Project Entropia Development Report 2
Source: http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features/den/pedev02.shtml
Project Entropia Development Report #2[edit]
September 21, 2001
A month ago, I wrote about how busy and exciting it was here at MindArk as we made our final preparations to begin Phase II of the Project Entropia beta test. At that time, the entire team was working extra-long hours to be ready. We knew that it would be a huge step to increase from our first small group of about 50 doing technical testing to more than 500 in a much more wide-ranging test involving many more actual gameplay elements. In fact, we ended up having a few more days to prepare than we had originally thought due to a delay in the production and delivery of the beta CDs. As a result, Phase II actually started in early September instead of late August. To be frank, we didn't mind this too much since the designers and programmers were able to make very productive use of those days.
Phase II started gradually as the testers received their CDs over a period of a week or so. This was simply due to the time it takes for mail to arrive in different parts of the world. The participants who live here in Gothenburg and elsewhere in Sweden began receiving theirs the day after we mailed them, followed by those in other European countries, but the packages that went to people in North America and other overseas locations took up to a week, and in a few cases even longer. In any case, we think they pretty much all arrived by sometime last week, and the actual level of participation has been encouraging. I've been spending most of my time helping the support team, so I've seen that some of the test participants are extremely helpful in pointing out problems and helping us to track down bugs, which is also great.
In addition to finding and killing bugs, we're also putting a tremendous amount of effort into expanding all the major aspects of Project Entropia, starting with basic functionality and extending to content and gameplay. At this time, the beta test area is about 10 square kilometers, which is about 3.5 square miles. It includes several different types of terrain such as plains, hills and mountains plus a variety of monsters including some of the animals that inhabit the planet Calypso and also some robots. Naturally, we will be adding more and different areas and a larger variety of monsters over the months to come.
Earlier today, we released the first screenshots from Phase II so that people who have not been selected as testers yet can have a look. In these images, you can see some of the current terrain types and several different monsters that the testers are seeing every day. We also wanted to demonstrate that Project Entropia's graphics are evolving and that they will improve over time as we implement the advanced features of the NetImmerse 4 graphics engine. For this reason, we also released a few development screenshots that give a peek at some of the visual enhancements the team is working on that are not yet in place in the beta. As in the other areas, we will be adding to the graphics on a continuing basis.
Now that Phase II is in progress, we are naturally even busier than last month. We are also even more excited than before because we have made truly exceptional progress in just these first couple of weeks. The team understands that there is still a huge amount of work ahead of us in order to bring our vision to realization. We even realize that we're sure to run into some unexpected problems. But so far, our first steps have been highly encouraging, which has been immensely motivating for all of us. It depends on our technical people, but I've even started to wonder how soon we will be able to expand the testing pool, and I'd like to remind anyone who would like to apply that they can do so at http://www.project-entropia.com/betatest/apply.asp?topic=betatest
As the last thing for today, on behalf of the team here at MindArk, I would like to thank the entire Project Entropia community for the wonderful moral support we continue to receive. This is another immense motivating factor for us, to see how the level of interest in Project Entropia continues to grow, and we look forward to the chance to welcome more of you into the beta as we forge ahead.
Patric Sundstrom
Marketing Manager
MindArk AB