Vitare Blog

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Note (27th June 2010): This video is now outdated.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.

Since we removed our development website and switched to the Vitare Blog, we have been receiving emails and comments from users who want to know more about Vitare. We’ve added the About page explaining the purpose of the blog and a brief description of Vitare.

We’ve also changed the settings on the comments – all comments are now moderated, your first comment will not appear instantly as it will have to be approved, thereafter any comments you post should appear instantly.

Cheers,
Daniel

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.

We finished the update pretty fasted, and ran all the tests we required. The new theme is looking good and we hope it makes the forum look a lot more “cool”, or as I like to say… Shiny!

Here is what we done, and what time it was performed at:

20:30 – Forums offline
20:34 – Installed theme
20:38 – Finished tests

So be sure to head on over to the forums, and check it out!

Thanks,
Daniel & the team

Hey everyone, It’s Thursday. Today I am updating you to let you know that at the Vitare Forums will be getting a makeover at 8:30pm GMT (London). We are giving it a fresh makeover because we removed our development site, and it looks very plain.

The forums should be back up and running by 9:00pm GMT at the latest. During the update, you will not be able to use the forum service.

Cheers,
Daniel

Some of you may be expecting our weekly update from Matt, unfortunately this has been delayed until next week because we are currently sorting other issues.

Thanks for understanding

Cheers,
Daniel

Happy Tuesday everyone, I have updated the blog today. The first thing you will notice is to the right of this (the sidebar) is that we added more visible links to other things to do with Vitare, such as the forums and blueprints. We have also moved the search box higher up the sidebar.

I also updated the comments, no longer do they have to be moderated and we have added an anti-spam system to help reduce spam comments.

Finally, I have changed the search system, if we have nothing related to your search, you will get an entertaining message – or so I think it is! Try searching something of pure randomness and see what it says.

Cheers,
Daniel