Ashianae’s Journey is an online role-playing/strategy game focused primarily on an expansive storyline and questing. Players are immersed in an environment that is alive and available for many types of interaction, and where people are encouraged to become involved in all levels of game society.

As stated about, this main page is a dedicated blog. Please do not hesitate to post comments and respond to my posts.. and don’t be afraid to ask questions!

Jim Rothfork
Ashianae’s Journey Project Manager

I know it has been a little while since I’ve been able to update you with anything real good, so I figured I would throw a bone in your general direction. I have been working on some ideas for this AW Expo video presentation I’ll be doing and in the process worked on a little sneak peek of one of the main cities, Dekarne. Take a look at this video and share with me your thoughts. Take your motion sickness pills before hand! This isn’t necessarily a finalized product by any means, but I figured it would serve well to give you all a look into one of our cities.

Let us know what you think!

- Jim Rothfork

In an effort to figure out just what exactly draws people into a game I’ve done a lot of reading online about online RPGs, MMOs, etc to hopefully impact Ashianae’s Journey in a positive way. There is an incredible article at Gamesutra.com called “Rethinking the MMO” which can be found at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_01.shtml - the article is good and provides some insight on features and concepts needed in order to successfully pull off an MMO. While the article includes a great deal of information for someone willing to read a bit, the most important aspect mentioned in the article is game play that is fun. That’s to say, one of the biggest game killers can be “boring game play”. This leads to the question of “How do you make your game fun?” It’s a question that plagues me consistently, because while I can envision our game being fun, and including elements that tend to make games fun.. how can you be sure that your concept will lead to “fun” game play, and keep people engaged?

Two consistent answers seem pretty apparent in creating fun game play: an environment which is rich and full of depth, and an environment where “things” are happening. The second one may sound too easy to hold any water, but in fact is perhaps more important than the first. Depth is an important aspect of the game, but when even an encyclopedia contains said depth, it won’t be enough to make the game play interesting and fun (unless of course you just enjoy reading an encyclopedia through).

The aspect of making “things” happen, and making them happen frequently however is something that consistently seems to keep players entertained… and if you’ve established some depth in your game, then you should theoretically have all the more fire power to make some worth while game play and activities. In the game that we first began, and continue to work on here and there when there is time is a prime example of the above condition. AWRPG (the title of the server in Active Worlds) and Draeda (the name of the game) contain mind boggling depth which includes pages and pages of developer written contain, and books full of player written history and events. However, while this depth is something that makes game play very rich, the game clearly slumps when few “things” go on, on a game wide scale. From what we’ve seen in the four years of running it, more activity equals more players, more interaction, and more fun.

In fact this can be seen in most of the virtual environments I’ve ever encountered, whether they’re full blown games or not. Active Worlds itself (www.activeworlds.com) is experiencing an all time low in number of paying accounts online at one time partly due to a decrease in activity in the environment (at least, that’s my argument). In all cases, you can typically trace number of active users to the amount of events going on at any given time and in turn the excitement generated by said events. So the answer seems simple - make more events, make more “things” happen. Unfortunately this is easier said than done. In fact, even in large scale games like EVE Online that appeal to thousands of players at one time, I often find myself bored and lacking *something* to do, even in an environment so deep that I can literally do anything I want. In many cases it seems that *something* does not grab me, and force me to interact in an engaging way. So the question becomes, what *things* have you seen and been a part of in online games that have made them fun, engaging, and something you didn’t want to log off of? Dig deep and see what you come up with. For Active Worlds, many of those events were things like the AW version of survivor, community awards, building competitions, social gatherings, etc. In our game AWRPG, much of those events were world wide storyline events that grabbed people and compelled them to become involved.

What do you think? Share with us what keeps you engaged in the games you play, besides of course the motivational grind to be the best. *grin* And like wise, what causes a game to feel old? Is it the lack of new events, or the lack of events altogether?

Tell us what you think!

- Jim Rothfork

There are an incredible amount of things that factor into the creation of an RPG, many of which we are discovering along the way and hopefully failing at (quickly) and then correcting (just as quickly). While there are an incredible amount of factors that go into the creation of RPGs, not all of them are interesting or things you want to hear about which brings me to the point of this here post: What would you like to know about, when it comes to the creation of RPGS? Let us know, and we’ll include them in our presentation and do our best to give you a glimpse of how those things have effected Ashianae’s Journey. So… What do you want to hear about? What do you want to see? Are there things you’d like to hear about that don’t exactly pertain to the creation of the game, but relate to the final outcome of the game itself? If so, let us know!

More updates about Ashianae’s Journey to come soon. Thanks for reading!

This does not mean though that the absence from blogging has meant an absence from working on Ashianae’s Journey. On the contrary, progress seams to be flying all around us. Significant strides have been made on the realm programming, and in the last two weeks much has developed on the art front. Realm technology now allows us to limit a players building to a specific area which a month ago was a serious bump in the road. The HUD development continues to move along, evolve and improve. Additionally our artists have churned out an incredible amount of content over the last month.

Our goal for the realm technology is simple… perhaps more simple in words than execution: allow our community to create places that are unique, custom and personalized. Active Worlds is all about three dimensional content creation driven by the users. The current setup conflicts with gaming and access to the inferstructure makes allowing users these coveted features especially difficult. However, in an effort to bridge this gap we’ve come up with a new system that when completed will allow players all the benefits of Active Worlds building. The complexities of this system that AW currently uses and its difficulties in our application is perhaps more appropriate for another time. Suffice it to say, games can expect the same environmental customization found in AW, and on par with those in Second Life.

Here’s a screenshot of a realm mock up. The concept behind realms is that players will have their own floating platforms in the sky where they can build and customize an environment of their own:

In regards to the HUD - we continue to refine it so that it continues to become less intrusive to the game, and easily hidden if desired. Some pictures of it and its evolution can be seen above.

On my flight home yesterday, I found that turbulence in the air made for some great creativity strides by way of storyline. I’ve decided to share with you my scribbled notes and writing about Dekarne, one of the primary cities in Ashianae’s Journey. Take a look at it and share your thoughts with me.

<Begin scribbled notes

Dekarne represents the surface dwellers topside culture. Politically these individuals are cut throat and have been known to spread propaganda to achieve their goals. For decades Dekarne has dominated politics of the entire island, above and below ground and seeks to extend its influence throughout the entire civilization. In more recent years Dekarne has spear headed wars against neighboring empires Draeda, Sah, and Amala. Within the last two centuries Dekarne has publicly invested in and developed a starship program building the first and only space worthy vessel on the planet. As a result of its new technology Dekarne has become increasingly hostile towards neighboring empires in an effort to bolster its standing within the Ashianae Electorate and coalition.

The political forces within Dekarne are known for their cold and domineering demeanor, and it is common knowledge that money and violence tend to be responsible for many of its so called democratic elections. Almost as if born from the starship and cosmos programs, new political factions have emerged that work against the current politics. Often these factions spawn additional violence in the name of revolution, but there are factions amongst them that work silently and covertly attempting change.

Dekarne is controlled by the Aurelius family and their allies that dominate the cities electorate. Other factions have been able to infiltrate this governing body, but their power and influence tends to be limited. The elders of the family Rajan and Edaj Aurelius sit as heads of state, administering propaganda and maintain almost absolute power within the electorate. Beyond the powers that be, citizens of Dekarne tend to be passionate and seek a path of enlightenment. Typically Dekarne citizens feel minimal effects of its tyranical ruler, until so called “rogue” factions begin to gain powers within the electorate. Citizens of Dekarne enjoy a fairly lavish lifestyle in one of the richest cities in all of Ashianae. The Dekarne are also almost obsessively fascinated with the enlightenment that awaits them in their ascention to the cosmos. It is this afformentioned lifestyle, and their obsessions with enlightenment that makes for their general apathy towards their government that terrorizes those who stand in its way. Although it is a city of apathy towards its leaders, groups exist which seek truth and change. These are the factions of the Duval. The family run factions are appropriately referred to as those of The House.

<End scribbled notes

In the next blog I will talk about and discuss the behavior of the Karnaires - the city within the underground cavern. I will also try to give a few sneak peeks at some of the quest and cavern areas. Until then, share your thoughts, comments and questions. Until next time.

-Jim Rothfork

- A customizable and interactive environment.
- A high level of depth and character immesion.
- An experience that is fun.

In my opinion and from the research I’ve done, this last point is almost painfully, and obviously the most important goal on the list. While the others are important, you could almost include them as sub points. As it stands now, we’re pulling out all the stops in the Active Worlds software to make a game that can compete with other games in the industry, as many games created by individual third parties on the AW engine seem to fail when it comes to modern features. The company that owns the software however seems to very naturally come up with unique approaches that make their projects *feel* like games. This is our goal with Ashianae.

So that brings me to talking a little about two of the very important factors of the game itself - the two cities, and the culture of the Ashianae.. So allow me to elaborate a bit for you here.

Ashianae is a civilization of people that occupy a number of island chains, off the coast of a small neighboring continent, Draeda. Each island within the chain is usually comprised primarily of an entire city, as most of the islands are fairly small. In addition to one large city, some contain villages that branch off towards the coasts. Within each chain of islands is what modern civilizations would consider to be a “Capital” island, a place where the local seat of government power resides. The entire civilization of Ashianae is what one might compare to that of the mythological Atlantis - that is to say, the people there are spiritually and scientifically advanced and have under their control powerful weapons and utilities. It is this advance in scientific and mystical knowledge that has lead to an incredibly hostile environment amongst neighboring islands and island chains. Indeed, the neighboring relationships are tense and often violent even though all within our civilization claim to live under the flag of the Ashianae.

Our story, Ashianae’s Journey, takes place on just one of these capital islands, and is controled by two large cities: Dekarne and Karnaires.

Dekarne is the sprawling city that resides on the surface of the island, while Karnaires is a city that resides below ground within a large magma chamber and cavern. The two island cultures differ incredibly, but ultimately rely on one another for survival. The Karnaires provide the top side culture with the energy source that allows their civilization and island to thrive, while Dekarne provides food, water, and other natural resources. Typically the Dekarne is dominated by cut-throat politics, while Karnaires thrives amongst dangerous and volatile death matches.

At a later time I will have to go into more detail on the cities and their roles in the game itself, but to give you a generic idea: Players will be able to reside in either city, and be able to take part in the politics of each city. It is our goal to allow players to feel as immersed and involved in both city and political life as possible, for those players who are interested in role-playing.

In the mean time, here are some screen shots of the two cities… I’m sure you can guess which is which.

And finally, I thought it might be nice to end this picture with an update on some of our progress as of late. We’ve been working with our graphic artist on the team to do some mock ups of what our HUD will consist of, and what it will look like. Please keep in mind that this is a very basic tool set at this moment, and the icons you see along the top side of the screen will be changed completely to match out environment.

Drop me a line and let me know what you think about all of the above!

I’m partially hoping that at some point the constant gears in my head will cease, but in other ways hoping it doesn’t. I’m constantly scheming up ways (or trying to) to keep players involved and having fun within the game idea we’ve been working on. Lately we have been putting a lot of thought into new stats, spell creation, and the division between the various spells. After some scheming today and some talking with Allen last night, we decided on four different “Trees” of spells, that would help improve diversity among the player ranks. You can read about those here. The idea is to give players a few different routes to go in terms of spells and stat improvement, but at the same time allow players to conquer all of it if they so desire. As of yet, all stats in Ashianae’s Journey are “trainable” - that’s to say, they will all improve with usage. Some people have expressed concern that this would in fact not result in diversity, but I propose this argument: Take two players, each of which spends 100 hours improving their stats. Player A who spends 100 hours on only improving her mana and Fire abilities. Player B spends 100 hours improving his fire, water, arcane and mana abilities. Player A is going to generally have much stronger spells than player B at this point.

At this point we’re still open to the idea of making things a little more exclusive than that though, and I’m curious to hear compelling arguments on why the above is a bad idea. One such alternative might be to limit characters to learning either Water or Fire spells, but let them freely dabble in both Arcane and Divinity, or limit those as well so you end up with players who have various combinations of the four different spell trees. Any input on the above would be greatly appreciated!

One reason we’ve been so interested in not limiting players like this is to let players have as much freedom as possible. Making things like PvP not a necessity in the game, but an optional thing, to me makes our original concept completely do-able and fair. If players aren’t interested in conquering everything, they won’t have to in order to progress along in the game. However if players do spend the time to “master” everything, they would have a leg up in PvP and PvE situations. Is that fair? Most of me says yes, but part of me is a bit hesitant.

Apart from working out a bit more on spell theory, I’ve continued to sculpt some of our natural environments. It is an aim to make this environment as rich and fun to explore as possible. While we have used some automatic placement of trees and such, I am going back in and layering in more detail over those original tree objects to give things a little more oomph. Here is a screenshot of one such area I’ve been working on a bit more with a meandering deer in the shot.

The hand sculpting of these environments is a tiring process but ultimately I think these areas feel more developed and realistic than the areas that have just had a layer of randomized trees entered. As always, comments are welcome on anything I’ve said above - and they’re appreciated!

Until next time…

Jim Rothfork

And so here I am, blogging till my little hearts content. As of this evening, this page will document much of our development process in the hopes of getting some of you readers involved in watching how our game shapes up to ultimately spark some interest in this new(ish) project of ours. So perhaps I should start at the beginning, as it tends to be an excellent place to begin.. erm.. yes.

Ashianae’s Journey is a project started by myself and a few other brave (insane) citizens on a 3D chat program called Active Worlds. For roughly six years now, a few of us have been developing and supporting a game within that client called “AWRPG - The Land of Draeda”. Over the years we’ve had a blast and learned a ton. Years back we were commissioned by some Dutch folk to create a 3D game using the platform for a website called Games.nl. After a few snaffoos that project washed up, and we were left to our own devices back in AWRPG. Years later, here we are: taking what I consider to be a bold step forward. Three months ago we purchased our own license of the software to develop our own game on. This software is not open source and therefore we do not have the rights to change the programming of the engine itself, but we are free to develop on top of it until we drop… And that is what we’re doing!

In the past couple of months we’ve been working feverishly with various groups to bring this little dream together. Magine, of www.turtleflight.com has graciously provided us with a license to use her RPG II software, which is what one might call a “plugin” to the AW software (without being as cool as a true plugin). This software allows us to operate a “Game Master” which in the most basic language controls all user stats. This Game Master is essentially what we in Active Worlds call a Bot… In generic terms, a bot is the equivalent in AW of Artificial Intelligence. These bots can keep track of player records and accounts, and function as all the NPCs players interact with. We’ve also been working with a couple of citizens, Tim and Joel, to get some cool terrain forms within the world that will make things very nice… So far all of that is set.

At this point in the game we are working heavily on setting up the various Game Master settings, testing out its features, and setting up the infrastructure of the game itself. Setting up the physical environment players interact with is also moving along nicely.

I feel as though I’ve blathered on long enough for one evening. As I make my posts and discuss the progress we make in various areas, I will try to give you, the reader, more background on the topic itself. For example, if tomorrow I post about our NPC development (which I just might!), I will do my best to give you a better understanding of where we are in the process, and where we would like to head. In the mean time, if you’re just discovering this blog feel free to look around at the other pages we’ve provided to get some more information, although some of them lack content for the moment.

Thanks for reading!

Jim Rothfork