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Make your own MMO with Atavism, now on Steam
Think you can do better than all the MMO devs currently making games for a living? Have at it with Atavism, a new make-your-own MMO development environment based on Unity and now available via Steam. "Atavism allows game designers to focus on making their game and to not worry about programming," says Neojac CEO Jacques Rossouw in a new press release. "In fact many of our clients have been able to have a prototype within a matter of weeks. You don't need to have a million dollar budget any more to develop an MMO game. Our team, along with Unity, has already done most of the heavy lifting with pre-designed plugins for every system. All you need to do is setup what stats you want to use with them." Neojac is building its own MMORPG called Neo's Land using the Atavism toolset.
Neojac is looking to put Atavism MMO creator on Steam
Raise your hand if you've ever thought you could do better than a professional MMO dev. Good, now, all of you go and click the link at the bottom of this article that leads to something called Atavism Online. Atavism is billed as an "MMO creator" on its preliminary Steam Greenlight page, and it's essentially a Unity game development environment that handles all the pesky programming, networking, and server administration tasks while enabling creative types to jump in and start developing the actual game. You might recognize the company behind Atavism, as Neojac is also building an MMO called Neo's Land using this very toolset. [Thanks omedon666!]
Neo's Land voxel-based building demo now available
Did our Neo's Land preview whet your appetite for voxel-based MMO creativity earlier this month? If so, you'll want to know that starting today, you can log into the game's website and play around with a set of editing tools that allow for dungeon creation, terrain sculpting, house construction, and more! Though the building demo is web-based, developer NeoJac notes that the full game will feature a traditional client/server model when it launches in 2014. Don't forget that you can help fund Neo's Land via its ongoing Kickstarter drive. [Source: NeoJac press release]
Some Assembly Required: Community dictates development path of Neo's Land
Sandbox aficionados, are you ready for another contender in the fight to be your next virtual world? Well, ready or not, here one comes! And now that the cat (or Kickstarter, as it were) is officially out of the bag, we can take stroll through this new development project and see just how things are shaping up. The name of this virtual playground-to-be? Neo's Land. With the number of crowdfund-hopefuls coming and going, you might be wondering what -- if anything -- distinguishes this game from all the others also vying for your attention and support. What exactly makes this project different and worth a look? It's not the various sandbox features like skills, an open world, and building homes; you can find those in other games that are out there or in the works. No, what sets Neo's Land apart is the different approach to development it is taking. Instead of building a game using the studio's ideal features, NeoJac Entertainment is quite literally soliciting the feature set directly from the players before implementing. In this case, Some Assembly Required also refers to the game itself! Can it be done -- can a game truly be built to honest-to-goodness player specs? During an exclusive interview with CEO and President Jacques Rossouw, I got to walk along the development path of Neo's Land and see what the game is about.
Neo's Land sandbox launches Kickstarter
A new Kickstarter project, Neo's Land, doesn't just want gamers to play it -- it wants gamers to create it. NeoJac Entertainment (Islands of War) has created a toolset that allows players to mold the in-game world from buildings to landscapes. The developers will hold regular contests to prompt more world building. Neo's Land will be a proper MMO, with PvE and PvP play, a skill-based character system without levels or classes, dungeons, and a player-driven economy. As if shaping the game world wasn't enough, Neo's Land will also feature player-created quests. Much of Neo's Land is already complete, but the team wants to raise $100,000 to power up this vision and get the game across the finish line. It's looking at a 2014 release if all goes well, but you can check out the possibilities with the videos after the jump, and expect to see our detailed Q&A with the team in a future installment of Some Assembly Required.
GDC09: Multiverse travels to the City of Sinners and Saints and the Islands of War
This summer is shaping up to be a big release for the Multiverse platform, as two independent developers are gearing up to remove the final bugs from their games built on the open-source engine. However, their choice in development platform is the only thing these two games have in common, as both have taken radically different approaches to their gameplay.Telos International's City of Sinners and Saints will be setting up a closed beta for April in preparations of opening their doors to the public in June. The game is focusing on creating a social networking experience within a three dimensional space, combining Facebook-esque concepts with game environment mechanics. Quests and games will be available, but most of the focus centers on creating an avatar and just meeting other people in a very over-the-top environment.On the flip side, Neojac Entertainment's Islands of War has announced that they wish to start their open beta today, the 25th of March, and they have requested testers via their website. This fantasy themed MMORPG has been created more in the vein of the traditional MMO, a la World of Warcraft. While the game will be incorporating features that the casual player will enjoy, the setup seems to be more traditional than the approach of Sinners and Saints.
