Vitare Blog

Hello everyone, sorry for the lack of updates we have been working hard on the client, behind the scenes, and several things do take a while, so however small it seems – it can be very efficient towards client development. Also remember, our personal lives come first, Vitare comes second.

The Vitare engine has been updated with several new features. These features are key to the Vitare engine, and provide services that are used in other services and elsewhere in the game. We’ve added the tiling engine into the game – you can add walls, floors and objects, theoretically.

Rendering is also coming along well, frustum culling as it’s known prevents objects that aren’t on your screen being rendered. This makes the game run faster.

Sorry for the lack of updates from me, but little things can take a while. And remember, Vitare comes second in my priorities.

- Matthew.

Please note: This is a re-post as the original was removed due to an error.

Hey everyone. Sadly I can not offer as much in the light of updates due to the short period of time since such a large update, however i will try and explain what’s been happening.

Firstly lighting has been started, lighting is a hugely important feature in any game as it allows interesting scene designs and layouts to be possible and creates a realistic image of light entering a room and interacting with the objects in the room.

Secondly i have started the styling feature, that allows any object to have its looks changed, it allows different textures and surface types to be applied to objects and really creates a whole range of possible textures for a single object. This feature is also optional in the custom content system, custom items can have their own style maps that lays out where each texture can go.

Finally i would like to give a huge thanks to the community for supporting us this far, and remember to keep on sending us your input, they are a huge help during the development process, and early on is where they are likely to be implemented!

Until next time,

Matt.

This weekend we have added a handy feature to the forums, especially if you are on the go and enjoy using the internet on your mobile/cell phone.

Vitare Forums are officially supported on your iPhone/iPod Touch – yes, that’s right! You can now easily stay up to date with discussions on the Vitare Forums anywhere you are.

Test out the new feature today by going to: http://www.vitare.net/forum/iphone on your mobile device.

Only supported for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, may work on other phones. Additional charges may apply. Please check with your mobile network provider.

Well, as the weekend starts we have updated the Vitare Forums with a bunch of new features, which will allow you to get more interactive and have more fun on the forums. So let’s go over what we’ve added.

User bars

For the first time on the forums, you get your very own user bars which you can post on other forums, on your website, or in your signature. These show your username, posts and your group! You can edit your user bar in the User CP.

Social Networking, and more!

You can now tell others what your Steam account is, XBOX Live, Facebook and others! These will be shown in your posts. You can share this by going into User CP and Edit Profile.

Design your profile

Your user profiles are now fully customisable, you c an pick the colours to make it yours. Simply click on the “Style” button on your profile, and you can unleash your creativity. Simply click in one of the boxes, and the colour pallet will appear, you choose the colour and click the small icon of the pallet. You will instantly be able to preview the new design, and change it as you wish.

Profile messages & buddies

Leave someone a message, you can now go onto their profile and leave a message, they will then receive an alert that it is there, you now also have buddies.

Registration security

We have increased the registration security. To prevent bots, we have added image verification where new users are required to type in the letters/numbers, they also receive a welcome personal message once they register.

There are more features to come

Hello everyone, I’ve been up until the crack of dawn (as I write this it’s 12:53am GMT) improving Vitare Blueprints for you all.

Inspired by another website, I have re-designed the main page and it is a lot more easier to navigate. Please let us know what you think of the update, and be sure to register a Blueprints account and contribute your ideas!

The new Blueprints homepage now features new links, colours and information. You can also stay up to date with this blog on there with the RSS feature. We will be updating the homepage, so comment letting us know what Blueprint is missing.

Note: The new sidebars links on the homepage (Contribute) are not all valid. They will be added over the weekend.

I’d also like to thank you for your replies so far to the currency voting, be sure to keep giving us your ideas!

Thanks,
Daniel

As you know, Vitare will have a fully-working economy, and a currency! We originally planned to call the currency Vitare Dollars (V$), but I am thinking of calling a vote for the currency, if this goes ahead we need a list of what we could call it so we can create a poll! So this is what we need you to do:

Leave a comment and let us know what you think the currency in Vitare should be called, if we like it we will add it to the poll and keep you updated with this subject.

Thanks for all the help!
Daniel

It’s Wednesday, so to update the blog today I have checked our videos and thought id post our Blueprints Developer Walkthrough, narrated by Tom, which was originally released for our Twitter and Facebook fans/followers.

Let us know what you think, and should we make more of these for something else?

Note (27th June 2010): This video is now outdated. Vitare may re-create this video for the new Blueprints.

Cheers,
Daniel

Hello everyone, today I am writing this blog to share our ideas for the Vitare Real Estate. The Real Estate will be one of the main things in the Vitare Economy. As with other games, you can purchase a piece of land or trade the house deed. In Vitare, it is similar but with a few differences.

In Vitare you can purchase a piece of land for V$ (Vitare Dollars) which you can earn in-game by working at a job lot or you can purchase it via our available payment methods. Depending on where the land is, the price will vary. Any land that is vacant belongs to Vitare, we are considering adding a rent feature. Where you can pay a certain amount of V$ per week, there could be an auto-pay feature where if you have the funds and you are not online, it automatically takes it and rents the land for another week. If you fail to pay or don’t have this selected and forget to pay, you will be forced to move out and your home will be placed into your avatar’s inventory along with any furniture.

This is where you come in! We want you to let us know what you think of a rental system, where it’d be easier for new players or people who want to get a lot fast.

In the future, we will go over this more once we gather feedback.

Thanks,
Daniel

Hello everyone welcome to weekly update number 1 from me, Matt!

Firstly just a brief description of what these updates will contain; in these updates i will write about what’s going on behind the scenes in the Vitare development and maybe even a few screenshots! These updates will also help me get some feedback on what you think about the client so far and the features that i have implemented, so without further ado, lets get into this weeks update!

A lot has been done on the client over the past few weeks, however we have decided to once again go back to our original XNA powered client, and scrap our web-based client, this is because of two reasons: both speed and simplicity. Although the web client was extremely fast, it did not handle well once many thousands of objects were on screen, a simple requirement for a game engine. However do not panic! as we are still using the original game engine so development has not been affected.

Another new feature of the client is our world system which allows us to split the Vitare world through multiple servers that has a massive speed benefit as well as providing the fastest game experience, the transitions between world servers is seamless, and you will not even notice that you have been moved server.

Custom content has also been started, which is a huge feature in Vitare and we want the best possible way to manage and provide custom content, currently AND in-game item can be either edited or fully recreated, so for example you could design your own fridge in a modelling program such as Google sketch-up, 3ds max or Maya and import it directly into Vitare.

That’s it for this weeks update, next week i will be delivering even more juicy news about the client and server!

Many regards,

Matt – Lead developer.

Hello everyone, after trying to fix this for a long time, we have almost fixed the error on the forums where your post would have loads of unwanted symbols. We are glad to say it has been fixed… almost. Along with every fix, another bug always somehow appears.

The known bug is when you submit a request (eg. change your settings, post a new thread or not use the quick reply function), you will be shown a error screen. Ignore this, if it does not go away after a few seconds, scroll down and click the text that says “Redirect me now”.

Thanks for bearing with us, and please remember that we are doing our best to fix the issues, but at least you will no longer have to stare at the endless unwanted symbols!

Thanks, and have a great weekend!
Daniel & The Team

AS OF 7TH JULY 2010 THIS ERROR IS NOW FIXED.