People -- chiefly gamers, friends, and family -- constantly ask me, "How close to done are you?"
This project is going to be divided into five primary phases: Pre-alpha, Alpha 1, Alpha 2, Closed Beta, and Open Beta prior to final product launch.
Across the overall project, I would estimate that we are 20-25% finished with all of the mechanics that we have presently planned for the game.
Alpha 1 will be a closed test by invite only. We already have a list of around 16 players who have expressed interest in testing the Alpha 1 version of the game.
Alpha 1 mechanics:
- Stars and galaxy - DONE
- Planets - MOSTLY DONE
- Planetary cities - MOSTLY DONE
- Starship design - MOSTLY DONE
- Starship production - MOSTLY DONE
- Fleet creation - MOSTLY DONE
- Research tree - MOSTLY DONE
- Fiat currencies - MOSTLY DONE
- Galaxy chat - MOSTLY DONE
- Technology tree - IN PROGRESS
- Fleet travel - IN PROGRESS
- Fleet travel between stars - IN PROGRESS
- Fog of war - IN PROGRESS
By the time we reach Alpha 1, the game should be playable and empire expansion and basic platform and bug fixes will be the primary objective.
Based on our current progress and assuming no catastrophic events, I expect that we will be prepared for Alpha 1 within the next two to eight months.
Alpha 2 will also consist of closed testing by invite and players contributing to our KickStarter
The Alpha 2 features will generally (subject to change) include:
- Fleet combat & formations
- Planetary governors and fleet admirals
- Galactic Exchange for resource trading
- Galactic Council for diplomacy
- Planetary Sway, Discord, & revolt
- Espionage, Assassination, Sabotage, and Subversion spying
The Closed Beta will consist of a test by invite only, except the player list should expand to at least 1000.
The Closed Beta features will generally (subject to change) include:
- Federations (the 'guilds' in this game)
- Federation-level victory, bonuses, flagships, etc.
- Expanded trade and economics
- CETU star systems, fleets, and technology
- AI helper agents
The Open Beta will be a freely available test focused chiefly on ironing out bugs across the entire game and load testing servers.
So, now you know where we are, where we are going, and where you might fit into it.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
Greetings, I am Andrew VanLoo, lead developer on the massively multiplayer online (MMO) real time strategy game (RTS) currently titled "FATES: Carpe Moerae," and I would like to communicate in this inaugural post the vision and mission that Adam and I have in creating this game.
First allow me to share a bit of history, as it should help to clarify how we got to this point and where we are going. Adam and I met many years ago on another MMORTS named "Lord of Ultima" (LoU) developed by Electronic Arts (EA) Phenomic and published by EA global. The fundamental idea behind LoU was solid as was a good bit of their implementation. However, the lead designer and mind behind LOU left EA, and the game began to lose its spark. From that point the remaining people had difficulty keeping the game afloat, and it was eventually shut down.
Adam and I had both grown to love the game, but while playing through it for the second time, we both came to the mutual realisation that we could do it better.
Thus, in early 2013 the project that became FATES: Carpe Moerae was born. We began by researching various other RTS-style games and looking for a variety of mechanics that we found interesting, then took them and re-engineered them to give them new life within our game. After the selection of the science fiction theme, we began designing the technical aspects of the game in earnest in order enhance the graphics, designs and game mechanics seen in older games in the RTS genre. Our goal is for our game to be a pinnacle in both quality and quantity for years to come.
The vision of FATES: Carpe Moerae was further fleshed out by our gradual understanding that true information is becoming harder to reach and of lesser value to the general populace. We believe that games are the way of the future for transferring such knowledge and hope that gamers will enjoy the work we have put into researching and developing our scientific concepts within the game. As such, we're incentivising players to research the various mechanics, resulting in the design decision to implement the advanced economic knowledge that I have been accumulating after 2008 to work making an economic model as close to reality as possible, including such advanced topics as fiat currencies and sovereign debt markets.
The mission of FATES: Carpe Moerae is to entertain, challenge, and educate players who engage with us in this venture. The game will definitely incentivise you to learn about economics, as this aspect will be key, as one would expect from a strategy game.
In the spirit of education and broader societal value, we have also recently begun forging a relationship with the guys at Massively Multiplayer Science who are working to integrate science and gaming, in the hopes that we can make use of their scientific contacts to increase the fidelity and simulation value of our game, while still keeping it simple and stupidly easy to learn initially.
With time, luck, and a lot of hard work, we are hoping to bring to market a game which both entertains and educates people, retaking the ground that humanity in general has lost with regards to valuing knowledge.
We hope that you enjoy our final product and look forward to finishing it.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
