Relics Dev Log - April 2008

Hello Everyone,

It has been a crazy few past weeks. After getting back from GDC, I've been slammed with all kinds of follow-up emails, phone calls, negotiations, and 40,000 other things that I just never seem to have enough time in the day to do. This is probably why I'm starting to get gray hair. That or waiting for the new season of Battlestar Galactica to start is killing me. But I digress. Let's get to the news of the game.

Now, I've always said that we don't want to get too deep with certain topics because we are so early in the game's development; things could change drastically over time and we don't want to just keep having to retract statements. Well, this is one of those moments. This is our first and hopefully only major change. This unfortunately comes to the topic of the Perma-Death Server. We've been working on several ideas and playing around with some systems in the game and we've just come to certain situations that a perma-death server just doesn't work for us and the type of fun game that we are trying to create. So, after much deliberation and thought, we have come to the conclusion that we have to re-mold the idea to something that works better for us.

We've been working with the idea two main server types for players. The first server type is what we call the "Normal" server. It will have the normal rule sets that we have for the game and players will be able to play as both Human (Survivor / Outcast) and Zombie. It's probably what you are already thinking about when you're imagining the game. The second server type is what we call the "Infection" server. This server works with the same rule sets of the "Normal" server, but with a few additional tweaks. So, you're probably asking yourself, "Ok, So what the hell is the difference?"

Think of this scenario: You create a character on the "Normal" server. Along the way you build up this great Survivor character. Then come along some zombies that decide to try to eat your face. During this course of events, you end up being bitten by a zombie. Now, from this point a variety of things will happen depending on which server you're playing on. But bottom line, let's say that you don't want to lose your human character that you spent months creating. Well, we've got good news for you. You won't lose it. If you're playing on a "Normal" server, you can choose to stay a human. However, if you're playing on an "Infection" server, you have no choice. You will become a zombie. This is our version of the Perma-Death server.

Over time, we will go into further depth once we have additional details worked out, but we wanted to go ahead and let everyone know of the Perma-Death change. We've seen a ton of topics on the forums about it and we didn't want to drop the bomb on people later down the line.

So, until next time...