I'm really surprised to see that Dristin is still being developed; I'm sure you'll remember me telling you that you'll never complete the project due to the languages and tools that were chosen for it.
However, from what I've seen from other indie MMORPGs, indie development journals tend to be very technical; instead of posting the features they intend to support, they post solely the design changes to the code with the assumption that readers will be able to conclude what features it enabled; basically, they tend to be more proud of their technical accomplishments than the features implemented for the game.
You guys don't describe the technicalities of the project, and I'm very curious. One of the benefits of making the journal very technical is that people with technical background can accurately determine what parts of the project have yet to be finished. I've tried finding hints on the forum, but there's virtually none, . I skimmed through every post by the admins here, and (omitting speculation) I was only able to find vague progress reports of the project, of which I'll summarize below:
Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:02 pm - Client and Server Coding
Our main priority atm is still client engine and server coding and that doesnt make for very interesting screen shots
Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:12 pm - Development Tools
We've been working on development tools (file editors, map editing program).
Thu Apr 17, 2008 11:57 pm - First Person to Login
Today Strongbah became the first person to log on Dristin. Sounds more exciting than it really is. We had a error with our new gui system that caused a test window to look like a gray blob. Strong got to see the test map which hugely exciting for him .
Mon Apr 21, 2008 7:30 am - First Login Outside Test Environment
We rewrote alot of the backend of the gui system and only have some basic control's to add. This week also saw the first person to log on the server outside the test environment.
Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:57 pm - Tool Coding
We've been building design tools for a bit and are in the middle of a rewrite of our map editor. We went back to the drawing board on our map editor and decided to build it from the client itself instead of a seperate windows application. The main reason for this, is it lets us get bugs out of the dristin game engine, as the editor and game will use the same code.
Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:48 pm - Finished Tools, Working on Networking Code
But we are done with our tools, working on graphics and client/server comunications which are basically the last step before we can start breaking stuff.
Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:20 pm - Networking Coding
Worked on some more sprites (which will usually be the case), And have spend alot of time on the network code. Working on the area of the map that will serve as the place you'll see when we start our beta (nothing soooo exciting), but its mostly waiting on additional artwork.
Tue Feb 24, 2009 8:34 pm - Chat System Testing
We are doing some pre-public testing with the chat system tonight.
These progress reports don't really entail what you guys have left to do. In fact, it doesn't even accurately describe what you've even accomplished. For instance, does "Networking Code" mean that you've finished all the different types of packets that are used in the game, or just that you've figured out how to send and receive data?Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:11 am - Chat System Ready for Testing
Chat system has been reworked and its basically ready for the upcoming testing. We could put it up right now, but we have a few more things we want some people to 'break' in addition to the chat system, so we'll be adding that in this week.
The ability to send and receive text messages can be done in about 15 lines of code in a high level language such as Java , C#, VB.NET, C++/CLI, etc. And a tile editor can be done in about 200 lines (XNA included, for DirectX support). I know that you guys arn't using a high-level language, but I'm just trying to show that the screenshot of the editor (although impressive) doesn't really show the work that you guys have put into the project.
Cheers
-- Peter Blain