Hey all. It’s Tuesday, and I’m working hard. There’s nothing really special about Tuesdays, so I thought it would be nice to start doing a weekly Blog for all the little things going on with Genesis, instead of spamming the blog with little things every other day.

So, here we go!

We have appointed a Lead Music Director - Jasper Brownrigg - otherwise known as Dark Stalion on the forums! I am extremely excited about this, because he makes some seriously awesome music and has a lot of really great ideas for making the Genesis experience something unforgettable.

Otherwise, I’m diving back into the Genesis Design Document - the surviving part of which is from last spring! So, I have a lot of work ahead of me. Thankfully, Google has a great document hosting service, so I’ve uploaded the document to Google Docs so i can work on it wherever I go.

There’s a few formatting issues that I could use some help with, so if you have a bit of spare time I’d appreciate maybe a half hour tops of going through and getting rid of random bullet points and strange things like that. Send me an email if you want to help with that - otherwise I’ll open up contributions once I finish with the hacking and slashing I have in front of me.

(Oh, and I’m tapping my artist friends for some more work. Hopefully I can have some Siren artwork for you all soon.)

That’s it for now, I think.

Oh ho ho!  Looks like it isn’t.

The Balance Realm has been received by Gavan so well, it’s already been ok’d!  Follow the link for more on Genesis’ spirit world.

Yo.

I’ve been working on a Biome-Alignment table.

We’ve talked about having a mechanic involving the terrain and climate of a region of the map tying into its denizens. Like the Zerg ‘creep’ that’ll aesthetically show when you’ve entered a particular alignment’s area. However, in order to fit the alignments into the limited amount of biomes, I came up with a dual-alignment system.

Light + Ice = Frozen Wastes
Light + Death = Dune Wastes
Light + Earth = Temperate Forest
Light + Fire = Desert
Light + Life = Prairie
Light + Air = Plateau
Ice + Death = Bog
Ice + Earth = Tundra
Ice + Shadow = Frozen Cavern
Ice + Life = Boreal Forest
Ice + Air = Taiga
Death + Earth = Deadlands
Death + Shadow = Cavern
Death + Air = Badlands
Earth + Shadow = Jungle
Earth + Fire = Lava Fields
Earth + Life = Marsh
Shadow + Fire = Magma Cave
Shadow + Life = Rainforest
Shadow + Air = Swamp
Fire + Life = Savannah
Fire + Air = Geotherm
Life + Air = Steppes

Next, I’ll go into possible Havens for the alignments. Small areas which can appear in Biomes which can allow for players to rest in a friendly environment, or even start a community.

Light: Meadow
Ice: Water Hole
Death: Rock Shelter
Earth: Mire
Shadow: Pit Cave
Fire: Caldera
Life: Oasis
Air: Crater Lake

All for now, I need to go sleep. Discuss!

We’ve updated the alignment system, to make more sense than the last one.

It’ll be changed to:

Order - Chaos
—————–
Light - Shadow
Ice - Fire
Death - Life
Earth - Sky

This isn’t permanent, and we’ll still consider new ideas, but we feel more comfortable with this set up than the last.

Wiki updating will be sporadic this week.  I’ll be working on a new chart for Races as well.

In other news, I now have a Condo and a new job.  I’m entering the Real World, and hopefully the professional atmosphere will help spur my leftover energies into Genesis.

Pretty much as long as the community’s been here, we’ve been undecided about Dwarves. Currently, they’re in the Water alignment, but they don’t really fit there.

A friend of mine, Terianis, just joined and resparked the discussion.

He suggested putting Dwarves into Abyss, which I believe was mentioned before - but never acted upon. I agree with this, but that would mean Kobolds would have to be axed, moved, or modified in size.

***

So I just finished speaking to Gavan about this, and he agrees with everything. Or agreed to everything.

Confirmations:
Dwarves moved to Small Abyss.
Kobolds moved from Small Abyss to Tiny Abyss.
Gremlins removed.
“Gene Pool” theory for inter-racial procreation
Oreams added to Small Water.

Hey everyone.  Things have been kind of hectic for me, getting a job, losing a job, getting a condo, still searching for a job, etc.  Though I’ve been doing my best to come back into IRC more often.  And I’ll try to keep up with the Blog from now on, since it might help retain folks who don’t really have the time to lurk in our forums.

I’ve been urging for some prototypes to start up, and we have a couple now.  Most recent is Swak’s combat prototype, based in Flash, which can be found here.  The respective conversation, mostly about combat controls can be found in the forums here.

Gavan came into IRC last night to discuss prototypes a bit.  He admitted to working on a prototyping engine, in Flash, which can do a lot of work for us without anyone needing programming experience.    Someday, at least.

Quick update: We have scheduled a big developer meeting in the Genesis IRC Chat for this Friday AND Saturday at 8pmPDT (11pmEDT). Anyone and everyone is welcome to come and participate in the discussion! There is a lot to talk about and decide, so be there if you can.

So, many people (especially those new to the project, and those who just casually browse the progress) are probably wondering what happened to the once lively project of Genesis. While I can’t speak for everyone on the project, I believe that I can give you a basic idea of the project’s current status, and its future.

Let me start off by saying that the project is not dead by any means, we’ve just been in a sort-of recession. Why? Mainly because everyone has been busy with their real life priorities, which for many of us, including me, is school and college. I’ve been boggled down with so many assignments and projects, as well as my social life, that I have had basically no time for the project during the school year, especially during this past spring semester. Many others have been under the similar stresses of life, including work, that are keeping us quite a bit less active than last summer and fall.

However, I think I can safely say fear not! Starting soon, I believe you will see the project once again gain steam, and see many people return to developing this potentially great game. This is because of one simple, yet great reason: summer. Again, while I can’t speak for others on this project, I know that I am going to have a crap-load of spare, free, and “doin’ nothin’” time now that I am out of college for three months. I now not only have the time to work on the project, but I have so much of it that I will practically be forced to work on things to fight the boredom. I’m sure many of the other developers and people on the project are in a similar boat now. In the next few weeks as more and more of us get out of school, and have one less thing on our backs, you will see more and more activity here.

One great omen of good things to come is that we have a second developer meeting/chat (tentatively) planned! You can check out the topic discussing the meeting here. Right now we are planning on holding this meeting on Friday, May 25, 2007. Please give your opinion on that date (and anything else relating to the future meeting) in that topic. There is much to be discussed, so this will be a great meeting to be in!

With all of this said, I must say as you all get more time, come back to the forums and the IRC chat so we can get this train rolling again. And if you are a new member, or a past member who hasn’t posted in a while, please do! I’m sure you all have many ideas and opinions to contribute to the project. Hopefully some coding assignments can be sorted out in that future development meeting. I personally am starting to work on music again, and have a few different things I am working on. Also, much thanks to new user Dark Stalion for his awesome music contributions to the project. You can listen/comment on them in this topic. Keep up the great work!

Hope to see all of you around the forum and IRC, and here’s to a productive summer for Genesis!

Well hello there! My name is Paul Williams, although I am often referred to by my screen name (skenmy). I am the self-appointed (:P) Network Systems Developer for Genesis Online, dealing primarily with backend server maintenance and various other bits and bobs to do with running the network of servers that we will require to keep Genesis online.

My current tasks include running and maintaining the SVN, Trac, and GGDD server (which is hereafter referred to by it’s codename, blofeld.), as well as planning out and designing the final backend server design that we will require for the game to function. I plan in this post to run through what I currently have - probably not of a lot of interest to a lot of you, but it’s a necessity!

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello all! I am Jason Fouchard, known around these parts as Homestar14. I am the music lead for the Genesis project, and help with some web and Game Design aspects of the game’s development too. We’re making some great progress on all fronts of game development, but today I want to talk about the music.

We’ve had some awesome music submissions so far. Robert Fruchtman (Consonance), and Mike Martin (Gex) have both been contributing wonderful musical pieces to the game, along with myself. (You can check them out on the playgenesis.com site). Still, many more are needed, and us three alone will have quite a fun (and by fun I mean challenging) time writing all of the music that will be needed for the game. We really don’t want players hearing the same song too often. So if you like writing music, and would like to contribute, please visit us in the Music and Sound board of the Genesis Forums. Although not all submissions will be accepted, all are welcome.

Moving on from that, let’s get down to the Genesis Engine. I believe (and I think most any gamer would agree) that music is a huge part of any game, and so I personally want to make sure that the music engine in Genesis is near-perfect. Music has the great ability of not only providing some background noise that gets you involved in the environment, but is also important in actually telling the story, and emphasising what is happening in the game. It is important that the music goes with what is happening on the screen–you don’t want to be playing happy, joyous music when you are in a fight, or when you die. This is why we are developing a music engine that not only seeks to make sure that this will not happen, but that will actually go one better, and pick the perfect music for the situation.

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Well, first off I’d like to thank you for being a part of the genesis community, and would also like to thank you for taking the time to read our blog.

This blog is the staffs way of giving out information to the community whether it be interesting stories, movie/song/game reviews, or news about the genesis project.

There will be designated writers/editors that we will hire for specific purposes. Some of them may be developing the genesis project and will frequently use the blog to convey an update in the project. Others may be avid movie-goers that like to voice their opinions on a movie they thought as amazing, or not so good.

Since some of you may not be active on the forums, and don’t know who the staff are I’ll introduce myself. My name is Shawn, and I setup and manage the community forums. I live in Canada, and and anxiously awaiting the next news about the genesis project. Each writer you see on here will probable leave some sort of introduction in one of their first posts, or you’ll know them from another area of the forums.

Don’t be discouraged since you don’t have the ability to make a new blog entry yet. By registering an account you’ll be allowed to comment on the entries made by staff members. As the genesis community grows, we’ll need more writers and that may be your break. We’ll be working with the development team so they can bring you news as to how the coding side of genesis is working, as well as some reviews for various need to buy, or do not buy products.

Since we currently do not have any writers and could use some we will be taking applications. We will currently be looking for people who can review various products, movies, video games, etc. If you would like to do this for the community please send an e-mail to Shawn_Prendergast@Ridleycollege.com and attach some previous works of yours. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible if we want you to do some writing for us.

Hope you enjoy!