Dofus Wrap Report

Dofus also differentiates itself from other RPGs by the importance given to the social and economic interactions between the members of our community. Everything has been made to enhance the relations and mutual aids within the community. For instance, almost all the items or equipment must be crafted by the players themselves; thus, professions have a very important place in the life of the community, and some craftsmen have become more popular than the most powerful players of the game.

After dozens of changes and improvements, Dofus has become a real MMORPG with a true community and is almost nothing like the first version anymore, except for the name and the spirit...

Finally, the game distinguishes itself by its subscription system. Gamers do not have to buy the game - just download, for free, a file of 40MB. They only have to pay a subscription of US $6.90; moreover, there is a completely free zone that allows new players to test the game without any time limit.

Technology Camille "Kam" Chafer: At the very beginning of the game creation, the technology used was very simple - paper, cardboard, scissors, pens, pencils and glue! We first made paste-ups of the game, exactly like a homemade board game. Then, we moved on to computers for the development.

The primary goals with respect to the technology for the game were simplicity of use and costs. We chose Flash format for the client side of the game because, first we - I mean Emmanuel, Anthony and I - were working in the field of flash content before creating Ankama Studio, and second, development with this technology is easy and quite cheap compared to, for example, Visual Studio.

Moreover, this format is also very simple for the customers; neither DirectX nor Java virtual machine to be downloaded, only the Flash player plug-in which takes two minutes and two mouse clicks!! Finally, it allows the players to play a true MMORPG easily at home, at school or even at their office!

For the server, we have chosen Java for several reasons. First, contrary to C/C++, it is compatible with all systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OSx...). Second, it is quite easy to fix bugs with Java (error search is much easier than with C/C++). Third, Java is very simple for everything regarding network development, and as our servers are multiplayer game servers, that's cool! :) And last, but not least, it is cheap (the editor is free).

We never used any license regarding the servers. We have done everything on our own using free editors. Regarding the client side of the game, we used only flash to code and make the graphics. For some time now, we have skipped from Flash to Eclipse (a free editor) to write the code, but we still use Flash for the graphics.

Finally, we have developed our own map editors so that they could completely suit our needs.

Development Timeline Anthony "Tot" Roux: The development of the game started in September 2002, and the first beta test for the French version in October 2003. During this test, the game really evolved a lot; more than 20 versions have been released before the French launch version in September 2004. The launch of Dofus International occurred one year later, in September 2005, after a very much shorter beta of two months. This schedule allowed us to respect all the deadlines. Moreover, we use a simple update system for the game; it enables us to easily and quickly make modifications, and increase our reactivity to possible problem. Flexibility of our organization (management of the team, quick meetings...) also helps us fix bugs or correct mistakes as soon as they appear.

But that's not all, the passion for the project and the involvement were keys for the respect of the deadlines... and the thousands of hours, days and nights, spent on the project must have been as well!!

Changes and Enhancements Anthony "Tot" Roux: The original idea for the game was to make a very tactical and turn-based combat game with a ladder system in which the players could fight in PvP in order to reach the top of the ranking. This is what the first beta version of Dofus looked like. There was no map, just arenas, and the player could search for other connected players to make fights and rise in the rankings. As the game evolved, it looked more and more like a community game. Maps were created, and the players could find opponents while walking on the map instead of searching for them using a simple "search interface".

After dozens of changes and improvements, Dofus has become a real MMORPG with a true community and is almost nothing like the first version anymore, except for the name and the spirit...

Major Challenges Emmanuel "Manu" Darras: Ankama Studio is the unique creator, designer, developer and publisher of Dofus. The game itself represented a huge challenge! In more detail, the top challenges were:

Designing the graphics and the gameplay. Ankama Studio had no experience in game design, although members of the Dofus team had some experience in classic flash games and/or graphic design. However, almost all of us have a passion for arcade games, RPGs or imported Asian games.

Manage the technical part of the game. Flash technology is very flexible. In short, we can do everything. However we still faced some problems, for example, to make an RPG in Flash without latency or even how to host 4,000 players connected simultaneously on a single machine and avoid lag for the players. Other problems occurred during development phase and beta, test but we have always found solutions!!