Description
We (Christian Rück, Mike Bähr und Jan Falke) want to create a complex online role-playing game (multi user dungeon). Some people may moan: "Not again! There are so many MUDs! Why don't you join another project?"
The answer is simple: A student of computer science (and that's what we all are) must be familiar with network programming, threads, AI (artificial intelligence), software development in teams, object oriented programming, etc. These stuff (and many other) combined with our hobby role-playing led us to the conclusion, to program such a game on our own. So we are up to fun and knowledge and don't want to join an existing project. Never the less we appreciate experience and knowledge exchange with other programmers.
It is an important point for us that Illarion should enable you for real role-playing, not only monster hunting. We hope that we have designed the professions in a way that disables some of them to live only by hunting creatures. The professions should join together and achieve their goals in a team of players because they need the combination of all abilities.
We try to develop a game with a special focus on role-playing. This is in most games underdeveloped as we think. You can see this focus in Illarion in many details, not in big technical innovations (although Illarion is not the worst in this genre in techniques).
In most games you will see the names of all players that leads often to conflicts between them. In Illarion you must introduce yourself first, before they can see your name.
The magic system is very complex: There are different runes, each with a special meaning. Players can explore spells by trying out meaningful combinations (out of over 4 billion possibilities). They must learn about each rune from masters of the arcane arts. The chance of success in casting spells is determined by the skills for the used runes.
Druids will be able to search for herbs everywhere and find some, depending on the area they search in. You can only find herbs, that a wise druid explained to you before. You must explore different combinations of herbs, to create powerful potions.
You can live a successful life without killing monsters, because there are no experience points. You can live as a craftsman or trader instead.
There will be a social system. Your rank in this system will depend on the amount of luxury goods you spend (expensive cloth and food for instance), so you can reach powerful positions in politics. This enables you to play a feudal lord, that protects his people in court and war, taking money from them instead.
It is possible to hit players unconscious instead of dead. This way you can play robbers rather than killers.
In other games there is often trouble with people talking about their skill values and experience. In Illarion you will not know any of these values although you know their tendency.
Other graphical online games often have no races. Here you can pick from several races with own graphics and cities (e.g. the elves live in tree houses, the dwarves in caves, lizard man in the ocean, ...)
Many actions will change your alignment. If you kill a unicorn or summon an undead, you will drop in alignment, if you hunt vampires or heal players it will rise. This will influence your spell successes since each spell has an alignment value.
These are only some examples on how we will encourage role-play. Not everything is developed yet since we are still working on the game. You are invited to check it out and tell us about your ideas and comments on the boards.
Requirements
Hardware:
- Pentium 200
- 32 MB RAM
- 20 MB free disk space
Software:
- Windows 98, 2000 (not (successfully) tested on other Windows-versions)
- DirectX 7.0 (or higher)
