Dev Update - The Next Chapter of Project Existence
[h2]Happy (late) new year! [/h2]
The team is back at the office after a lovely holiday break. Looking back at the past year, we are super happy with what we achieved, but even more excited about what’s coming next.
Arctic Theory was founded with the ambitious goal of pushing the boundaries of what massively multiplayer games are through technological innovation. By bringing together elements from traditional MMO games and social networks, our aim has always been to build products that revolve around collaboration, creativity and community.
Project Existence started as a project meant for validating a lot of things that were important for our studio’s journey towards that goal. We decided early on that we wanted to be transparent with our work, so we created a live prototype and made it available for anyone to jump in and try out.
Whether it was a silly mission where players would receive a Halloween pumpkin to place in the world, or sculpting out a huge landscape with an innovative weather system - everything we’ve implemented to Project Existence has given so much value to our team, our game systems and our technology.
At first we updated the prototype frequently, sometimes once a week and sometimes every day! We had simple 3D assets and graphics that allowed us to focus on adding new features and mechanics, but most importantly was that it enabled us to release patches whenever we could.
Last spring, we received a grant from the Icelandic Technology Fund for our world simulation technology, GenOS, which we started developing and testing through Project Existence. Our first step was to upgrade the graphics to create a more realistic game world to stress the technology and fully put it to the test.
This opened up the opportunity to experiment with art style and environment concepts, which then lead to exploring designs for characters, infrastructure and other things. We called this version the ‘Valley of Sands’, and this evolved over a few months to the version you see now.
We are now at an extremely exciting point where the current form of Project Existence has served its purpose. A short while ago we took the servers offline to prepare for the next step, an evolved version of Project Existence that is built upon everything that has preceded it.
We will be sharing more information about this next step very soon so stay tuned. Until then, come hang out on Discord and say hi!
- The Arctic Theory team
The team is back at the office after a lovely holiday break. Looking back at the past year, we are super happy with what we achieved, but even more excited about what’s coming next.
Arctic Theory was founded with the ambitious goal of pushing the boundaries of what massively multiplayer games are through technological innovation. By bringing together elements from traditional MMO games and social networks, our aim has always been to build products that revolve around collaboration, creativity and community.
Project Existence started as a project meant for validating a lot of things that were important for our studio’s journey towards that goal. We decided early on that we wanted to be transparent with our work, so we created a live prototype and made it available for anyone to jump in and try out.
Whether it was a silly mission where players would receive a Halloween pumpkin to place in the world, or sculpting out a huge landscape with an innovative weather system - everything we’ve implemented to Project Existence has given so much value to our team, our game systems and our technology.
At first we updated the prototype frequently, sometimes once a week and sometimes every day! We had simple 3D assets and graphics that allowed us to focus on adding new features and mechanics, but most importantly was that it enabled us to release patches whenever we could.
Last spring, we received a grant from the Icelandic Technology Fund for our world simulation technology, GenOS, which we started developing and testing through Project Existence. Our first step was to upgrade the graphics to create a more realistic game world to stress the technology and fully put it to the test.
This opened up the opportunity to experiment with art style and environment concepts, which then lead to exploring designs for characters, infrastructure and other things. We called this version the ‘Valley of Sands’, and this evolved over a few months to the version you see now.
We are now at an extremely exciting point where the current form of Project Existence has served its purpose. A short while ago we took the servers offline to prepare for the next step, an evolved version of Project Existence that is built upon everything that has preceded it.
We will be sharing more information about this next step very soon so stay tuned. Until then, come hang out on Discord and say hi!
- The Arctic Theory team