Greetings everyone! Hopefully the spring has been warm for you all.
Gekkeiju Online got, once again, quite a lot of new stuff after the previous update.
Player Housing
Player Housing has always been a part of Gekkeiju Online. Some could even say that the way it was possible to decorate the houses in the past was one of the best since it gave almost total freedom to the players. However, the outside parts of the player houses were always a bit dull.
This time the Player Housing will change quite dramatically. Players will no longer go to a player city and purchase a house there. Instead there'll be empty land lots everywhere - even inside normal cities like Kyrt. These land lots come in 3 different sizes - small, medium and large, and can be bought by whoever gets there first.
Each land lot type has its own house types that can be built there. For example, it's possible to build a windmill-house on a small land lot while the large ones will no doubt allow different kinds of mansions and forts. The indoor of the house naturally depends on the house type.
Indoor furniture is naturally a must like it has been before. However, this time the game will also support outdoor furniture so players will be able to put crafting workbenches and other stuff outside their houses or on the roof, tower etc.
Instancing System
Implementation of the Player House indoors also required implementation of the instancing system. This system will also be used by for example some quests and raid dungeons. What the system does is it creates a dynamic copy of some map or area, and there can be multiple versions running at the same time. So for example party A can be in instance 1 of a dungeon while party B is inside the other instance of the same dungeon. This way they will not run into each other.
New Skill execution methods
The action combat in Gekkeiju used only a single skill activation-style before. Basically skill started when skill hotkey was pressed and executed when the key was released. Now there's 2 more modes so players are likely going to find a system that works for them.
The first of the 2 modes starts the skill when hotkey is clicked and fires it when the hotkey is clicked again. The other one starts the skill when hotkey is clicked but the fire actually requires clicking the left mouse button. This method is common in some MOBA-style games.
More vanity items
Our graphics artist made some 10 or more different wings graphics for the previous version of Gekkeiju. These items have now been converted into this new version with some nice adjustments on how the item dyes affect them.
While these will not allow the player to actually fly, they'll still be a welcome addition for all those who care about how their characters look.
Graphical Tip boxes
The tutorial tip boxes were changed to contain less text but instead have rather big images. This should be helpful for the TLDR-generation of MMORPG players.
What's next?
There's still plenty of features I want implemented before the next public Alpha test weekend. So far I've started working on quite many but not fully finished them. This includes mages, Kyrt, parties etc.
It's likely that this style will continue and the next things to get partly implemented will include spawning of crafting resource nodes like ore deposits and wood logs etc.
One big thing on my todo-list is also the implementation of the latest Oculus Rift SDK since it introduced some pretty huge changes on how the barrel wrapping is supposed to be handled.
Stay tuned!
