It’s been a while since the last time we did a Status Update on FunOrb and I know that a lot of you are asking questions about releases and the like, so here goes our most in-depth and honest appraisal of where we are with FunOrb currently.
First off, we’ve had a number of major back-end infrastructure changes take place over the summer. The first and most visible of these was the display names project, which allowed players to choose a different name. This has been the equivalent to a game’s worth of work for us, principally due to the number of systems we needed to update. The development team have been working hard on integrating the changes required to every one of our games and service modules; it’s been time consuming and complex and has highlighted the need for us to improve the maintenance overhead that the games currently require (more on this later).
It’s been a while since the last time we did a “state of play” post on FunOrb and I know that a lot of you are asking questions about releases and the like, so here goes our most in-depth and honest appraisal of where we are with FunOrb currently. Read more…
I admit, this past month of no updates has left me somewhat bitter. If not the lack of content, what mainly had me riled up was the complete lack of communication from Jagex these past few months. No one is accusing them of slacking off, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one begging for at least a small sign that they were still alive over in that office of theirs.
Luckily Mod Korpz never disappoints. In the thread for the most recent Developer Diary, Mod Korpz announced an upcoming State of FunOrb, to be released next week.
Also, I understand that there have been a lack of updates recently. I plan on putting together a State of FunOrb post next week where I’ll try to explain matters in a bit more detail.
During our recent Q&A sessions, some of you have been asking about the process we go through here when we make a game, so I thought I’d jot down some notes on how our production process works.
As with most things, it starts with an idea. Inspiration for a game can come from numerous sources. A good game designer will be looking at the world around them and seeing “systems”: mechanisms by which things interact with each other. By understanding the systems we see around us every day, we can see how these systems can be adapted into games.
Welcome to this dev blog about infrastructure, the first of its type. I am Mod Tom S, IT Manager, and I would like to keep you updated on some of the big infrastructure changes that will benefit both RuneScape and FunOrb.
Today another video popped up on Jagex’s Youtube channel for the upcoming game; Kickabout League.
This version looks much smoother than the jagged, often laggy beta we played only a few weeks ago, and a few notable additions are the crowd chanting and the 10 second countdown.
Looking forward to Kickabout League, set to release in July 09.
This diary covers one of the most significant problems involved with building FunOrb games and FunOrb Central: memory consumption.
