DarkLife - SL's MMORPG - is reborn!

Exciting news! DarkLife, the cool MMORPG experience first developed in Second Life at the end of last year is back!

Thanks to the wonderful generosity of Sensual Casanova and Johnny Bunderfeld the sim of Navora has been donated to the DarkLife team. Pirate Cotton and Mark Busch will make the entire sim devoted to adventure and roleplay in DarkLife's fantasy world.

If you've never played DarkLife you can read about it in a New World Notes article here. It was a skill-based roleplaying game where players would wear a backpack (containing the game code) and go off into the scary DarkWoods castle to fight monsters of all kinds.

Along the way they would get loot and experience points. As they levelled they would increase skills, allowing access to better equipment to spend their loot on.

Even though the original was small and primitive it was wildly popular. Many players spent hours chatting, levelling and drooling over the next big sword or shiny shield. And in the new, version 2 of DarkLife there is even more to do. The new version will have:

1. Fighting monsters and levelling
   
2. Magic spells to learn and scrolls to buy
   
3. More potions
   
4. More items
   
5. Offensive and defensive magics
   
6. Grouping
   
7. A whole sim of adventure!
   

Navora sim is currently a blank slate but we are looking for contributors and contractors to change that quickly. If you think you can help then check the employment forumemployment forum where jobs and opportunities are broken down. We are keen to see things moving quickly so contact us ASAP!

Thanks, and comments and feedback welcome

Pirate Cotton - Project Director
Mark Busch - Code and Design Director

...What adventures will fill this void?

I don't suppose my backpack is still around?

Nope... all new version, all new stats, all new backpack.. sorry folks

Sounds awesome. Can't wait to sign up

excuse me.. i want a monetary compensation for my lost backpack.. i had a special made versaci backpack.. just drop the money on my account.

Starting over is kinda sad - i'll miss my level 26! But, the good news is that DL is BACK! Yay!! I am very much looking forward to it being up and running!

Very excited to see it back! I'm almost tempted to help out with some monsters.

Don't be tempted... JUST DO IT!

^
What she said!

You I can imagine that you don't like the idea of starting over again... but this time you can decide yourself which stats you want to update, everything is diffrent, new level-up system, new monsters, new weapons... so there's no way I can calculate the old stats into new ones... just re-expirience the joy of starting from the beginning and finding out everything

also now versaci-refunds... sorry dude

Planning has begun and site construction is underway!

PC

Err, ok a bit off-topic, how'd you get a picture up on the forums instead of through attachments?

Anyways, that's really cool.

I'm also tempted to make up some baddies.

The boards now allow in-line html-like image tags like this:
[ IMG ]http://domain.com/image.jpg[ /IMG ]
(remove spaces in IMG tags)

May I suggest that players have to purchase homes in Dark Life with GP earned from playing, with a regular upkeep to maintain the house (rent)? Hehe.. just throwing some new ideas out there now that there are so many new options available!

Interesting idea
Actually, I'm thinking of selling some homes off (there will be plots in the village pre-built, or we can let you build your own version) via a Founders Club. This would be a way of supporting DarkLife and also Founder's Club members could get in on making and selling items for the game

People who help build could probably get a Founders Club membership instead of being paid. Or something. We'll think about it closer to the time.

PC

How about instead of selling homes, you rent or lease pre-built storefronts? Would make more sense, especially if all items had to be made for DarkLife.

Storefronts will be seperate from residences and that is a good idea. If we could automate it I think it would be very acceptable way of doing things

PC

I thought of (what I think are) really cool concept ideas last night in my hazy pre-sleep phase.. will throw you an IM sometime before posting here about the ideas, though!

Okay, I decided to do the reverse, might be easier to reference...

I'm a fanatic of psychotically organizing things, so my first idea need be taken with a grain of salt because I don't imagine it's necessary in the slightest and it might be hard to implement... but it would give players an incentive to play for a long long time. Since you have divided up the sim into 3 quarters, looking like:
1 2
3 4
I've no idea what you have in mind for 1, 2, and 4; I just know you have the village in 3. One of the things you might want to consider is, if DarkLife becomes a huge hit, would you want to 'add on' to the game by adding one or more sims? That's the basis for this proposal idea:
If you make exactly one exit from the village, leading from 3 to 4, you could create 4 as a kind of "easy" area. You can create a 'dungeon' (whatever it may be; a forest, plains, cave--anything with monsters is a dungeon in my book) in that quarter of the sim that has monsters ranging from levels 1-15 (that is, monsters would provide a decent amount of experience points for leveling up for people levels 1-15.. after that the experience points are basically moot.) This would allow you to create an organized monster base (say, you'll have 3 monsters of Lv1-3, 5 of Lv4-7, 3 of Lv8-10, etc) and also create a monster barrier to keep people progressing in the game at a steady pace--if monsters are too hard for them, they'll know they shouldn't go further than that.
You could create a 'boss' at the end of this quarter of the sim that would allow them to pass into sim quarter #2. This will do a couple of things for the game. First, it will give people direction in the game--if you create a storyline concept, then you can give the people reason for wanting to go through #4 to find the boss and retrieve 'whatever', only to find that what they really need is in #2--so they're off on an adventure again. Also, it will provide a hurdle for players that will give them something to strive towards. Lastly, for sake of space in the sim, it will keep players from moving too fast in the game and getting bored with the system.

Next idea I have in mind feeds off of this idea; I'm not sure if it was present in DarkLife before (I never got to try it, to be honest! but I know a bit about how it worked...) but you may want to create a Treasure Box system. Treasure Boxes are treasure box-looking prims that open if the character has a certain type of key (these boxes can be labeled on the front with a triangle, circle, square, and star so that players know exactly what kind of key they would need to open it.) You could create a systematic approach towards how keys are divvied out from monsters; for example, only 'boss' monsters, like the one mentioned above, will drop a star key. Only square keys can be purchased in town. And circle and triangle keys are dropped by all kinds of monsters, but the variation will make people really want to play for that other kind of key if they find a treasure box that they cannot open. The idea behind the treasure box, however, is that they have a 'spawn' rate. What I mean is, for example, you can designate some 8 spots in each quarter of a sim where, on specific intervals, a treasure box (or two, or three) will rez. You could create a randomizer for its contents (make sure though that the type/value of the item corresponds with the type/value of the key) if you would like. But in any case, if people get bored fighting, this would be an added incentive to go treasure hunting. Treasure could include GP, honorary items, items that give you special statistical bonuses. In any case, if a person has a star key and finds a star treasure box I'm sure they'd be thrilled.

And lastly is a more bogus idea which I'm not sure would be even easy to implement, but it could certainly add to gameplay. I'm thinking of an Honor system, based on points. How this would work is, monsters that are within your level range will give you a nice amount of Honor points when you beat them. Monsters above your level range will give you a very large amount of honor points. Monsters below your level range will take away some of your honor points (because it's not particularly honorable to slay ladybugs.) People can trade off their honor points to one another (a kind of "praise" system--if new players need help fighting a monster and an experienced player kills the monster for them, then the experienced player is faulted and loses honor points--however, with the praise system, the other player can show thanks by giving up some of his/her Honor points in return.) The honor points can be used for a few things. If it reaches a certain amount then it could change the title of the player. Or, if a character is at a certain level of honor, then 'the king' or whatever is high and mighty in this game can send special items to the player. Or, it could just be one more stat for people to flash around or feel ashamed of . But this would help to prevent old experienced players from hanging around the low level areas beating up all the monsters that new players need to play the game and advance.

So that's what I have to offer!
Daemioth

I kind of noticed that a lot of the builds right now in the four quarters are being spread out really far apart... in making roleplaying games, especially since this is going to be a no-fly game, I thought I'd throw out this concept (it's something RP game makers have a hard time doing a lot of the time but it's pretty critical.) The idea behind travel in RP is that you want there to be a feeling of freedom, but you don't want the feeling of uselessness; if there's going to be major destinations in the corners of the map, then there has to be paths inbetween that keep the player active/doing something... expanse is nice, but imagine what it'll be like walking across a laaarge field just to make it to a castle.

OK Sklar (sorry your first name is too difficult to type) I've read all your idea's and they all have some good points... so I'll remember the points of your ideas (linear gameplay, treaure boxes, a way to make sure people try hard monsters) and I'll think of a way to implement these well maybe non of them will be implemented, but I sure like the treasure box system... they could be 'hidden' on all darklife terretoria (some parts of other sim will get darklife monsters too and they diffrent key idea gives a nice touch to it .. but maybe instead of 4 symbols I'll just give them a level
like level 3 key.. that way I can add more types of treasure boxes
yeah I really see it happening... also because I don't have to change anything in the backpack, the keys could be real items with own script

Awsome, glad to hear this!

It'd be cool if there was a village that was user run, also user lived in, i.e. Like a real village! You could even have rent space above stores so owners could live above their store, etc.

Think less of "lets emulate an MMORPG" and more of "how can we take advantage of what SL allows us to do, that MMORPG's cant?", which you seem to be already!

There are a few MMORPG's that have started or are working on allowing users to buy/rent land and houses, so its good to see this concept flourish as it does create more of a village rather than just a bunch of NPC's and fake stuff laying around villages.

A mock-up of the town has been created and is in place, go look! (Damn I need texture artists too).

Erm, yes, we plan to rent out the shops or houses and offer them as incentives to Founders Club members too!

PC

Hi all. DarkLife now has a group forum! You can go view it in the usual place. We'll use this forum for major news and there for project and game chat

PC

Group forum? Usual place? "There"? Where is "there"?