Irth Online Wrap Report - Part 1

We offer a freedom to craft what you want to. Crafting was intended to be the most intricate that we could possibly provide. In Irth if you see it you can most likely craft it or harvest it. If by chance you find something that you can't, be patient you will be able to. There may be exceptions to this rule, but they are few and far between. Many combat skills, Magery, Alchemy (about 500 potions), Fishing, Lumberjacking (tons of different woods), Mining (seven different ores, rocks, gems,) Smelting, Pharmacy (make about 200 different bandages), Healing, Herbalism (tons and tons of herbs), Enchanting, De-Enchanting, Inscription (hundreds of spells to scribe), Masonry, Sculpting, Basket Weaving, Fabric Weaving cottons, wools, silks, Tailoring, Skinning, Tanning many different leathers, Fletching, Blacksmithing, Weaponsmithing, Engineering, Jewelry (make 200 pieces), Pottery, Carpentry, Cooking (over 200 recipes), Brewing (over 200 recipes), Glassblowing, dying clothes, etc.... much, much more. So I think you get the point that crafting is huge and the options within each profession are intricate. You could do nothing but craft and would have plenty to do.

It was all a matter of determining when players could have fun with what we had. And that was determined to be in November. But we haven't stopped development. Since release, we have continued to create and add content.

We provide a freedom react to the environment. See a river? Go for a swim. See a tree? Chop it down. See some wild cotton? Pick it. See an herb? Harvest it. See a rock? Mine it. See an item? Pick it up and throw it. See an animal? Tame it. See a horse? Mount it. See a light source? Light it up or put it out. Cut down a tree, take the logs, find a flint and make yourself a campfire. Then kill a chicken or something edible and cook it on the open flame. Now that's livin'. :)

We give players freedom to choose a civilization that caters to their playing style, PvP or non-PvP. If you want a change from PvP, or no longer identify with your aggressive culture's agendas and ideology, do as others have done and migrate to Avaria and become an Avarian. No longer identify with your Avarian Non-PvP countrymen? Return for citizenship to your country of ethnic origin.

We also give players the ability to own their own homes. No one pays for them. Everyone gets a free house and can spend time decorating it to their heart's content. If you don't like the neighborhood, you can move out and find another. You can also have your own guild village if you have enough members.

Technology

We decided early on that we wanted to design a proprietary game engine. We wanted a unique look and feel and were concerned with stability issues of prepackaged ones. Plus game engines are expensive! We had the capability to do it ourselves, so we did. We couldn't be happier with the result. This engine is extremely reliable and stable. It offers 10 km of viewing on a clear day. This creates beautiful vistas and creates scenarios for large-scale battles.

We have an in-game physics system for objects including gravity, acceleration, velocity, friction and momentum. Players will enjoy our background thread resource management for loading incoming objects, and portal-based map transition with no zoning. The world map seems virtually infinite because visible sectors are loaded dynamically and seamlessly as players move around.

Water reflects sky, terrain, items and objects. The water can be still or have currents and surf.

Our game engine handles collision detection well. It uses the actual 3D poly mesh model data to determine what is solid and what is not. The engine handles several types of collision depending on object proximity.

Irth uses specular and emissive lighting. We have dynamic lighting for shadows and objects. Point source lighting in the world for torches and lamps cast shadows and alter ambient light in the environment. DirectX 9 shader pipeline lights our world. We're using phong per pixel lighting with bump map and gloss map for specula reflection. The sun's slow-moving directional light illuminates the terrain, and shadows are computed from a horizon map for the terrain,with shadow mapping techniques for objects.

We have a dynamic weather system with moving weather patterns of, rain, snow, haze and ds. We offer player tools to design and decorate select areas. e have very few static items. Most of the game world is interactive. We have a macro option in game.

Aside from some fantasy trees, most of our trees use Speedtree technology. We chose it because it' simply the best package for high quality models and shadows, with branch and leaf motion affected by variable wind.

Character animations were done using Emotion FX 2 technology. This system was chosen because it allows an incredible range of possibilities some of which we haven't even begun to use yet. If you like the animations you see now, wait 'til you see what we can do as we progress. Characters can be extremely expressive. Emotion FX delivers compelling animated characters by using advanced real-time animation features such as inverse kinematics, facial animation, lip-sync technology, hardware shader support and controllers for physics and many other technologies.

Development Timeline

Hmm. Interesting topic. Well, we tried to tell people that we would release the game when it was ready. So, I guess in that respect, we released it on time. We did have varying release dates internally however. Our vision of the game is such that it will never be finished, but rather evolving based on what the community wants and whatever new feature we can come up with... and believe me when I say that the list of features that we have on our wish list is as ambitious as everything we've already got in the game.

Initially, we wanted to release the game earlier. We had two other dates, but when we got close to them, we wanted more features. Initially, we were going to release with only combat, and crafting would largely be implemented later. But the community said no, and they were right. So, we didn't release with a small crafting system but the most extravagant one available in any MMO. And we're not done with it. The players love the crafting system.

It was all a matter of determining when players could have fun with what we had. And that was determined to be in November. But we haven't stopped development. Since release, we have continued to create and add content.

So, the entire game took about two years, and we will continue to develop it further as long as we have players. So how did we do it in two years? A clear vision, good communication, a solid prioritized plan... we opened ourselves up to community criticism in order to maintain a reality check and we literally worked morning, noon and night, not all of us, but some of us. Going home at 3am and in starting the day at 9am was not an uncommon routine for some of us.

Tony Pungitore, Sr.

Lead Developer, Irth Online

Magic Hat Software

[Since introducing them in November of 2003 to offer post-release viewpoints from the respective teams, it has been our pleasure to publish Wrap Reports on a good number of other titles, primarily within the RPG, online world, action and strategy categories. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.]