Newsletter

[Sephalo]

The Oakwood Forest ORPG
newsletter

Recently I started working on TOF (the oakwood forest) again and I enjoy it. It has been a busy month for me at school and now when my major things are done I can safely say I'm working like a madman to finish the terrain as fast as possible.

Which things have recently been added to the game?
So far we added the beginnings of an Undead City and the area around it. The undead city is a brick city on pillars above a deserted poisoned swamp. It's been built between mountains so it's cloaked for the rest of the world to hide the Undead from sight until they're ready to start their attacks.
The area around the undead city got more of my interest at the moment and I'm working on that now. The area around the undead city is seperated into 2 parts. To the north east it's a dry and dead area with lots of rocks. Centaurs once lived here and are still struggling to keep the undead out of their area. The southern area consists out of a dead area with little places where living tree's grow. This is the work of the Gabba shamans. They added life to the areas again and summoned tree's in the ground to keep the nature alive. The gabba's are furbolgs in regular warcraft 3.

The screenshot features the Gabba area near the undead city. You will see 4 of the Defiler classes in front of one of the Gabba bosses. From left to right you see: Undead Chanter, Dark Elf Swordmaster, Undead Zealot and Undead Assassin. The boss is called Gnar the Lifebinder.

That's it for now, I will start working on the map again and send a little update next week.

 

[Sephalo]

The Oakwood Forest ORPG
newsletter

Alot has been done this week.
RaiN has worked on the event system while I have worked on a few terrain parts again. Check this out:

Event system:
RaiN has made the event system to carry players through many adventures in the Oakwood Forest. This event system is a system that tracks what has been done for various group events/group quests and tells you what to do to come to the end of an event.
None of the bosses in Oakwood Forest just stands there waiting to get killed. You get him to come so you can slay him. However not every event has a boss that's why we call this the event system. An event can also mean that you have to protect someone for atleast 4 minutes or you gotta find 10 items. Who knows?!

Here's our event example of Sistra the Forestwatcher:

Level req: ~8
The real event begins after you've slain 40 dryads or wood elfs. The event manager will keep track of how many have been slain already.
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/4466/event1a.jpg

After defeating atleast 40 dryads or wood elfs stage 2 of the event begins.
When a next stage begins you will always see a certain emote in this case from Sistra.
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/4337/event2h.jpg

In the Sistra the Forestwatcher event's stage 2, 6 ancient protectors will spawn and you will have to defeat those within 6 minutes to start stage 3 of the event. Every event's stage 2 and beyond will have a timer. If the timer reaches 0 the event will reset and you will start at stage 1 again.
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2150/event3z.jpg
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2708/event4w.jpg

After defeating the 6 ancients you will start stage 3. A new emote will appear and you will be able to face the endboss of this event; Sistra the Forestwatcher. She will eventually drop better then average loot and experience.
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/6600/event5e.jpg
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6510/event6.jpg


Terrain Area: The Frozen Glade

Level req: ~20
I've been working on the Frozen Glade area the past few days. This is an area next to Sistra's forest part. The Frozen Glade is cursed by immense cold. The dryads once lived here but had to retreat to Sistra's forest to not die from the cold. The dryad king Fordaron the Keeper got slain by 'the curser' yet his soul still remains in the area. His soul is frozen in the middle of the Frozen Glade. Unfreeze him and it's up to you if you want to save Fordaron and help him to reclaim his honor by defeating 'the curser' or defeat him in an epic battle.

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6462/fordaronthekeeper.jpg

 

[Sephalo]

The Oakwood Forest
Newsletter


It's been a while since I wrote the last newsletter, but I think we got some cool stuff to show again.
It's quite hard to fill alot of text with interesting stories but I'll do my best to keep you interested in, what I call, the best ORPG ever!


Frozen Glade Area
I finished the Frozen Glade Area, which I featured in my last newsletter. It's now 100% done and has multiple frozen dryads now.
However it's still undecided if they're friendly or unfriendly after unfreezing them.


Shadow Drake Area
I found this simple but great model on thehive a few days ago and just had to use it! The Shade dragon!
I used this dragon in the starting area for undead players where they will have to level their first levels by doing quests involving the shadow drakes.
Take a look at the screenshot.

Forest Troll Area
I worked on creating a Forest Troll Area the past few days.
This area is a little encampment built in a swampy pool featuring alot of skulls, shrubs and critters.
The Forest Trolls tame the swamp inhabitants, Salamanders, to join them on their hunting journeys.
The Forest Trolls are an aggressive tribe of warriors collecting skulls of killed enemies to put them on sticks to frighten unwanted visitors.

Resurrection Stones
We're also going to use Resurrection Stones in the map.
It may not be original but we think this is a good way to reduce traveltime after dying.
There will be 1 Resurrection Stone at each border of an area so let's say a level 5 area and a level 10 area share the same stone.
This to not make dying and resurrecting too easy because dying still has to be a bad thing.


Quest System
So far the Quest System has been made and we started to create NPC's at certain locations.
We're planning to create quest-chains for those NPC's in the near future to start giving life to Oakwood.

Class Overview
To tell you about a little class update we show you how the hero creation is going, and you might notice this is a thing that will take some more time.
However we first prefer to create the main systems we can easily say this is something we need to get done as fast as possible.

Gryphonwing: All idea's are done so far. 3 classes are 100% done (Sage, Ranger, Rune Warrior). 2 classes 50% (Redeemer, Archmage) and we didn't start with the last 3 yet although their spells/concept are written down already.
Bloodbane: Most idea's done so far. 2 classes are 100% done (Berserker, Summoner). 2 classes are 50% done (Won't reveal those). And the last 4 are still a mystery.
Defiler: 1 class is 100% done (Won't reveal). 2 classes 50% done (Swordmaster, Zealot) and the last 5 are quite undone.

So far it looks like each faction will have the following roles:
Gryphonwing: 2 classes able to tank. 3 classes able to heal and 7 classes able to dps.
Bloodbane: 2 classes able to tank. 3 classes able to heal and all 8 classes able to dps.
Defiler: 2 classes able to tank. 3 classes able to heal and all 8 classes able to dps.

 

[Sephalo]

The Oakwood Forest
Newsletter

Time for another update!
RaiN and I have done a few nice things although I gotta say we didn't do as much as previous updates. Because of this this will only be a small update featuring the Quest System.

Wolfe_Orcscythe is currently helping me to create quest descriptions for various quests in addition to correcting the grammar from the already excisting quests.

To give you a view of the current Quest System I would ask you to take a look at this youtube video. This should give you a nice idea of how we plan to make it look like. Currently it's still a bit bugged because you see the floating texts from the talent window. I didn't want to bother RaiN about this yet because he was so busy with making cool spells for one of the classes I'm not going to reveal and an additional system I'm not going to reveal aswel.
So just act like the green texts aren't there. Oh and the first quest you'll see is removed already, it was just to try something out.

As I already said. RaiN did a nice job on various spells. But I'm not going to reveal any of those. I think it's best to not reveal all classes because we're still not sure if we want to add all classes to the game at the open beta. Maybe it's good to start with 5 classes per faction and expand it to 8 with various patches. Who knows... We don't (yet).

That was the short update.
New update comming in something like 2 weeks.

 

[Sephalo]

The Oakwood Forest
Newsletter

A little extra update:

RaiN is working on a flight system!
You can't control your flying beast, but it will bring you to a certain point for a certain fee. Just like most ORPG's have flight taxi's.

More info about that comming next newsletter.

 

[Sephalo]

The Oakwood Forest
Newsletter


Update time!
Many things have been added! Check this out!


PvP Arena
Been working on a PvP arena to allow players battle eachother for various rewards. There will be multiple pvp game modes in the arena. I described everything in here: PvP Arena

Picture

Mogrovas the lost Orc Warcamp
The first attack the undead ever made was against Mogrovas. Mogrovas used to be the capital city of the orcs and trolls. Even before the Dark Elves joined the Undead to create the Alliance of the Defilers the orcs lived in Mogrovas until their city got devastated and destroyed. Now it serves as a ruin with wandering skeletal orcs. Being half dead and half orc they haunt the area killing every newcomer to defend Mogrovas as if it had never been attacked before. This area will have an event playable by all 3 forces but every force will have a different storyline involved.

Picture

Witch Doctor and Worgmaster
2 more classes have been revealed! The Witch Doctor and Worgmaster! Both are Bloodbane classes with a completely different playstyle.
The Witch Doctor focusses on alchemy, curses, voodoo and spiritual magic while the Worgmaster focusses on physical strength and his pet's strength. You can read more information about both classes here:
Witch Doctor: Link
Worgmaster: Link

Witch Doctor

Worgmaster

Flight System
The flight system will be very important for travelers in Oakwood. You will be able to fly from your capital city to various Resurrection Stones. Not every Resurrection stone will be reachable by every faction but most resurrection stones will be reachable for a certain fee. Every faction has a different coloured dragons that will bring you to your destination. Unfortunatelly I can't show any screenshots yet because the system isn't finished yet but expect some screenshots in the future.
Bloodbane City: Korgrom Stronghold
Bloodbane Dragon: Red/Green Dragon
Defiler City: The Pit
Defiler Dragon: Black/Bone Dragon
Gryphonwing City: Gryphonwing Hold
Gryphonwing Dragon: Gold/Blue Dragon


Loot System
The loot system has been made! Whenever a unit you kill drops an item he will drop a bag. That bag can be seen in the bottom left of your screen as an icon (replaces the idle worker icon). Whenever you press on that you select the bag and see which items the unit dropped in the bag's inventory. Click on the items in it's inventory to move them to your hero's inventory.
There are 3 different loot types.
1. Loot Bag (Normal bag, you can pickup every item it has)
2. Reward Bag (Bag used for questreward, you can only pickup one of the items it has.)
3. Reward Chest (Reward chests are used for event rewards. Players maybe able to click on every item it has. After a certain time the items will be randomly distributed amongst those that clicked on them. This is basically a Need and Greed system. Click on an item and you will have a chance to obtain it while not clicking at all will automatically pass the item for other players.)

Weight System
We also introduced a Weight System in Oakwood. Every item will have a certain weight which gives players various opportunities on equipping and selecting gear. A caster class like the Sage will have a low weight cap, allowing her to basically only wear light armor while a Rune Warrior has a high weight cap, allowing him to wear full heavy armor. A Sage could still equip heavy plated gear, but will probably not be able to wear more armor anymore because she reached the weight cap from 1/2 items already. In this case certain hybrid classes could experiment alot with gear choices. Gear is non-restricted while the classchoice basically requires a certain gearchoice to be able to fully equip yourself.

Example:
Sage has 61 weight points. She equips a staff (14) which means she has 47 weight points left. She's able to chose a helmet questreward now and notices the difference in weight of the 3 items. 8 weight, 16 weight and 32 weight. She picks the helm with 32 weight (heavy armor). In this case she only has 15 weight points left meaning she cannot equip much extra gear anymore.