DarkLife enters testing phase

Hi everyone. We've been busy building for a couple of weeks now and we're entering the final phase of production of DarkLife. I thought you all might to know what it's about, so here's some info! You can find us in the NE corner of DarkWood.


Welcome to DarkLife!

DarkLife is a new interactive experience for Second Life. In DarkLife you face terrible trials in a castle overrun with warped and twisted creatures. Will you emerge victorious or will your bones be chewed upon by the evil inside DarkLife Dungeon!

Note: DarkLife is currently in a test phase until late November. During the test not all features will be in DarkLife and there may be bugs. All stats will be wiped at the end of beta (and probably during). Only a LIMITED number of people will be testing, more on that later.

When we go live DarkLife will allow any player to buy the backpack required to get started. Basic equipment like a sword and shield will also be for sale for L$. As you advance you will end up buying many items with Gold, currency that monsters drop, rather than L$.


Testing
We are looking for a few keen testers to help make DarkLife great. Experience with RPGs a bonus as well as a little patience! To apply you should message me in game. If I don't reply bug me till I give you an answer (victim of lag ya see).


Volunteers
We need your help! We are interested in getting content submissions from anyone in Second Life. What do we want? Well, if you see something in the DarkLife game that you think could look better, make a new version and we'll use it if we like it! For example, the backpack needs work, signs and we would love to get some more monster submissions (remember, legs are hard to do in SL).


Selling weapons and items
DarkWood members are invited to start setting up shops in DW to sell weapons, armor and magic items for DarkLife players. If you are interested in taking part then IM me!


Feedback
We are always interested in your feedback. Contact us by IM to pass on your thoughts.


....................................................
DarkLife is made by:
Pirate Cotton - Coordinator and Designer
Mark Bush - Head coder and Designer
With thanks to...
- Ama Omega
- Auricon Sunchaser
- Eggy Lipmann
- Lindens

Oh, I want to apply! I gotta get in world and bug ya

Some thanks also goes out to people who patiently helped me test some things, that includes Eve, Soulcatcher, Eznil and others (sorry don't remember your last names)

!!!Beta testers read this carefully to see if you really want to apply!!!

Remember when you are beta testing that the goals are this (in order of importance)

-Find bugs
-Tell use what you think of it
-Come with suggestions on how to improve it
-Have fun playing

So please send any bugs or weird behaviour to me in IM.

If you are really busy with other projects or you are not online much you better not apply to the demo, we do need people who actually have time to beta test.

Also I want to ask the beta players to play it long enough so you had a chance to try out all the features.

This list coud help: (don't worry we'll tell you how this will all work)

-fight all kill all monsters from the demo
-fill all your potions and try out all potions
-buy all objects that are for sale and test them (including loose potions)
-Die
-Try every feature when you are dead (only equiping and stats should work then)
-Resurrect
-Deattach and attach your backpack several times during the game
-Try all kinds of actions that should not be able to work including:
-Click repetingly at items
-equip multiple swords/shields etc.
-try to buy items with not enough gold
-pay too much or to little L$ when buying
-click on other peoples items (include backpack potions)
-equip and unequip fast
-Any odd behaviour that you think could result in bugs or incorrect behaviour. Don't be affraid to break the game. I need you to try it. Just don't forget what actions you were doing when you did this
-Log out and in with your backpack attached or in inventory
-(!)unplug your network cable with your backpack in diffrent states (attached or in inventory) until you log out
-Look at your stats all the time during these actions and see if your stats stay consistent


Why do all this? It's very important in this game that your stats are never lost.
I can't do much about it actually if something goes wrong, exept bugreporting the lindens.
What I can do however is use you beta testers to see where it goes wrong and warn the future players for this. (Well maybe it never goes wrong that would be nice)
Also in the final version I will make a backpack storage. If you place your backpack there I will be mailed with your stats every 2 hours or so. Might anything go wrong with your stats then I will look at the last mail I got with your stats and prepare a new backpack for you with those stats. That's all I can do...

Also have a look at all the items you receive/buy and the monsters to test if you cannot access any scripts inside. If you DO find a permission bug don't tell anyone but me or pirate, and most importantly don't tell anyone the channel-numbers and don't use them for cheating in the final version

Well have fun beta testing... The test should start today or tomorrow!

Mark Busch

Backup the stats via email until we get that #$%#$%#% llWriteNoteCard command in the game.

Yeah that would be nice too
But I think with the new permission system people can add and remove notecards in ANY items they own so that could enable people to cheat (correct me if I'm wrong here)
Hmm they would have to know the layour of the notecard. I could add some secret word on the first line then.
Good idea Eggy, thanks I would have to test it with permissions etc. but it could work.
But I'm still worried the update info in the notecard could get lost or something. I'de hate any SL bug causing players to lose all the time they played to level up So mail will be the final backup system
I'm only also expecting players with high stats to use this feature anyways...

We could throw in a "save" command (but no "load" to prevent cheating) and let the players assume the responsibility of backing up their own char, so they will only have themselves to blame if something weird happens.
In the unlikely event any data is lost, we could paste a copy of the email into a notecard and have a script restore all the stats automatically.

2 hours is probably excessive. Unless I'm mistaken, stats will be constant while sitting on the rack? I would suggest an email only when they first set it down.

Other good times to email:
- When they level (er are there levels?)
- When they die
- Permanant stat changes (er are there permanant stat changes?)
- When the inventory changes (they get a new item or equip something etc)


The real idea should be that you don't need to send duplicate emails to your self. Only get the backup emails when something actually changes worth saving.

You really don't need to back up all of those. Players won't mind excessively a couple hours roll back if absolutely necessary. So maybe while playing - pack on and in a certain area - you could do periodic backups, and once they set the pack down it gets one. Or just do the one when they set it down. Or eggy's save command is a nice idea.

As a note of confidence towards script state stability - I ran two Stock systems for my wells that collected player keys, stocks owned and dividend balance. I was (and am for 1) emailed every day with a back up of all the data as well as some other stuff. I ran these for months, literally since the end of May I think, and never once had to use my backup. The data was never lost. And these were complex systems with about 4 scripts on each. They survived the transition all the way through 1.1 and 1 of them still runs today (I took down the other for different reasons).

Due to this I think a save command that saved data to a seperate script (via link messages) would be feasable, and easy.

Been having lag. If I don't reply keep trying till I do.

IM me to join in the fun!

Pirate

Pirate invited me to take a look around the DarkLife Castle and store today. The partners been putting in a lot of work on the place, worth a look indeed.

yes Ama we do have levels and permanent stat changes... Indeed I could only email on other occasions. Thanks for all your suggestions.

I really hope we can rely on the scripts-save from SL... we'll see about that in beta testing

A friend showed me this in action and the akar project is interested in contacting you, when you get online please contct me, or ill contact you.

A friend showed you what in action and what is the akar project?

We're pleased announce that we're going to have an open demo for the next couple of weeks. As Mark and I are often online at funny times compared to most of you guys we thought we'd open up access a bit.

To join the fun simply turn up to the site in the NW of Darkwood and buy a backpack in the little house next to the castle. Buy a basic sword and shield and then put them all on and head into the castle! Creatures are on the ground and first floors with more coming.

Pirate Cotton

He showed me darklife in action, and the akar project is basically darklife in a futeristic world, weve been around for about a month now with little work on the system done. Akar was basically made for pvp combat though, but seeing as we are currently FAR from compleating the project, we are interested in licenseing the darklife engine, then modding it to finish up akar.

I don't really care about L$ and I'm not allowed to sell it for real money (Won't do that anyway, it's lame)
The thing I care about is DarkLife and if I would sell the code to some other players with better game-creating skills all the attention might diverse from DarkLife to your project. And in my eyes that would mean a failure of our project. And that's the last thing I would want.
I am willing to cooperate with anyone on any level (well not without terms) as long as it keeps inside the DarkLife project and under Pirate's and mine supervision.
I'm really sorry but you can not use any parts of the DarkLife code for your own projects. Maybe much later when I don't have time for Second Life anymore or something like that (and if pirate agrees). But don't expect that to be anytime soon.
However I am wiling to help you out in any other way you need! Just IM me in game.

no need, and also, i was playing darklife for a total of 5 () hours today. Its that good, And on the akar topic, we completaly understand, we are haveing an alpha in a week or 2 and we would love it if you could join in

Ryen has hit lvl8, top of the test so far hehe.

More weapons and monsters going in on Sunday.

Pirate

No we aren't. As one of the two main scripters for Akar, I dont want to even *see* anyone else's proprietary code. That way no one can claim that what we are doing is in any way plaigarized.

Not only that, but the projects are different enough that I dont think the Darklife code would really fit our needs without being chopped up to the point of non recognition. It is, in a way, like comparing apples to oranges (pardon the cliche).

To the Darklife team: Good job I like what I have been seeing!

With Regards,
Antagonistic Protagonist

Thanks ant!

Good for you Antagonistic Protagonist, I'm also a coder who wants to make his own work.
Ofcourse I will beta test your project as soons as possible. However I don't have time to join your team or anything like that.
Thanks for your comments on DarkLife

Call her Taggy.
Mark I think you should talk to me about securing those channel numbers a little... I'll IM you.

Nor do I have time to join yours, so that puts us in the same boat . I look forward to us both providing the community with an excellent gaming experience

Regards,
Antagonistic Protagonist

I sure hope we will

I have a patent pending secure method of communication over chat channels.

It is available completely free at the off chance you can catch me online. I think I was very smart in making it which means someone will hack it if I say how it was done in about 3.2 minutes.

Ama told me there were 2 billion (32 bit?) channel numbers.. I think I can pick some very random channel numbers from there. In theory you could crack them but in real life you will not succeed.. However I am very interested in a more theoretical way of securing the channels, but it musn't be too complex or slow, or unreliable. So please let me know your ideas, mail them to [email]bram.vaessen@wxs.nl[/email].
Also if you compromised the demo it's not a big deal but please tell me how you did it as soon as possible!