Hunnenkoenig's Blog

OMFG!

2011-05-09T02:06:00.009+01:00

I totally forgot about this blog :-)

I twitter, and I use Facebook and we have a dozen other projects and sites and I wouldn't even remember, that I used to have a blog, if somebody wouldn't have come to one of our sites from this blog.

I will try to catch up a bit from now on.

As probably many of you know, Renaissance has been put on hold. I think everybody can figure out why.

We are so busy with iPhone development, we can't manage Renaissance, but we didn't forget about it. Rather the opposite: we try to get our feet on the Appstore, so we can make money for Renaissance.

We successfully released Alpine Crawler (it was #2 on the US Appstore) and Assault Commando (had 150.000 downloads in one day) and we are in the making of Armored Combat.

We also have our Promo Dispenser site, which is in the rework now and will be online in a few days again. There you can get paid iPhone apps for free, directly from iTunes by promo codes.

Promo Dispenser"

If you stumble upon this blog again, add it to your bookmarks, because I will try to keep posting more in the future.

Next time some more personal and specific, promise!

New sites and iPhone games

2009-07-11T09:16:00.003+01:00

We are still here and we are still active and to be honest I have been very busy with our ongoing projects, that's why I write so rarely.

We have a new company site, which I already mentioned and we published our first iPhone game, which was made by the team of Dimension Technics. Our first self developed iPhone game will come to the Appstore shortly and it will be a retro looking arcade game, which will be released within two weeks. We have 3 games in the pipeline at the moment and the other games will follow this summer.

This year we are concentrating on the iPhone and would like to release at least 5 games until December.

We assume that these games will bring so much money that we can start to develop our browser based MMO further, which would be the next step on the way to finance Renaissance on our own.

You can visit our iPhone website under http://iphone.3dmagicbox.com and if you have an iPhone, you can support us by buying our games. They cost a minimal amount of money, but it is a huge help for us.

You can also spread the word about them, so maybe your friends find them also worth them to try.

New Homepage

2009-04-27T19:39:00.002+01:00

Our new company homepage is online.

You can visit it by the following link: http://3dmagicbox.com

Hello again

2009-04-18T19:40:00.002+01:00

I thought, I have to post something again, because I disappeared for a very long time from this blog, although many things are happening lately in our team.

Unfortunately nothing is really related to Renaissance. We started new developments and continue our old ones too.

We always try to find new ways to get the needed funding, but these ways are still not for the public, so I can't tell anything yet.

I just wanted to check in. Hopefully I can report something truely amazing shortly. Until then stay tuned and visit the blog every now and then.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-22T06:14:00.006+01:00

I didn't write for a long time, because unfortunately nothing happened. I was working too much and in my spare time I was rather managing my other sites.

Regarding Renaissance I can only report that I was getting emails from jerks, but nothing serious. Some Nigerian scammers and some nerds, who wanted to trick me to get our business plans and mainly our game design.

I don't know, what their intention was, but I am old enough to smell suspicious and cheap attempts, so don't try it children! :-P

For everybody else I and the whole team wish a merry Christmas and a very happy new year!

Nonserious Business

2008-08-27T09:19:00.009+01:00

So, here I am again. It was a busy time for us in the last weeks. We were in Leipzig at the Game Convention, which was cool, but not as good as last year in my opinion. I wanted to write about it, but honestly, there is nothing to write. We had a good time, but nothing special. I could upload some images, but they are also not really interesting, so I skip. I think, you can find much more interesting articles, photos and videos about it on the net.

And now to my main theme: As I mentioned, in July we were talking to an investor, who assured us that he is interested in our company and he wants to invest into it. The whole team were coming to Vienna to talk about the game and different technical things and actually to set up the contract. At the presentation of the game he was very excited and I firmly saw the $ signs in his eyes, but after the technical meeting he pushed back the date for setting up the contract with some lame excuses. When I asked him again several times, he never replied.

That would be not the problem, but we think, he may try to develop our ideas on his own, that's why he never replies to phones and emails. We didn't only present Renaissance for him, but also MMBRPG, the other project of us, and I think he thought "why to buy half of the revenue, if you can steal the whole".

I mean, it's one thing, if a "serious business man" doesn't write at least a "sorry no interest", after he was asking for a business plan (like it happend hundred times with other investors and companies), but it's another, if somebody lies into your eyes, saying "it's cool and I want to be a part of it" and then he avoids any contact. It's like kindergarden.

None the less, we are working on the project and we will pull it off sooner or later, and if we have to go to court, we will do it.

I wrote this little rant just for you to see, how hard it is to get feet in the business and if we are slow and it seems that we do nothing and the project is vaporware, you should know: it's not true. We will go on, no matter how many barriers we have to take.

So, up to another fight!

Holiday before Business

2008-07-16T14:27:00.010+01:00

Last week we have spent our time with the team at the Balaton lake in Hungary. Beside eating, swimming and sleeping we also talked about the game a lot.

On Monday we came to Vienna to meet our potential investor and I think, this round went very well too. I will meet him on Friday again and we will see, if we can cooperate, so even if your fingers are already hurting, keep them crossed! :-D
Here are a few pictures. I will add more.

EDIT: Added a few more pics.

Second Round

2008-07-02T22:17:00.005+01:00

You have crossed your fingers very well, because it seems that we are on the right track. As you may have thought right, my last post was about a meeting with an investor. Unfortunately I can't tell anything specific about it yet, but everything went cool and the second round of the negotiation starts at the end of next week, so keep your fingers crossed! If we can make an announcement, we will do so. ;-)

Honestly, when I started this blog, my intention was to speak about everything freely from my personal point of view, but unfortunately - as you can see - there are things, which I am not allowed to talk about. Not even here, and that makes me sad somehow, but anyways, it's time to start getting happy (of course very carefully yet).

I also don't want to talk about those things too early, because I am a bit superstitious and I made the same mistake too often already, when I was talking about things out of joy, which then didn't turn out well - or not in the expected time frame.

The one thing I can say: It doesn't matter how cool the project may sound and how experienced the involved people may be, it is really, really hard for an unknown developer team, like us, to find an investor. We were looking for him almost two years and we are still not sure, if we found one, but we've never ever been so near to the finish line (which is simultaneously also the start), although we already thought it so a few times.

Maybe I said already too much and maybe I should have saved this for my next post, but right now I feel myself, like being on crack or something. :-P

So maybe it's just an old empty phrase, but I really believe that you can achive everything you want, if you want it so badly that you can't even think about anything else.

A new hope

2008-06-12T22:33:00.004+01:00

No, it's not Star Wars related :-P

Many people asked me to write something, because they hated to read the previous post over and over again. Unfortunately I had nothing new to tell... until now.

Next week we will have a very important meeting. I hope it will work out well. Cross your fingers... again! But do it a bit stronger now! :-P

The worst day of my life

2008-05-05T23:35:00.012+01:00

This is the worst day of my whole life. I am angry, sad and disappointed at the same time. They say, if you write it down, it gets better. I don't even know, what I should write. I could cry and scream and I would like to punch somebody in the face. I feel betrayed and this is not even the worst part of it. I could handle it, like I handled it many times.

The problem is, I was accused for something that is absolutely not true. I was characterized like I were the personified devil. It seems, I am a greedy man, who has only thoughts for money, and probably I had plans for world domination. Me! Who even refused a heritage about a few hundred thousand euros, because I thought, I don't deserve it.

And all this, just because I try to get a project out of nothing. Just because I work hard and even spend my own money for a dream since over three years. Just because I try to find ways, how to earn money for something which is the dream of all of us.

The most ridiculous thing is, it came from somebody, who has no clue about the world. Who didn't earn a penny in his life. Who lives in mom's basement and who thinks, just because he "helps" for his parents in the house, he payed all of his dues and now he has the right to judge the world and other people.

I would understand it, if I would try to trick people to invest into my business, but exactly the opposite is true. I try to create something with hard work, so I can earn money and invest it into another hard work.

The funniest thing is, this person is waiting for the game exactly as eager as we do. I don't know, what such morons (yes, my friend, you are a moron!) think. Maybe in his world such projects grow on trees.... I don't know. When I heard that I am the devil, because I "praise" money, but Google is a lovely company and Bill Gates is a nice guy, exactly at this moment was I throwing my brain away.

What makes me sad, is the fact that I was relying very much on this person. Now we are separated people. Although I appreciate the work, he has done, I don't want to see him again. At least not for a very long time.

Now we were thrown back again with the project. I have to look for somebody, who can finish his work, but I am very scared that we will lose a few months. Sometimes I think, it's not my destiny to be succesfull. I just want to make a game, which makes people happy and I just want to be able to work on something I really love. Of course I would like to make an existence out of it, but is it reprehensible? I don't even want to become rich. I just want to earn my money to be able to ground a family (with 40!) and feed them. If I wanted to become rich, I wouldn't fight for such an idealistic project for years, spending even more money and getting nothing for it.

So for all people, who think, money doesn't make you happy: True, but it makes life easier (if you are man enough to get out of mom's basement! In other case, you don't have to care...at least as long your mom lives... which won't last forever). So grow up and don't be a stupid asshole, who thinks, he knows everything better and will change the world alone.

Some insight

2008-04-23T22:42:00.008+01:00

We recently stopped development on Renaissance, because it seems, we can't attract any investors to invest such a huge amount of money into the project. I can understand this. We are an unknown team, the project is too risky, development time is too long etc.

Without money we are simply unable to finish even the demo in a normal timeframe, but this doesn't mean, we gave up!

We started a poll on the forum about donation. Although we don't like that solution, we have to try it.

Beside that, a few weeks ago we started to work on another project. We progress very quickly and we are sure, we can finish it in a few months. If it's ready, we will be able to earn money with it, so we can fund Renaissance on our own.

Unfortunately I can't say more about it, but today we made a really big step toward success. This project will change the world! At least ours... ;-)

Restructuring

2008-04-14T23:35:00.008+01:00

Today we restructured the company. The papers are written and signed by a lawyer and it's official. Tel@po is President, I became Chief Executive Officer and the company is a game publisher and development studio.

I have never signed so many papers in one hour until now :-)

We celebrated this with pizza and beer. What we need now is only money. But such bagatelles can't hinder us! ;-)

EDIT: For clarification: The company is registered and official since 2001. It's not that we registered the company right now. There were some people, who left the company, and there were some people, who joined. That's why I wrote the title "Restructuring" and not "Founding". ;-)

Among others, I am also an owner and the CEO of the company now.

Answer from Trimaran Project

2008-04-03T18:24:00.006+01:00

Today I received an answer from the Trimaran Project. It's a detailed analysis about our presentation, market chances, development and pretty everything about us and the game. To be honest I have mixed feelings about it.

It seems, we made a really good impression, but it was not enough. We don't get support by them. The main critics are high costs and long development time, which I can understand.

What I can't understand is that they argued with "there are already such projects, there is no need for another one".

Huh? What kind of businessmen are these people? It's like somebody would say: "There is already a Trabant, we don't need a Rolls Royce anymore."

The other thing is that they say, they couldn't analyze our Business Plan, because they didn't receive one. This is not true, because without a Business Plan we wouldn't even have been invited to the meeting.

None the less, we have learned a lot. The first time we got a detailed feedback and this is good. :-)

Donation?

2008-03-11T17:44:00.005+01:00

We have already talked about it a long time ago and we decided not to make a "Donation" button on our homepage, but a few people brought it up again.

I personally think that it would let the project look nonserious. On the other side, if only those 800 users, which are registered on the board would donate €150/person, we could get enough money to develop the playable demo in about 6 months.

The people of Ryzom.org collected €170.000 to save Saga of Ryzom, but they had a better starting point. First of all they were the original developers of the game, and secondly they already released a not really, but somehow successful game, so people knew, what they give their money for.

I will think about a poll, which let people tell us, what they think about a "Donation" system and if they would donate.

Also if we do a donation system at a later time, we have to be sure, people trust us 100% and there is a possibility to charge back their money, if the project fails (say: we have not enough money collected to start the full time work).

I had a meeting

2008-03-07T07:59:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I met some very cool people. There is a project going on, called The Trimaran Project. It was initiated by Innostart, a business angels network in Hungary, by The Loránd Eötvös University of Science in Budapest and a group of Italian specialists and Venture Capitalists.

I had the chance to introduce Renaissance and the team in 90 minutes and the people were wery interested. They asked many questions and I think, they liked, what they have heard. And yes, they have taken us seriously! I believe, they were even impressed by our experience, the business plan and the work, we already have done, because if not, we wouldn't even had the chance to get invited.

I was told, we will be contacted within two weeks, if we get supported by the project, which would mean, we get experts to help building up our company and probably we even get funded at least to finish the prototype.

Also if we won't make it, it was a very good exercise for me. And allow me to say: These are the people, whos opinion counts! ;-)

Something to think about

2008-03-05T18:50:00.011+01:00

I received a newsletter from GoBigNetwork.com today, which had a very interesting article (I will copy+paste it at the end).

Although the writing contains many things, which may match to the most entrepreneurs, I think it can't be generalized like that.

In the comments of the previous post "anonymous" grumbled about us, and how we have to catch up on reality and how we have no clue about game development and no experience and how we are just dreamers, and so on.

I can only say, that we are aware of reality and we do have experience and we do have a clue about game development (please get us known, before you spit such things on us based on assumptions!). Even if we are professionals, we are not well known in the international industry, so it's hard to sell the project and I think, it's allowed to be frustrated sometimes.

I wouldn't say anything (I wouldn't even write this blog or release our official site) if we were only some teens dreaming about making a game. I write this blog for you to see, how we progress (or not) and for other independent groups to see, how hard it is to get such a project working. So, before anybody starts to insult us for this, please think about it! How rude is insulting somebody for being honest!?

But let's get to the topic: This article desribes exactly those things, which "anonymous" tried to put in words (very awkward IMHO) and I can only say, sometimes you must try to make yourself a bit bigger, than you really are. If you forget to dream, you'll never get anywhere.

Our case is not as bad as described in the article (which is very funny in a strange way). I think, we proved our honesty and our skills many times and we don't need to trashtalk to anybody. Not even to Investors. And I don't whine, bitch! ;-)

What if every Entrepreneur had to tell the Truth?
In the movie Liar Liar, Jim Carrey plays attorney Fletcher Reede, who’s been cursed with the inability to lie. Every attempt Fletcher makes to lie results in him blurting out the God’s honest truth instead.

Imagine what would happen if an entrepreneur were cursed with the same affliction. What would their pitch really look like?

The Sales Pitch

“Hello, I’m Wil Schroter, and thank you for being the only client that was willing to return my phone call. I’ve borrowed my roommate’s car to get here and you’ll probably notice that while it’s the middle of August, I’m wearing a 3 piece wool suit that I bought for a $1 from a thrift store yesterday.

Since this is the first time a real customer has ever looked at my product, I’d like to pitch you on every last idea we’ve ever had for the product, hoping that one of these ideas is something you’re potentially looking to purchase today.

Unlike pitches I’ve given for previous employers that simply meant a bigger commission in my regular paycheck, this time I’ll be pitching for the money that pulls me out of a mountain of debt. In many ways, your reaction to this pitch will determine whether or not I can pay my rent next month, so I certainly hope you like it.

The Product

You may not realize from my fancy PowerPoint presentation that the wonderful product I’m presenting is nowhere near completion. In fact, there has been more product development done in Adobe Photoshop to make these slides look legitimate than on the actual product itself.

Regardless, I’m hoping you share my excitement about the potential of this product, despite the lack of any tangible value that I could deliver today. The beauty of an intangible, undeliverable product is that I can not only make it into anything you desire, I can also sell it to you for any budget you’re willing to pay.

Don’t bother holding your questions to the end of this presentation, because I can already tell you the answer – it’s “yes.” Wondering if the product is effective? Yes. Can we deliver upon your made up timeline? Yes. Are we the best possible vendor for a product that hasn’t even been proven? Well, yes, we are.

The Company

Of course you’ll want some background on our startup company, so let me fill you in on the details.

The company was founded when I realized I could make more money competing against my last employer than working for them. I am taking advantage of this opportunity by draining all of my personal savings, selling every possession I have, and giving my friends and family basic “visiting hours” by which to contact me.

We’re currently in discussions with some very large venture capital firms about investment. So far our discussions have gone so far as to say “who is the person I would speak with to send in our business plan?” and we’re anxiously awaiting their responses.

In addition, we’ve lined up key partnerships with major companies like AT&T (when we signed up for our cell phone), American Express (when we got our credit card), and Dell computer (when we used our Amex to buy a laptop). These vendors are very excited about getting in on the ground floor of our startup company.

The Team

The Team I’ve assembled has an incredible amount of experience in just about everything but starting a company. The man standing beside me is not only our CFO, but is also my cousin-in-law who actually works at H&R block as a tax prep counselor and is on his lunch break for this meeting as a stand-in.

We (and by “we” I mean “I”) have attracted top notch players to our company, especially our all-star Board. You’ll recognize many of the names on our Advisory Board, even if the people on the Board wouldn’t ever recognize ours.

The Close

In closing, I’d like to beg for you to part with even a nickel so we can land our first customer. You’d be shocked and appalled if you knew how little we really had to deliver on a completely underfunded and unstaffed product idea. We hope you’ll look past that to do business with us.

We’re so passionate about what we want to accomplish that we’re completely unaware of what we’re committing to. We’re told that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about, and we assume only other entrepreneurs could be that clueless.

Despite the fact that our whole presentation today is a joke, if you even hint that you’ll work with us, we’re going to be incredibly relieved. We’re going to spend every waking hour from this point forward cow towing to your every whim because frankly, we have no other choice.

We want to be open and fair about how excited we are about this opportunity. Let’s face it – honesty is the best policy, right?”

Silence

2008-02-21T12:47:00.003+01:00

Sorry for the silence, but there is nothing to say. Things are going very slow. Still working on the demo, still waiting for the Grome developers, still waiting for the network being functional with the engine, still waiting for investors.

It's a bit depressing. I read everywhere on the net, how developers of useless things get money for their projects and I ask myself, what they do right and what do I do wrong?

Maybe Hungary is not the right place to develop an MMO after all...

At the beginning of the year I was very optimistic, but now I loose faith. At least I don't think, we will ever get the project financed by an investor. I think, we have to prove ourselves on our own.

Two new Character Animations

2008-02-05T10:35:00.000+01:00

We released two new character animations on the website. It's not much I know, but more than nothing :-)

Enjoy!
Attack
Walk

The old ones:
Run
Run2

and
Stand

Happy New Year

2008-01-04T15:10:00.000+01:00

A little bit late, but still: Happy New Year!

I went to Hungary for the Christmas holidays and came back yesterday. Beside the whole family rush I could arrange a meeting with the team and we discussed many things.

We decided to stick with Ogre for this time, because the licenced engine doesn't meet our needs.

Akimaki is still working on the integration of the server into Ogre, which is way harder, than we thought. We also try to get Grome generated terrains into the engine, and we are already able to import them manually, but we need a really good exporter from the Grome side, so we are working with it's developers to make one. They say, it can last a month, until we have a fully functional software. I think, we just have to wait. We are already good at it :-P

We were also thinking about other ways to get the project financed, because it seems, investors don't fall from trees. We had some good ideas, which we will try to realize. It will slow down the development again, but I think, we have no other choice. It doesn't matter how long it takes, we are strong and we will get the project finished with or without outside capital.

We released a small video on our forums, which is nothing special and has many flaws, but we thought, we have to show something for our visitors to see that we don't sleep.

My horoscope says, 2008 will be the best year of my life and everything I touch turns into gold. They'd better be right!

New Link

2007-12-20T02:36:00.000+01:00

I recognized, that our other concept artist's gallery (on deviantart.com) is not listed under the links section, so I quickly fixed this huge mistake. ;-)

Look for Qwert's Gallery.

Just to say hello

2007-12-16T23:12:00.000+01:00

Nothing really to tell about development. We are trying and thinking about many things, so we also developed a new strategy for the case, we don't find enough investors. We hope that we can make some news before Christmas.

Engines Everywhere

2007-11-27T03:07:00.000+01:00

As I said before, we work with Ogre for the demo, but in the mean time we ordered another professional toolset under the prototype licence policy. Unfortunately I can't say, which one.

It is possible that we will switch once again. It depends on how well the ordered engine will fit our needs.

I have high hopes. If it is a good one, we will make the whole game with it, so we don't have to develop our own tools for building Chronia.

Some update

2007-11-06T16:14:00.000+01:00

I already mentioned that we are still working on a playable demo. We switched development to Ogre, because of reasons explained in previous posts. Yes, it's the fifth engine (I think), we try and have to start over, but now we stick with it at least for the demo.

We have now an early version of the demo, where some of the graphics are still placeholders.

That means, the sky is crappy, the terrain is crappy and the textures are crappy, but our artists are working on them. The main thing is, we can load huge (empty) areas at 400-500 FPS.

The character is in the game and we can control him. Hopefully this weekend we can test a simple version of the character creation, the log-in process and other online related stuff for the developers- & company-intern version. Then it will look like a real MMOG with different characters in game, who can see eachother and interact on a basic level.

Later on I plan to release a "history of Renaissance", where I will show the different phases of the development by pictures and videos. Then you will understand, why it takes so long to get the simplest thing together and why you always read that we are almost finished, just to find a post a few weeks/months later, which tells the same again. :-)

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see that comments were switched off. I enabled them again :-)

Ain't it good news?

2007-10-29T22:14:00.000+01:00

I don't really know, if I should be happy or depressed... I think, I rather choose to be happy, because I don't like to be depressed.

I had a call today and one of the interested parties was on the line. We didn't chit-chat much around, but we came to the point immediately.

The good thing is, it looks like we secured one third (1/3) of our needed funding for the development. The bad thing is, we still have to get the rest, otherwise we can't use the money.

I knew, begging is hard, but I didn't know that it's so hard... Okay, I had a slight idea... :-P

Hopefully this will make the decision easier for the others. Cross your fingers further on. Oh and by the way, if you have some cash to spend, you can always call me! :-))

Business talks

2007-10-15T20:00:00.000+01:00

Today I had the best talk since I am talking to publishers and investors. It seems that we have found a very interested company, which maybe would invest into our project.

I was a bit nervous at the beginning, but then I didn't even realize that we were talking over 2 hours.

Although I can't go into details, I must say, I left the office with a very positive feeling about the future of our project.

Also if this will not work, I am still waiting for answers from about 20 companies, so there is still hope ;-)

Waiting for Mr. Right

2007-08-28T23:14:00.001+01:00

So, the big waiting has started.

I have sent out the business plan to over forty (40) Venture Capitalists and Investors. A few of them already rejected, some of them are interested in the first run.

I am so excited. I hope, at least one of them will love our project and we'll get the chance to develop the best mmorpg of all time. ;-)

Keep your fingers crossed!

Back from Leipzig

2007-08-25T15:39:00.000+01:00

Yes, we were only for a short time there, but it was very interesting.

We learned a lot and we have a clue now, how the circus is going on there. We didn't run into any investors, who were just waiting for us, but we are not sad about that. Our time will come. ;-)

We enjoyed to look around and we saw some very interesting things. As a player, I loved to try "The Witcher" (even got a T-Shirt :-P ) and "Age of Conan". I tried to get a beta key, but the DEV-guy was prety upset about the question. I don't understand why. I thought, I was the first one asking :-P

Oh, and I loved to see the Trailer to "Mafia 2". Hopefully the game will be amazing, like the first one, which I loved so much.

We didn't see "Spore", because only a few "important" people could get it to the presentation, but I'm not really interested in that game, so it was not a big problem.

All in all it was a really nice experience and I hope, next year we can get there too, but as a trader, not as a visitor.

Converting animated Models

2007-08-19T22:56:00.000+01:00

It's a real pain.

I don't understand, why it is so hard to support developers with a simple solution.

To be able to compile a playable demo within a realistic timeframe, we decided to stop the development of our own engine and try an existing one.

We decided to try Irrlicht. Everything seemed to be fine, until we had to put an animated character into the world.

There is no solution to export our animated characters into the supported file formats. I am trying to find a way to convert our Max and/or Maya files into DirectX .X format or even into MD2-MD5 since weeks. It is impossible.

There is no info on the net, nobody seems to have a solution. It's crazy.

Now we probably will try Torque engine. I have heard, it can handle almost every formats and has a built in importer and beside that it looks great in the demo so far.

It costs a bit, but if we can save time, it is valuable. Hopefully it will end our torture.

We are going to Leipzig

2007-08-11T13:16:00.000+01:00

It's final. We are going to Leipzig. Of course not as exhibitors, but as industry professionals.

I was a bit late with reserving rooms for us, but after 4 hours on the phone I found a private motel for us. It looks nice and it's really cheap.

I am already curious, how it feels being part of it from the other side and how it is being together with the biggest fishes of the industry.

Wish us good luck for making some good connections! ;-)

New Site Online

2007-08-04T17:05:00.000+01:00

Finally we have our new site online.

We are so happy that the waiting is over. I mean, there are a few little things to improve, sure, but anyways. I didn't want to wait any longer.

Now there will be other tasks, which will steal my precious free time ;-P

For those, who are lazy to look for it: http://renaissance-mmorpg.com

Problems with webserver

2007-08-01T13:19:00.000+01:00

There is not much to write actually.

I was setting up the new homepage and it is finished, but we have problems with the server admins.

They refuse to update the database, so we had to look for another provider. Sounds easy, but the actual provider doesn't reply to our mails and requests about redirecting or even transfer the domain.

If you think about setting up a homepage and leasing a server or webspace, never ever register by Bighosting (High Tech Bits GmbH) in Switzerland!

Gameplaces Frankfurt

2007-07-04T11:25:00.000+01:00

Due to tragical events in the family I had no time to write here, but I am back again.

We just arrived from Frankfurt (Germany), where we attended the international game development conference "Gameplaces".

It was a very interesting experience. We even met the developers of "The Witcher". Those guys are the gods of Poland!

Anyway, the main purpose of our visit was to meet big german investors and publishers. Although we didn't participate in the "Power Pitching" - where small teams had the opportunity to present their games in 15 minutes - we could manage to talk to some of the publishers and make connections.

We learned a lot and now I am sure, we will make it this year. All of the guys were great and cool, so I have no fear anymore to be able to attract them to our project.

In August we will go to Leipzig for being part of the Game Convention as industry professionals, not just visitors.

Nothing new

2007-06-10T19:16:00.001+01:00

I didn't post a while, because nothing special happend.

We were experimenting with things on the engine side. We are still not finished with our milestone, although I wanted to reach it about 3 weeks ago.

Our new homepage gets a delay again, because our webdesigner disappeared without a trace. Nobody can imagine, how I hate such things. The homepage is 99% finished and I already wrote him a mail to send me the last version to be able to work on it by myself, but no... there is no answer.

I know one thing. If we can work on our project in full time and I pay these people, there will be no mercy. One day off without a call and we are separated.

EDIT: Finally I could reach him on the phone. The delay will be not as big at all as I was afraid of.

GDF Hungary

2007-05-21T20:16:00.000+01:00

We were at the first Game Developer Forum Hungary in Budapest on Saturday. It was very interesting, although it didn't fulfill our expectations.

The CryEngine 2 demo was the highlight of the show and the guys were very funny. This demonstration alone was worth it to go there.

Now everybody is very motivated again. There is nothing like meet the team in person and discuss things without MSN, IRC and Ventrilo ;-P

A little Update

2007-05-13T08:06:00.000+01:00

Nothing to write really. I was a bit afraid of changing our plans again, but it seems, we are coming along.

I can imagine, it is very confusing and many people don't understand, what's going on, and I know I should finally explain the situation a bit, but I still want to wait with it. I want to do it on the official page, when time comes. I just want you to know, we are working very hard, but there are a few things, we can't always control, so we have to change our way.

Anyways: Birmi has sent me the first demo of the sound engine where I should hear rain. I only hear strange noises, but if I concentrate very hard, I can almost imagine the rain. :-P

Ok, it is probably not his fault but the sound file's, which is playing.

A few days ago I also received the first engine demo with an animated character in it. I can't control him yet, but it looks very good after all.

Some News

2007-05-06T21:01:00.000+01:00

The last days were relatively boring. I was working on the design and realisation of some other pages and they took all my time.

The biggest news is that we have an almost fully working new homepage. It looks greeeeat! But I won't show you... it's my treasure! :-P

Just kidding! Hopefully we can launch it in the next two weeks.

After some discussion we canceled the development of the java game, but no worries! We continue the development, we just decided to code it for the original engine in C++.

It is not a big step backwards, because we already have the engine and the server, so it is just a little bit of porting.

Probably with the new website we can show a small video, how it works.

PS.: Thanks for clicking the AD Banner! We already collected $36.0!

Back again

2007-04-28T06:47:00.000+01:00

I am back again.

I came back at 3 o'clock in the morning, but I couldn't sleep, so I tried to convert our forum to the new one. It was a really easy task, so we will be able to keep all the topics and messeges, when the new site arrives.

I also started to design the login and character generation screens. It looks good, but it still needs some polishing.

I was happy to read in Birmi's blog that the guys were working hard on the code and it seems, they will finish putting the parts together on this weekend. We already have a primitive GUI and the new skin of our test character looks amazing.

Our new member Syam is working on the animation loader. He changed the MD5 to the HL1 MTL system, because it doesn't need so much processing time.

Birmi is working on a particle system (which he started already a few times, but couldn't finish, because I always told him that it's not important at the moment :-P). It seems, he can't resist... I would be happier, if he would work on the lighting, but a particle system is also a nice thing, so I will let him. At least we will have Rain, Snow, Flare, Explosions, Spark, Smoke and Bubbles.

I can't wait to see our baby in action!

EDIT: Syam tells me at this moment, we will use MD5 after all. Implementing MTL is too complicated and it's not worth the effort ;-)

The Isle of Beginning

2007-04-16T00:18:00.000+01:00

Today we discussed with Greedo about the starting area of the java game. He made a rough concept of the Isle with Grome and I like it very much. Within 1 hour we had so many ideas for content...

Birmi is working on the ASE exporter for Grome (which we use for importing static objects into the engine), but we are considering the possibility to rather use Collada, than ASE. Birmi will kill us... Fortunately it's Greedo's task to explain him the situation ;-)

Probably I will post rather rarely in the next two weeks, because I work now on a project for my real living, and next week I will be in the country side, so I won't be able to reach the net.

I am really excited, because I will meet a very famous german actor, who is one of my favorits, and a famous porn actress. I am curious, how they are in person. :-D

Oh, and btw.: Keep clicking my Google banner! I already collected $2,39. Slowly but sure we get to the sum needed to develop our game. We still need about $9.999997,61 :-P

Cleaning the HDD

2007-04-11T16:52:00.000+01:00

Today I was cleaning my directories and scrubbed many old and useless files. I was reading some very old concepts and descriptions and I was smiling, how many things change in a few months.

The last days I was trying to export our animated characters from Max into MD5 file format. It was a challange, because the exporter was made for Doom3 and Quake4 models, but finally I could manage it.

Birmi is implementing them into the java engine now. I hope, I can run around with them shortly.

I don't like, how slow things go, but unfortunately I have to live with it. We wanted to be at this state at the beginning of January. :-(

Advertising

2007-04-09T14:19:00.000+01:00

So. I have now a Google ad bar. I hope, it will be enough to finance the whole development, so start clicking! :-P

Grome and other things

2007-04-06T22:53:00.000+01:00

A few days ago we bought Grome and today we activated it. I hope, we will make good progress with it.

It was a bit of a confusion, who should activate it, because the program is tied to a single hardware configuration. At the end we decided, Greedo should activate it. :-)

I had no internet connection for a few days, but today I could talk to all programmers and I found out that our server, the engine and the network communication between them are coming along. Shortly we will have a testing version of the java game, which will almost look like a real MMO.

The new homepage got some delay, because our webdesigner got ill, and after he recovered, he had to go out of the country, but he promised to finish the site until the end of April... We will see.

Groove

2007-03-25T22:48:00.000+01:00

Today we messed a bit with Groove around and it's a good software, although many features could be worked out a bit more.

We would like to see more features, like better management of accounts and rights, comment function of pictures and other files, grouping pictures in folders, better discussion board etc., but MS never was the company, which could make a software fully user friendly and working in the way, how the users want...

What we like the most is the sketchpad feature, where you can draw something and the others see it in realtime. This makes many things much simpler.

I think, I will search the web for similar softwares, maybe I'll find a better one.

Long distance work

2007-03-25T02:54:00.000+01:00

Working with, and managing a group from the distance is really hard. We had a little incident on friday because one of the designers didn't like, what the other created and suddenly we had a heavy discussion and a little flaming.

I mean, the ratio is not bad, because it was the first one of this kind in 2 years, but i didn't like it anyways.

Fortunately everybody got calmed really fast and today is everything fun, joy and happiness again.

It had its positive aspects too, because the designers worked on the questioned part really hard today and they made good progress. Nontheless it's time to get a good groupware to manage the project from a central place.

Now you can think: "What a bunch of amateurs! How they can work without any coordination?", but this is not the case. We are coordinated at a certain level. Sometimes just shit happens.

We already tried some free stuff, but they were not the kind of software we are looking for. Today I discovered Groove, so we will give it a try. If anybody has a good idea or some experiences, please let us know :-)

Maybe some of you will ask "Why is he telling this to us? Doesn't this damage their reputation?"

It's simple. I made this blog to talk about the development and my personal experiences, in an unofficial manner without any marketing bullshit. It is natural that there are also some "not so nice" days in a game development (like in any other team oriented work) and I want to dare to talk about them too.

Somebody will like it, somebody maybe not. It's your decision :-)

New Design

2007-03-23T23:08:00.000+01:00

After I saw Birmi's new design, I wanted to make one for myself too.

I searched the net for free templates, but I couldn't find any good, so I decided to redesign the original template "The Hobbit" made by Arcsin.se & Beautiful Beta.

It has its problems because it shows the site differently in IE and Firefox, but it's not really annoying.

I hope, you like it.

Maybe life is not so cruel though

2007-03-21T00:00:00.000+01:00

Friday we will have our new game server for testing. I hope it will run better than the old one.

Birmi has finished the MD5 loader and is working on the renderer. Grome is still not released, but it can't last long anymore ...

Finally, life comes into the shack ... (like the germans say) ;-)

Life is cruel

2007-03-20T02:53:00.000+01:00

I had to set up my windows three times in a row today, because I had no backup from my hard disk and something went always wrong. Finally I found a 64 bit version, which works correctly now.

But that's not enough. It seems our game server does stupid things as well, so we have to find a solution. Probably a completely new hardware. This will hinder us for a few days, but we don't give up! :-)

For the good part: a new charakter model is in the work, but we don't know yet, if we will animate it in MD3 or MD5 file format within the engine. Birmi is working on the new code. We will see.

Servers everywhere

2007-03-19T00:02:00.000+01:00

We have now our own brandnew web-server (for the new website), game-server and IRC server. Sometimes I ask myself, what other kind of server could be out there, we still don't have... ;-)

When it's time, I will have to say many thanks to the partner, who supports us so greatly. Until then I just send them many kisses from here :-)

Otherwise there is some progress, but nothing to report. It's always the same old story: People come with big intentions and ensure, they will help us, but after a week their motivation fades away and we only see a grey mist behind them... I get annoyed every time by people, who are completely unreliable.
Probably I better get used to this :-(

I just don't get, which word they don't understand from "We are not mad if you can't, just let us know, so we don't count on something we never get."

Grrr...

Finally

2007-03-12T21:37:00.000+01:00

Finally I figured out, how to finish the Business Plan. I was working on it very hard in the last days and it comes to the end soon.

I have a few corrections to make, then spellchecking, formatting and proofreading by a native english speaker. I assume to be finished this week. Yippieee! :-)

Today I received a mail accidentally, which was a disquisition about mobile phone game market. The good thing is, it was full of names of investors. Now I don't have to look for them :-))

Somebody wants us to be successful...

A new meeting

2007-03-05T11:29:00.000+01:00

A new meeting was held on last Friday. Almost everybody could come and we discussed many topics.

The mood was very good and it seems, we will make progress in the next month.

The server technology is almost finished and probably we will reach the milestone to be able to run around in the world with a single character at the end of this month. We will see...

We decided to buy Grome for building our landscape, instead of making everything by ourselves.

My pendrive became corrupted, which is not a good thing, because the last version of the business plan was stored on it. The only reason, why I didn't run amok is that I have a backup on my hard disk, which is a bit older, but the loss is not so big, what I couldn't fix in a few hours.

Engine & Homepage

2007-02-26T15:25:00.000+01:00

Last week I recieved the first version of the new homepage. I have to say, it looks fantastic! Everybody who saw it, was busy for minutes by looking for their jaws. Me too! ;-)

According to our genius webdesigner we can present it to the public in a few weeks.

Birmi wasn't lazy as well and our engine has already particle effects, vertex paint, and can handle alpha channels and much more.

The server software gets an overhaul, because TCP is probably not the best protocol for us. ;-)

Fortunately we could win a very talented guy for our team and now we hope, our servers will handle things way better.

Slowly but sure we come along...

After the meeting

2007-02-14T01:06:00.000+01:00

We had our meeting on Saturday. Unfortunately it was a bit rushed and not everybody could show up.

We were rather fooling around than talking seriously, because some people were missing, so we couldn't talk about really important things.

I will organize another meeting for March. Until then we have to try to catch up on things via web.

At least the modelers started to work on the assets for the java version of the game.

Nothing to write

2007-02-07T15:15:00.000+01:00

It is not too much to write lately.

Everybody has other duties and the mood is a bit depressive. Saturday we will have a meeting. Hopefuly it will motivate us a bit.

I am stuck with the Business Plan too, because the software I use, can't handle calculations for such projects. Probably I'll have to do them manually, but I have no clue, how to start.

Somehow I will finish it, but now I play rather Vanguard: Saga of Heroes :-))

I hope, the meeting and the new Homepage will raise the mood again...

Progress

2007-01-29T00:17:00.000+01:00

Today we tested our java based login server. It worked fine ;-)

Tomorrow we will test the chat server.

Birmi has reworked our graphic engine and it is loading graphics quicker and better now. We already have a skybox and blending and transparency effects too. The camera works (with the WASD keys) fine as well.

It's still not optimal, but next week we will have it fully functional, I think. The modelers can work with it and that means, we will pull up.

We get E-mails from artists every week, who want to work for us. There are some professionals and some amateurs among them. We will try a few of the professionals. The only problem is, everybody wants to make 3D models, but we need 2D artists and animators badly.

I hope, in a few weeks we can show some very impressive screenshots.

A small update

2007-01-22T04:45:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately our login/chat/game servers didn't work as intended.

It came out that the .Net framework is not willing to work on a Linux server, how CuccR wanted. He started to rewrite the whole damn thing in Java. The good news is that it doesn't take too much time, because the archictecture of the servers is already given. It's just a bit of coding... says the programming layman ;-)

Another good thing happend a few days ago. The team won another member, who is a great Concept Artist and will enhance the look of Renaissance. Hopefully I can show some of his works shortly.

The Java Game Engine

2007-01-19T01:48:00.000+01:00

I won't talk about Renaissance now, but the prequel I already mentioned and which will be a java based browser game.

I just made a small video (19MB DivX), which shows the basic functions of the engine, like camera handling etc. I am so excited, because our engine programmer Birmi is working very hard to get the thing running and it looks already very promising and it gets better and better every day. I love you Birmi! ;-)

Today I couldn't talk to our network and server programmer CuccR, so I don't know if he fired up the login and chat server, as arranged yesterday, but I hope we can test them tomorrow.

Yes, I know... we had a small delay. ;-)

Hm... I don't know, what could I say more, so I think that's all folks... for today.

One step finished

2007-01-16T01:17:00.000+01:00

Today I finished the calculation of our needed capital.

Some of the team members said "It's too much", some of them said "Payrolls are too low", some of them wanted more personnel, some of them less.

Although it's a bit more than originally assumed, I think I will keep it this way. It's the happy medium.

I counted every bit of costs I could think about (even billing, marketing, support, servers and the cleaning lady) and I calculated very generous, and surprisingly I am still below the €10.000.000 mark. Somebody should show me another company, who can produce an MMORPG for this amount of money. ;-)

After this marathon I can use excel with closed eyes, but it's not yet the end of the road. I still have to finish the business plan, but this listing helps me a lot.

From tomorrow I have to go to work for a few days, because I also need something to eat, but I think, next week I can finally complete the plan.

So or so, I am very happy with the result. I will reward myself with a bar of chocolate. :-)

PS.: I edited the settings, so everybody can comment without registration. :-)

Quiet Days

2007-01-12T23:44:00.000+01:00

I hope many of you enjoyed my last post.

Probably I won't write every day, because sometimes nothing really happens.

The last two days I was collecting new data for our business plan, reading articles about game development, talking to people etc.

Although it's still unofficial, I can tell you (because it's already out anyway) that we are working on a java based prequel to our game (until we get the financial fund for the big one) and it's going very well. Our server and network programmer told me, that the login and chatserver will be finished by end of the week, so we can chat in the game instead of MSN by Monday or Tuesday.

The basic version of the graphical engine is almost finished as well, and we are just waiting for the modelers to fill up the world, but we have still a long way to go...

Our new homepage design is also in progress and you will drop your jaws by end of January - middle of February ;-)

I am very happy, how far we came, although in very small steps...

It's been almost two years we are working on this project, but I wish you could see, how excited we are every time, when we talk about the game. It's a great team and I am very proud to be a part of it.

Hello World

2007-01-11T05:27:00.000+01:00

Today I decided to start a web blog. So many people do it and I always thought, I don't need a blog, but today it's somehow different.

I thought, I want to let people know, what's going on with me and the development of Renaissance, but I didn't want to do it on the official website, because I want to keep it private. These are my personal thoughts, experiences, enjoyments and problems...

I probably won't be able to tell everything (i.e. names and numbers), but I want people to be able to follow our work as close as possible. That was always our motto, and maybe somebody finds it interesting to get inside the everydays of a little team, which is trying to make the next step into professionalism.

I chose to write this blog in english (although I am not very good in it, so be patient with me), because this is the language, which will be understood by most of our fans. I promise, I will keep this up to date as often as I can.

I assume, you - the reader - know everything about our game and who we are and what we are doing so far, so I will simply start with the last day ;-)

I was working hard on our business plan again. Particularry I am designing an excel sheet with the complete calculation of our finance.

It's a bit hard to decide, who joins us when and how many people we need in the different stages of development.

I have set up the time frame to 4 years. I'm still not sure, if we should change our plans about developing our own engine, and just licence an existing one.

I recieved a few offers about pricing and licencing of different softwares lately and I gave some of them into the sheet, but I don't know, if I should put the engines into it too, or we should just stick with our original plan...

A licenced engine would save time and work, but it would cost too much money as well. We still have to weigh the pros and contras.

Maybe the next days bring clarification...

So, that was my first writing. It's already late and I have to get up early in the morning. I am going to bed...