Right, so, I figured i'd make a post for those five people who browse this particular part of the website.
If you play Phoenix, you most likely know it was taken down during the copyright infringement blitz that Funimation executed a day ago.
I'm pleased to say that we will not be discontinuing development of the Phoenix project, and will be moving it over to an all new original setting.
The current planned setting is a mix between lovecraftian horror, and your typical high speed fighting anime. So yes, you can punch out Cthulu.
We will also not be removing any races, mechanics or items from the game. I do not believe in stripping out aspects of a game to satisfy the paranoia or greed of other folks. As such, they will be re-termed and implemented using our own backstory.
You can read more details here, both about the setting, and our current plans, at our new hub.
http://www.byond.com/games/Archonex/PhoenixSunderedEarth
If you would like to contribute to the Phoenix project, feel free to contact either Valekor, or me. In particular, we are always looking for good, active, iconners. Which is something we often find ourselves lacking.
As always, icons or other originally created items of interest that are used in the game, will be credited to you on the hub once the servers are live on Byond again.
Mar 31 2011, 8:25 am
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Techgamer
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By "Keeping the same mechanics and items", do you mean you're keeping stuff like Nameks/Sayans/Capsule cars in the game? That's probably not very smart if you're on FUNimation's watchlist.
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Techgamer wrote:
By "Keeping the same mechanics and items", do you mean you're keeping stuff like Nameks/Sayans/Capsule cars in the game? That's probably not very smart if you're on FUNimation's watchlist. Saiyans are being changed to an entirely new race with their own story and lore. Both Saiyans and Tuffles are races descended from pre-Fall earth animals. Saiyans being monkeys. And Tuffles being felines. They have visual characteristics of each that are visible in-game. IE: Beastmen have a monkey tail. Taranians have cat ears, etc, etc. As a side-note, the reason why i'm altering the Tuffle species to not look like humans, is that I think that's wasted potential. Under the current system, Taranians were just going to be a much more intelligent, albeit weaker, species of human. Which felt rather bland to me. Nameks are getting a backstory make-over. Pods are going the way of the do-do, temporarily, as more important vehicles are going to occupy the first tier of craftable technology. On that note, one of the weaknesses of Finale/Phoenix, that I could never quite solve, as it was a core design issue, was that it was very hard for folks to travel to other locations outside of their starting location once the initial rush of technology got done. So what i'm doing is starting out with one planet, and the afterlife dimensions, which characters go to when they die. Every "living world" planet in the last iteration of Phoenix is becoming a unqiue location on Earth. The space map is becoming an overworld map from which you can access these locations. Rather then pods, you're going to see more mundane (And, depending on the skill of the crafter, fantastic, eventually.), vehicles. Things like sailboats, yachts, airplanes, cars, stuff like that. These vehicles will be needed, depending on where you want to travel. I'm more focused on removing all of the references to Funimation products at the moment, but, eventually, movement on the map will be much slower on foot then movement in a location. So cars are a good way to speed up long distance travel times. In addition to that, some locations (Tarania, for example.) are separated by water. So boats are needed. Of course, then there's the places where the Horror dimensions bleed through, and you have stuff like space itself as a terrain obstacle. Which has it's own traits. Space has no gravity, so one step without a means to control your propulsion (Such as the ability to fly, for instance.) will have you drift endlessly, until you run out of air. This is important to note, because some areas of the gameworld are planned on having been "cut away" by the Horrors. They're very much empty spaces in reality, and require some inventive thinking, or decent technology/powers to cross. Overall, this change, if done right, should provide a much more detailed world then previous the previous Phoenix production allowed for, if we can get all the icons we need, and build the map the way we want. One of the nice sides of the overworld change, is that once it's finished it allows for PVE content expansions in the future (Dungeons, random encounters, etc, etc.), once we get things settled down again. Which is something that was coming next after the original Phoenix:DB content arc we were publishing at the time of the de-listing happened. Also, a unified world that everyone starts out in makes it a little easier to travel and makes it much easier for people to explore, which in turn makes it easier for people to socialize, which in turn can lengthen a wipe. All in all, there should be something like 10-12 Z levels, 500x500 wide and tall each, attributed to Earth, at the release of the game. Not counting underground levels (Which are tunnelable, and thus, expandable in size.), or alternate dimensions that bleed through. Which is more then enough space to keep people occupied. There are also four Z levels implemented for the Afterlife. Five, if you end up getting killed twice. There's also a myriad number of interior Z levels. Ranging from the interior of boats, ships, cars, etc, etc, to caves, and even large-scale interiors like the Android start point, the "Factory". | |
Just changing minor appearances and back stories doesn't make it 'original'.
It's still using material that is copyrighted by FUNimation. | |
I'm actually going to ask a question that will probably anger you, but I suggest you seriously consider. Mind you, this comes from endless bias at the same time.
This, being a second stage descendant now from the original Finale Games, probably will attract the same audiances. And as a Game designer to another, I must ask you a serious question: What exactly are your plans for the community? I myself am an avid RPer, but I've avoided ANY Finale Game/Rip/Descendant for the sole reason that they all have a deadly stigma that they are basically lawless lands with abusive staff (the underlined will be ignored for the sake of discussion though). As stated, this is a stigma, I don't know if you've dealt with this during the actual DBZ:P, but my question is what are your plans for community management? Cthulu-esque or not, what are the upper moral limits of your RP, in addition, it would help for you since you're now turning this original to help explain exactly what sort of RP battle system(s) (PVP, T2, T1, TB) you're using as a basis, and how to decide who's stronger and prevent a blatant bias. Thank you for your time. | |
Latoma wrote:
I'm actually going to ask a question that will probably anger you, but I suggest you seriously consider. Mind you, this comes from endless bias at the same time. That doesn't anger me at all. It's a valid question, actually, given what i've heard of some of the Finale spin-offs. I can't speak for other games, as I pretty much don't play them nowadays, however I do try to run a tight ship. I was one of the codeds on Finale for some time, before Tens fired us, and things started going downhill from there. I tried to run a responsible team on my server back then, and I still do now, with Phoenix. In regards to your question about the administration. All admins on Phoenix are expected to follow a series of rules. If they don't and are caught abusing, being biased with rewards, or generally acting in a manner that is unfit for a member of the administration, they're replaced. There's also a pretty clear hierarchy of command and responsibility. One of the things we did early on, was retool the administration "ranks" so that each admin has a pretty clear cut job, along with the verbs to support that job. This limits the issues you have with admins experimenting, or dicking around with powerful verbs like 'edit', as those verbs don't exist for a good number of low level admins. Though, that being said, I do know some admins try to help out by crossing job boundaries, so to speak, if they've got permission to do that from one of the head admins. I don't consider that a negative thing, however. We also implemented new back-end/admin features when retooling the administration system. These changes included a player panel, to make it much easier to fix player related issues or bugs that might come up, along with visibility and accountability features. Any admin action is reported in chat to all other admins online. In addition to that, any admin action is recorded in an uneditable log, with precise details (Much more then Finale was, actually.) as to when, what, and how something happened. The combination of those two things makes it pretty much impossible to get away with abuse. Either someone on the admin team will get a bug up their proverbial ass, and report them, or they'll be busted, come the next admin-log checkup. That also isn't counting the fact that players can report a suspected issue of abuse, so long as they provide some form of verifiable evidence (Screenshots are the most typical one submitted.) and have it investigated. To date, we haven't had much in the way of problems with corrupt or abusive admins. There was a period where people were attempting to steal the host files, and were refusing to stop hosting illegally. Which forced me to step in and deal with that, but that's about it. In addition to that, pretty much any player can send me logs of abuse, or asshattery on the part of an admin. I keep my Byond MSN contact details fairly open (Going on 500+ players added as contacts atm.), and i've got a policy of investigating every claim, no matter how absurd it is. Because sometimes some really weird crap does happen through co-incidence, and needs to be addressed. We also are careful on who we recruit to the administration team. New players who come out of nowhere are generally refused out of principle, unless they can bring some confirmable credentials to the application process. Head administrators, and codeds, also try to poke around a person's background a bit to see how reliable they are before they're offered a trial position. So in short, I don't believe our current crop of admins to be abusive. I do believe that they burn out all too fast, however. The turnover rate for administrators is rather ridiculous, at times. We've had over five admins on one server join one of the server teams in one month, and quit the next, due to the amount of work the job put on them. If you log on to one of the servers, and type "rules" into the command bar, you should come up with a list of rules that are expected for all players to follow. If a player doesn't follow them, they may be subject to punishment. We tend to enforce the egregious stuff pretty heavily, such as random PKers, and such. I'm not sure what you mean by "upper moral limits". I'm assuming you're referring to what most folks on Phoenix consider kosher, and what isn't. As a rule of thumb, I don't approve of "adult" RP's. However, i'm also not stupid enough to think that that's going to stop anyone who's determined enough to try to RP that crap. So if you keep it out of the public, odds are noone will hit you with the ban-hammer, since we won't know about it. As for the system of combat, Phoenix has a built in combat system, including techniques, melee attacks, and all that jazz, rendered in graphical format. I can't say what every server will use, because every server on Phoenix is run a bit differently, in terms of story, rules, and ranks. Sometimes even setting, too, as our in-game development tools let you do some pretty crazy stuff. So it's rather hard to say what will be what. The nature of our administration system means that servers are essentially autonomous entities with oversight. They're expected to create their own rule system that is fair for the players, not be abusive or biased, and maintain a quality level of RP and atmosphere for those folks playing on the server. If they fail to do that, and I, or another top tier admin gets word of it, we typically shut them down, or, if the issue is of a more subdued nature, issue a warning, clean the offending folks out of the team/repair the issue, and keep an eye on them for awhile. As a general rule of thumb though, when it comes to what combat system to use, it's up to the players. The game supports a simple method of "Post iC intent -> Countdown -> Reply to post -> Fight using game mechanics", or more complex RP's, or turn-based text systems. Most folks prefer to use the in-game combat system for actual combat, and use text the rest of the time when RPing. Though admins are always ready (And expected) to step in to mediate if an OOC conflict of some sort happens, or a rule is broken. I'm not sure if that answered your question as well as you wanted. If you need me to elaborate on something, or explain something else, i'd be glad too. As for my plans for the community. The community builds itself. I just provide tools for them to do that with, and make sure nothing gets out of hand. @Kumorii: I suggest you check out the forums topic regarding the setting change-over. It isn't just a rename. Alot of stuff is coming that has nothing to do with DBZ. Hell, one of the things I wanted to avoid was to just do a simple rename of everything. | |
You answered well above and beyond the standardized call of duty. I applaud you.
I presume though Monkeys don't go 10 stories tall or grow golden hair for any reason though. | |
Latoma wrote:
You answered well above and beyond the standardized call of duty. I applaud you. No, they do not. Oozaru and SSJ are being taken out. SSJ is being replaced by a completely new sort of trans. Rather then go all glowey, Beastmen go all "berzerkergang" on their enemies. With the appropriate combat effects (Attack enemies and allies indiscriminately. Massive power boost, too, because y'know. With great power comes great insanity, and all that.). Their second stage transformation is more of a zen kung-fu master sort of "trans". It's less about power, and more gaining control of their own innate primal instincts, and leveraging them to kick ass. If we're going off of generic anime logic here, that would also make that trans much stronger then the first trans. It's notable that, from a backstory perspective, that Beastmen and Taranians are not descended from humans, like most of the other playable races (Outside of the Horror races, which only appear in the char creation menu rarely.) are. This is somewhat reflected in that they're a little bit isolated from the rest of the gameworld, in the current version of the map i'm drawing up. There's certainly no extra-dimensional obstacles to cross, but you would need to be able to fly, or have a boat, to travel to their starting location. Currently, in the setting change-over topic, we're also debating on what to call the Beastmen. Beastmen is the current working name, but several people have put forth some pretty good suggestions. So if you want to get in on the development process, drop a post there after browsing through the topic. | |
Well Arch, i am really pleased to hear all this, i have read threw all the comments and i am actually looking forward to playing this game.
From what you've explained it pretty much sounds like a completely original game, only similarities seem to be that you have transformations and theres a similar death system, but even those sound very well thought out. Good luck with this, it sounds great, and i admire your efforts in turning this terrible situation regarding funimation and making a very promising game out of it. | |
I appluad this effort and hope other fangame developers follow suit. If the game is good enough, it can even be listed or featured, which will give it more exposure to incoming BYOND users. Let's try to find a silver lining in all of this.
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Tom wrote:
I appluad this effort and hope other fangame developers follow suit. If the game is good enough, it can even be listed or featured, which will give it more exposure to incoming BYOND users. Let's try to find a silver lining in all of this. Thanks. I'm hoping this next project will turn out well. We scrapped one game already (Phoenix:DBZ) and are considering scrapping a much requested second fan-game that was in production and just about ready to release, as a result of the C&D. This is my way of trying to pull something good out of this mess. I'm mostly going to focus on removing the infringing aspects of the game, initially, as i've got alot of folks (Well over 200+ people could be on Phoenix:DBZ at any one time) waiting to play. From there, i'll do what I did with the other Phoenix projects, and release regular content updates fleshing out the proposed features bit by bit. I guess i'll be using this blog to post about updates as well, since it's here. | |
I got one question Archo:
Will you be scrapping all remnants of the Finale code and restarting from scratch? | |
Latoma wrote:
I got one question Archo: Bishamon bought the rights to use the Finale code however he saw fit. As far as I know, he's also the only one to do that. Most of the other spin-off's have been unauthorized, from what I can tell. That makes the code worth something all by itself, without considering the work we've done on it since the start of the project. It makes sense that we'd use the same code/engine. Especially since so much of it fits the setting, and we've put so much work into making it easily moddable to any setting this past year, both in the code, and in the game itself. One thing we've been doing with Phoenix since I got my hands on the project, is make it a "jack of all trades" sort of engine, that anyone can use to make their own RP game/setting. Multiple hosts on Phoenix over the past year have made their own unique wipes, with their own unique settings, now. These wipes ranged from "space epic" wipes, with ships and lasers, to Earth only wipes. To a wipe where someone managed to make a generic amalgamation of every anime concept ever, somehow mashing One Piece, DBZ, Naruto, and Shogun Total War into one wipe, complete with unique features. In fact, if you have hosting rights, you have a ridiculous number of tools that can let you do anything from inventing your own vehicles (We've seen, in the past, planet sized space-ships. Cars. And even boats. Something that isn't even coded in in any way, shape or form.), to creating your own races or planets to play around in. I really don't want to abandon that after all the work we've gotten done. And it helps that, if we use the same engine, folks can just alter the setting to something they prefer more, once the game is out. Since the tools will still be there. Which, in my mind, is a perfectly good thing. Most of the combat and training mechanics will remain the same. I want to keep the "anime" style fighting we have going. Otherwise this is going to be one dismal game to play, setting-wise. I mean, it's not like some dude with a pistol is going to be able to take out the tormented, madness-babbling, shadow of a slain bandit. You need to up the level of power PC's have beyond the mundane if you want to contend with that sort of thing. You'll still see people getting punched through three successive brick walls, and such. It's just in an entirely new setting, where instead the cause of such power is more reality being stretched thin, rather then "massive power levels". There'll eventually (Once we get set back up where we aren't scrambling to get the game back in order. This came as a shock. We were actually in the middle of a week long, massive content update, when the C&D order came through.) be new additions to the mechanics, like the Horror dimension effects. | |
Kumorii wrote:
Just changing minor appearances and back stories doesn't make it 'original'. Having "races descended from pre-Fall earth animals" that resemble monkeys and cats will not. But having them transform with glowing hair and becoming super whatever might raise a few eyebrows. So he's on the right path at least. | |
Tiberath wrote:
Kumorii wrote: As i've already stated. Things like SSJ are going out the window, to be replaced by more setting appropriate transes. It's unfortunate, because we had a fairly large number of icons designed for SSJ. However, most of them will have to be removed, or repurposed. Things like the SSJ aura (Just a golden glow around the player's form.) can be used for a Horror, perhaps. But the trans hair's are all far too iconic and, as a result are pretty much dead weight now. As a result they're most likely going to be scrapped. | |
Archonex wrote:
I keep my Byond MSN contact details fairly open (Going on 500+ players added as contacts atm.), and i've got a policy of investigating every claim, no matter how absurd it is. Because sometimes some really weird crap does happen through co-incidence, and needs to be addressed. I'm sorry but this is a bunch of bullshit Archonex, and its really disappointing to see you pull something like that out of of thin air instead of admitting Phoenix's faults and fixing them with this new game you're making. Whats more, I witnessed first hand you provoking a majority of the game into fighting each other, not only that, but that claim that you answer every abuse report if pure fabrication too. You ignore anything that doesn't directly affect you. Another case of Game owners thinking they're invincible. I hope Funimation took you down a notch. | |
SourMonkey wrote:
Archonex wrote: I'm pretty sure i've never even seen you online before, on any of the servers. So i'm not sure where all this hostility is coming from. As for this comment: "> Whats more, I witnessed first hand you provoking a majority of the game into fighting each other, not only that, but that claim that you answer every abuse report if pure fabrication too. You ignore anything that doesn't directly affect you." I think that'd be rather hard for me to do, buddy. Since i'm barely ever active on the main servers as a player. Rather hard to start a fight if you aren't there to provoke it, eh? About the only time I show up is to do administration duties. Which includes investigations. As for investigations, and how I conduct them: I've got a policy of not giving play-by-play reports of any abuse claims, to anyone, staff or otherwise, unless it's necessary to get to the truth. So maybe that's why you're mistaken, here. There's a few reasons for this: First of all, it's tacky as all hell to announce findings ahead of time, and premature. Things could come up that make earlier findings irrelevant, or put them in a new light. This can unduly bias people who I might need to talk too later on. Which poses some problems for me, since in this situation, i'm usually trying to figure out just what the hell happened prior to me getting involved. Second of all. When I investigate to see if abuse is occurring, i'm not commenting on a sports game. Announcing things as I find them is liable to stir people up, and make people hold grudges, even if the person is innocent, in the future. As such, it's bad practice to treat abuse claims like they're a spectator sport. Third of all. If I started announcing what I found prior to laying down a punishment, there's always that slim chance that I may have to deal with a corrupt admin going berserk and trying to take half the server files down with him. We've never had that particular issue in Phoenix before. Partially thanks to our hiring processes. And partially thanks to our own unique admin system. However, i've encountered it on Finale, in the past, and I personally, after having spent many long days repairing the damage from a player or admin getting a case of the ass, I don't believe it's a good use of my time to spend half a day recovering and repairing lost saves/damage to the gameworld, when it could be easily avoided. As for this comment: "> I'm sorry but this is a bunch of bullshit Archonex, and its really disappointing to see you pull something like that out of of thin air instead of admitting Phoenix's faults and fixing them with this new game you're making." I'm not even sure how to begin addressing it. Since quite obviously, we are addressing faults in the last iteration of Phoenix's gameplay design. Things like making an easier to travel overworld are planned features. And, over the past year, we've done a ridiculous amount of balancing and optimization of core gameplay features, both on the CPU optimization side of things, and on the player interactivity/balance side of things. If you don't believe me, you can check the patch notes (Which date about half a year back, to a year back, currently, I believe.) up on any given server. Heck, just recently, before the C&D, Changelings got a racial revamp, where their forms are now multipliers instead of large direct power boosts. This fixes an issue with certain builds/specs being overpowered if you play a Changie, early and mid-way into a wipe. I'm assuming you're either a troll, going off of the "starting fights" comment (We have had a large number of these plague the old comments page. To the point where I had to shut it down.), or you're severely mis-informed. Either way, I think you need to check your facts, or at least ask me about some of the stuff you posted (How I conduct investigations into possible cases of abuse, for instance.) before you start spouting off like that on someone else's development blog. That's pretty damned rude. | |
SourMonkey wrote:
I'm sorry but this is a bunch of bullshit Archonex, and its really disappointing to see you pull something like that out of of thin air instead of admitting Phoenix's faults and fixing them with this new game you're making. I'm going to chafe you in the leg with my nail file and watch you bleed to death. Only way to deal with trolls. | |
I've really been pleased with the result of this and I know this is irrelevant but I like that FUNimation has banned their material because it gives more motivation and creativity to users that aimed to make a successful anime game such as yourself. Keep updating the game.
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This game is going to be great. Good Luck, I see that you are putting much thought into this project and effort.
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