- Update 5 Nov. 2007 Going to the GDC 2008 -

This is our first official news update for Islands Of War. We are gearing up for the Game Developers Conference 2008 that will be held in San Francisco from Feb 18-22. It is one of the biggest gaming conventions around with many major players that attend. We will be there in full force and would like to invite you to come and meet the team that’s producing IOW. Along with gearing up for this event we have recently been chosen as one of only 20 game companies in the whole of Canada that will have the privilege to be part of a special program. This program is designed to develop the gaming industry in Canada through a one-on-one mentorship that will help prepare us for the conference and assist us in developing an action plan / marketing plan to attract new investors. With this added bonus we are looking forward to presenting Islands Of War at the conference and plan to have a playable demo for the public and investors to test out. So if you are in the neighborhood please stop buy and say hello, it’s always good to meet our supporters.

- Combat System 3 Nov. 2007 By Ash Downing Programming Manager -

This is the first of many discussions where I will try and give you some background on the combat system. The idea behind Islands of War’s combat was to make it as exiting as possible without actually creating a twitch based system. To do this, I have combined different aspects from existing MMOs and RPGs as well as (hopefully) some new ones.Our goal was to make it easy to learn but still be based more upon the skill of the player and not the player’s character. Of course, like in any RPG a character with some experience will be better (numerically speaking) than a newbie toon. That being said, we hope to limit this as much as possible and make the outcome rely more on the skill of the person sitting behind the keyboard. At the moment, only melee abilities are being worked on, I am saving magic based combat for last.

So far, I have tested and coded several features of the system such as positionals which require a player be behind, in front or on the side of their target. Combinations, these are skill chains that require players to use skills in a set order to open up other skills. Reaction based skills that require the previous attack have a certain result. For instance, you can use “shield bash” if your opponent blocked your last attack. And conditionals, these require your opponent to have a condition placed on them such as a bleed (DOT) in order for you to use a certain skill.

Stances are in place that open up various types of attacks and also affect your combat information such as defense and offense ratings. Some stances are better for certain situations than others, like the “Wildfire” stance is great for Rogues when they are in a situation of many weak attackers whereas the Warrior’s “Iron Tower” stance is good for fighting very strong mobs one on one.

Abilities in Islands of War of course don’t only do damage but a whole host of other nasty stuff. We are constantly coding in new maneuvers players can use such as charge, stun and various melee based attacks that make it harder to heal people.In addition, I have also implemented a vigor system that requires players to build up a certain amount of vigor in order to use different abilities. This is similar to how rage is used in World of Warcraft and other games.

As far as items are concerned, certain weapons will do more harm to players depending on the type of armor they wear. Slashing weapons will damage cloth users more than chain mail however piercing weapons will do more to chain and less to cloth etc. etc. There is a complete system of checks and balances developed and I will go into further detail on the resistance systems in the future.

OK, well that’s about it right now. It is important to note that all of the above is actually coded in the game and working. I prefer not to discuss “cool stuff we plan to add” and just stick to what is already in the game and tested.