————————————————————————————————————————-

babyHERO at 30 July 2009 00:55 wrote:
This is for you… I know this question has prolly risen 1,2 many times XD..
but my patient is running thin… So im forced to ask you this. When do you see Pokemon Universe becoming open to the public ?!… like just an estimate, it would be greatly appreciated ! … I recently seen in the updates that you were looking for new mappers. So its safe to assume the actually game release will take even longer(Painfully to say).
Any info on the game progress would be nice ^_^

I’d like to give a release date but, I can’t. We’re all working hard to finish the beta as soon as possible.

We know everyone is eager to play our game, but if we give a expected release date we HAVE to meet this date otherwise everyone is going to be mad at us. The reason we don’t give a release date is that there are too many variables.

Our team consists out of people from all over the globe and they all have their own lives. Everything we do is 100% free, so it’s not possible to demand stuff from our members, it’s all voluntarily. Sure we expect they do their best and work as much as possible.

An other thing which we have encountered is the holidays. At the moment is summer holiday and people are going on vacation, so progress is a bit slower than usual. Well not really slower because when we’re all at school that’s our primary objective (for most of us ;))

Because of those things we don’t give a release date and most of the time when people ask for one. I’ll give them my favorite awnser… When it’s done

As a reminder for some of you.. We are building a Beta version, this means NOT all the stuff/features we mentioned on the front-page are going to be in the game (yet). It’s going to be a basic game. But when we have the basics we can easily expand it.

Updates
- Last week we got two (maby three) new mappers (SnipeZilla and NikNaks) who are going to help us fix the first island.
- But the mapping is not all that needs to be done, me and Urmel still got lots of stuff to code (server and client).
- I fixed our PokÉditor and should work fine for now. Now i can 100% concentrate on the server.

As mentioned earlier we’re not being payed to build this (so, NO we don’t work for Nintendo as some of you have asked us). As a matter of fact we (me, Urmel and Wasabi) are the onces who are paying to build/run the game. If you like I can make the numbers public you everyone can see our costs. BUT, there’s always a but, we don’t mind paying for all this because we hope everyone will like the game and give us their support (ex. being a good community member or player for you fellow trainers).

I know this last part was not really something you asked but I wanted to post this to let people know how much effort we put into this game, so they might stop come into our IRC channel and just bash at us.

babyHERO at 30 July 2009 00:55 wrote:
Mr Dark im like already 2 steps ahead of you ..
ur most likely reply to this will be … “Topic Closed” …lOl
Its pretty shameful even though i know ur getting tired of the same questions constantly but what do u expect? . you present to use what could possibly be the best pokemon mmo ever … Dark i just can’t wait to finally make ur finishing touches to the game..

Yeah you got that right. I’m really getting tired of all these same topics. I know we don’t have a search button atm but it isn’t that hard to just browse through the topics.

We really hope we become one of the best Pokemon MMORPG around that’s our goal, to fill the gap between all other Pokemon MMO’s

babyHERO at 30 July 2009 00:55 wrote:
I personally hope when u do, i see u in battle 1-on-1..It’s gunna feel sOO heavenly unleashing my Pokemon on u XD …all the frustration i have right now il take it all out on u in that match but of course it will be a friendly battle XD

If you want to beat me you’d better bring some really good party with you I’m looking forward to it.

If you (or anyone else) has anymore (real and serious) questions feel free to ask them. Seems like this has become quite a long post xD

We thought we had new mappers but we where wrong. Both Vaden and Nexus are never online, so they’re already kicked out of the team. This leaves us with some open positions at a “critical” time.

Here it goes:

DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A PU MAPPER!?
Yes? Good…

How do you signup for the position?
1. Download this map assignment (PDF)
2. Follow the instructions inside the assignment (note that the size is approximately so it can be bigger)
3. When you are done, Send it to jobs@pokemon-universe.com

About the assignment. We want to receive 2 things:
1. A text document with your observations
2. An image of your made work.

We don’t really care what program you use the only thing we want is that you are using Pokemon (like) tiles.

Good luck!

With this done our mappers can begin with mapping the new “Pokemon Universe”

Go give you an idea of how big the new world is going to be, here’s a small screenshot of the worldmap Bakagringo is making for us. The original size of this picture is A2 (1650*1076 px).

Last two weeks i’ve (Mr_Dark) been working on the new PokÉditor, with this new editor it should be possible for multiple mappers to work on our worldmap.

Bakagringo (he’s in our IRC channel 99% of the time) is drawing an overworld map of our “pokemon universe”. The map is comming out really nice. When it’s done it’ll be posted on the website.

Urmel has done some changes in the PUClient which allows us to have  a more dynamic GUI.

Further more we’ve begun implementing….. ITEMS!

Kamaran has thought of some begin quests and has decieded to also do some mapping for us and he has some skills for that.

Well, think that’s all for now. We’ve done more stuff but that’s not really import for you guys (and girls). Next beta should come withing 2 or 3 weeks from now… stay tuned!

The update that fixed most of the reported problems was a server update. After this update 80% of the “crashes” where solved. The problem was that every user was using the same connection to the database, so when two (or more) users tried to select a record from the database, the whole connection was lost to the database and caused the server to “crash”.

Some of our foreign friends had a bit of a “lag” problem. With the new client and server we managed to bring back that lag.

There where two of our main problems and of course there where some small bugs but those are not really worth mentioning.

So what are we going to implement now?! Well here is a small list of things we want in the next release.

• Pokemon attack learning
• Pokemon evolution
• Items (so you can catch Pokemon)
• Bigger world map
• Inside map (so you can go inside buildings)

The next release might be a public release so everyone can come and play :D, so keep an eye on our website.

So what have we completed?

• Core Engine (walking, chatting)
• Challenging players through your PokePhone
• Battle system (wild Pokemon and player vs player)
• 2/3 of the world map.

What stuff do we have to do?

• Make the PokeCenter work
• Build the inside map (for when you enter a building)
• Build the rest of the world map

Estimated release date: next week ( March 2 - March 8 )

Preperations
At the moment we are finalizing the battle system (player vs. player) and testing the pre-beta worldmap.

Battle system
The core of the battle system is done the only thing that is left is requesting and accepting PvP battles. You can send a battle request by clicking on the player and than selecting “Battle” in your PokePhone. The other player will receive a message that he/she has got a battle request, when the player accepts this request the battle begins.

(Pre-Beta) Worldmap
From what we have seen so far the cities and routes are looking pretty awesome, if I may say so. Don’t expect any cities like the ones in the original pokemon games, they will have new names and are much, much bigger!

Pre-Beta sign-up is still open! Sign-up in this topic on our main website.

We’re working hard to realize this, though the programming of the game is nog the only part of developing a game. I’m currently in the process of creating a pre-beta map. Without a map no game. =p Though I can’t mention the full details of this map, it will feature a few battle areas and villages.

Stay tuned for updates. ^_^