what did it."

The interview continues to cover a wide range of writing challenges, including coming up with the script for Huttball, quests that the team was sure would get cut by the ESRB, and how the team enjoyed coming up with intricate stories, connections, and romances for companion characters.

MassivelySWTOR's Daniel Erickson on pulling players' moral strings originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>biowarechoicesdaniel-ericksondark-sideeaea-biowareesrbgamespyhuttballlight-sideloremoralmoral-codemoral-decisionsmoralityscriptingscriptsstar-wars-the-old-republicswtorvoice-overwritingwriting-teamFri, 30 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Lost Pages of Taborea: Do-It-Yourself Combat Engine]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/10/lost-pages-of-taborea-do-it-yourself-combat-engine/http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/10/lost-pages-of-taborea-do-it-yourself-combat-engine/http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/01/10/lost-pages-of-taborea-do-it-yourself-combat-engine/#commentsFiled under: , , , , ,

When I first started playing Runes of Magic and other MMOs, I never used addons because they broke my perceived immersion. Fast forward to today and I have well over a dozen different addons to enhance my user interface and interaction with Taborea. There are quite a few addons that I'd now highly recommend. The collection has both evolved and stayed basically the same over the months. The collection does grow, but a lot of the new addons that come along don't see any love once uploaded. Some of the great classics -- like Advanced AuctionHouse -- are constantly being updated and are very useful. Many others that come along are variations on older popular addons or they aren't popular because they are small fluff addons. Basically, there's a core of great addons that are still being updated, but good new addons are coming at a slow pace.

One new addon in particular is the Do-It-Yourself Combat Engine. DIYCE is a robust combat engine that can allow players to pre-script entire combat encounters with the push of a button. There are some ethical questions about the ability to easily program what some would call a cheat code. Is this going too far and skirting the boundaries of hacking? Let's take a closer look at the pros and cons for this program.

Continue reading Lost Pages of Taborea: Do-It-Yourself Combat Engine

MassivelyLost Pages of Taborea: Do-It-Yourself Combat Engine originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>addonaddonscombat-enginediycedo-it-yourself-combat-enginefeaturedfrogsterfrogster-americafrogster-interactivejeremy-strattonlost-pages-of-taborealuamacrosromrunes-of-magicrunewakerrunewaker-entertainmentscriptinguberflex-autocombat-systemMon, 10 Jan 2011 19:00:00 EST<![CDATA[LotRO UI implements Lua, preps for extreme makeover]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/09/03/lotro-ui-implements-lua-preps-for-extreme-makeover/http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/09/03/lotro-ui-implements-lua-preps-for-extreme-makeover/http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/09/03/lotro-ui-implements-lua-preps-for-extreme-makeover/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

The upcoming free-to-play conversion isn't the only big change coming to Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online over the next little while. In a new dev diary released yesterday on the European community website, Games System Engineer Narrel provided a glimpse into what began as the "pet project" of three developers and has now morphed into a full-fledged extreme makeover of the game's user interface capabilities.

Using the venerable and lightweight Lua scripting language, Narrel, Agiclaw, and ForsakenArcher are closing in on their stated goal of bringing extensive customization possibilities to LotRO's UI.

"The future of Lua in LOTRO is a bright one," Narrel writes. "While the current functionality is certainly limited, we fully intend to continue the development of this system so that both existing and new game systems will expose functionality to the user, allowing for a much more personalized user interface."

MassivelyLotRO UI implements Lua, preps for extreme makeover originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>agiclawdev-diarydeveloper-diaryf2pforsakenarcherfree-to-playlord-of-the-ringslord-of-the-rings-onlinelotroluanarrelscriptingturbineFri, 03 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST<![CDATA[The Anvil of Crom: Secrets of Hyboria]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/08/01/the-anvil-of-crom-secrets-of-hyboria/http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/08/01/the-anvil-of-crom-secrets-of-hyboria/http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/08/01/the-anvil-of-crom-secrets-of-hyboria/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

I thought we'd do a bit of a departure from our usual format for this week's installment of The Anvil of Crom. As the column is a long-term chronicle of my experiences in and out of game, it's occasionally appropriate to throw a guide or two in the mix. Age of Conan is developing into a pretty deep title, and as such it's got plenty of little nooks and crannies that aren't readily apparent to either the veteran skull-splitter or the bright-eyed newb fresh off the boat in Tortage.

Luckily for you, I've been making a list of the oddities I've encountered, as well as the various unanswered questions I've had since my return to Hyboria several months ago. By combining a little in-game and wiki research, I've put together this listing of a few of the game's notable quirks. Some of them involve combat, but as I'm really a PvEer at heart, you won't find much in the way of strategy or advice here. Most of this is along the lines of what I lovingly call fluff, i.e., it'll probably make your game experience more enjoyable, but it certainly isn't required reading if you just want to jump in and pwn face.

Continue reading The Anvil of Crom: Secrets of Hyboria

MassivelyThe Anvil of Crom: Secrets of Hyboria originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a sense, script memory limitations aren't coming to Second Life; they already exist.

What's going on is the process of Linden Lab making those limits predictable, and setting things up in such a way that script memory usage doesn't cause simulator processes to thrash madly (from paging memory to and from disk).

There's some interesting side-effects emerging from the overall prototype implementation, however. Mono (and, eventually C# when or if it becomes implemented as a scripting language) look like the losers.

Continue reading Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono?

MassivelySecond Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono? originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>ccontent-creationlinden-lablslmonoopinionprogrammingscriptingsecond-lifesource-codevirtual-worldsTue, 16 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Long-delayed Second Life script-limitations back in the public eye]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/12/13/long-delayed-second-life-script-limitations-back-in-the-public-e/http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/12/13/long-delayed-second-life-script-limitations-back-in-the-public-e/http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/12/13/long-delayed-second-life-script-limitations-back-in-the-public-e/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

It's now just over one year since Linden Lab announced that they would be implementing a some manner of script limitations over and above those which are presently a part of Second Life as it stands today. It is just over eleven months since those limitations were rescheduled to go ahead in Q3 2009 - which time has definitely long passed.

Nevertheless, the script limitations system is alive and well and coming up, apparently in 2010. This constitutes good news, very good news and not so good news (in roughly that order).

Continue reading Long-delayed Second Life script-limitations back in the public eye

MassivelyLong-delayed Second Life script-limitations back in the public eye originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>homestead-simulatorslinden-lablslmonoopenspace-simulatorsopinionscriptingsecond-lifesl-script-limitationsvirtual-worldsvoid-simulatorsSun, 13 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Second Life objects to become HTTP-aware]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/second-life-objects-to-become-http-aware/http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/second-life-objects-to-become-http-aware/http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/second-life-objects-to-become-http-aware/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

While Second Life users wait with 'bated breath for the SLS 1.27 deployment that will sort out a large number of crippling group communications failures, there's an extra bonus lurking in the code. SLS1.27 will be adding an HTTP-in feature which will allow HTTP requests to be sent to Second Life objects.

At present, Second Life objects can only 'dial out' to external Web-servers and services, but with few practical methods of communicating that external data and resources have changed, many object creators have had to settle for frequent polling of Web-services for data.

Continue reading Second Life objects to become HTTP-aware

MassivelySecond Life objects to become HTTP-aware originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>aditi-gridlslpatchesscriptingsecond-lifesls-1.27virtual-worldsWed, 08 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST<![CDATA[Tools of the trade: Scratch for SL]]>http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/07/14/tools-of-the-trade-scratch-for-sl/http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/07/14/tools-of-the-trade-scratch-for-sl/http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/07/14/tools-of-the-trade-scratch-for-sl/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

MIT Media Lab's Eric Rosenbaum has produced a wonderful little tool called Scratch for Second Life (S4SL). Available for Mac or Windows (but not Linux at present, alas) S4SL allows you to create scripts by assembling simple colorful shapes (a bit like plastic bricks).

S4SL is based on MIT's Scratch, and allows you to put together some useful functionality very simply. S4SL isn't going to make you a star creator of scripts overnight, though -- anyone who knows Second Life's LSL scripting language and has a modicum of programming skill can do much more, but that's not the point here.

Continue reading Tools of the trade: Scratch for SL

MassivelyTools of the trade: Scratch for SL originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments]]>eric-rosenbaumlogolslmacmitmit-media-labopinions4slscratchscriptingsecond-lifevideoMon, 14 Jul 2008 11:30:00 EST