Nov

Root Access Alpha Release Date

Finally, what you’ve all been waiting for!

After many months of hard work we are pleased to announce the release date of the Root Access alpha. The preview release will become available on Wednesday 17th of November at 7pm GMT. Alpha keys will be sent to those who have signed up and been accepted along with instructions on how to download and access the game.

For all those accepted into the alpha please remember this is a very early release so there are bugs and missing features. We will be updating the game every few weeks with bug fixes and new features, so please be patient. Also remember that you are testing the game and as such we require your feedback on any issues you encounter.

If you haven’t been selected for the alpha don’t worry as we’ll be sending out another wave of invitations soon. If you haven’t signed up yet then what are you waiting for? Head on over to the Root Access Website and sign up now!

November 7th, 2010 by CWolf | Type: Standard

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Aug

The Technology of a Deadworld – Project Management

Managing a games company is no different to managing any other organisation, group or project. There are some small subtle difference but in the end to make progress you need to set tasks to complete and deadlines you actually meet. We realised relatively early on we needed a central organised way of ensuring the team knew what was required of them and how much time they had. Welcome to the world of project management. (more…)

August 21st, 2010 by CWolf | Type: Standard

Filed Under: Development Tags: Acunote, Collabtive, Open Source, Project Management, Trac No comments yet

Aug

The Technology of a Deadworld Series Introduction

We’ve decided to write a series of posts that will cover the range of different technology we use to aid us at Deadworld Studios. In each post we’ll discuss the specific areas of management, game design and development which lead us to adopt an existing solution or develop our own solution to aid us. Moving further into our need we’ll discuss what options we were presented with, the reasons behind our choice and how we utilised it. We’ll reflect on our experiences and if this has lead us to do things differently in the future. We have a few interesting stories centered around the times we went through with the technology so those will be thrown in too for good measure!

Stay tuned for our first entry!

August 20th, 2010 by CWolf | Type: Standard

Filed Under: Development Tags: Computer Games, Design, Development, Open Source, Project Management, Technology No comments yet

Aug

I am the Alpha…

First of all hello to those of you who are new here as well as those of you who have been with us for a while. It’s been a few months since our last update and we’ve all been hard at work involving all things Deadworld. Things are moving well and we would like to officially announce that we will begin official alpha testing… soon.

The coding monkeys have been released from their cages for the day in celebration of the announcement but we’ll have them all rounded up and back to work soon. In the meantime head over to http://rootaccess.deadworldstudios.co.uk/alpha/ and fill in your details to register your interest. When we’re ready to begin we’ll send out alpha keys to a limited number of users and, if all progresses as planned, we’ll be sending out more alpha keys on a regular basis until we’re ready to move onto the next stage.

As an alpha tester you obviously get a taste of what’s to come, though bare in mind things are still at an early stage, there are still bugs that need squashing and lots is likely to change – hopefully with the benefit of your feedback to help us identify all the problems and provide some useful insight.

Thanks for being patient with us and we hope to see you in the alpha.

The Deadworld Studios Team

August 19th, 2010 by Rogue Vector | Type: Standard

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Jul

Lasting business is built on friendship

Through CWolf and Jargon you’ve caught a glimpse of the technical side of things and the development of computer games. I’m hoping to give you an idea of the other (admittedly more boring) aspects of Deadworld Studios.

So, the business side of things, getting things set up and running legally and financially.

This isn’t a business blog so I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail, instead I’m just going to skim over some of the problems we’ve had and how we’ve addressed them. (more…)

July 3rd, 2010 by Rogue Vector | Type: Standard

Filed Under: Development Tags: Development No comments yet

Jun

Integrate This!

Over the past week I’ve been working pretty hard on getting Hudson, our continuous integration software, integrated with all the tools and code we have. It’s been a little bit of an up hill struggle and a steep learning curve in some areas but all in all things seem to be going well.

So far we’ve integrated Bugzilla (Bug tracking), SVN (Code Repository), TestNG with the ReportNG addon (Unit Testing), ANT (Build Tool) and Java compiling / Javadoc (Documentation) into Hudson. These are very important tools to us and we will be adding more useful things to Hudson over the coming weeks. The initial effort to integrated all your tools may seem expensive in regards to time but once things are together it provides a very seamless way of working (not to mention the satisfying feeling!). When we commit our code we know it’s going to be bombarded by the unit tests and recording code coverage metrics along with static byte code analysis, to pick up common coding issues, for our use to ensure we can provide the best games we can. It’ll refine our way of working and ultimately speed our development up.

All in all I’d say these are exciting times!

June 27th, 2010 by CWolf | Type: Standard

Filed Under: Development Tags: ANT, Bugzilla, Continuous Integration, Hudson, Javadoc, ReportNG, SVN, TestNG 1 comment

May

Welcome to Deadworld!

Welcome to the new virtual home of Deadworld Studios; a place for all of you interested in following our work.

The aim of the site is two fold, as well as obviously letting you know when we have things available for you (such as games or other media) we also want to keep you aware of the development process.

The navigation should be fairly self explanatory but of particular note is the forum where you can keep in touch and get involved and the development blogs where we will be making posts to let you know what’s going on behind the scenes in the world of Deadworld. Also if you haven’t noticed at the bottom of the page you’re more than welcome to follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook.

So, we’ll leave it at that for now, but if you want to know more by all means have a wander around the site or drop into the forums and ask us whatever you want.

May 10th, 2010 by Rogue Vector | Type: Standard

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May

Wax On, Wax Off

Well, as you may have noticed the new site is up and running (thanks Ben). So that means we can start populating it with precious information regarding our projects.

Anyway, we’re still working hard on Root Access and we’re very close to wrapping up the alpha, just implementing the last couple of features and then it’s onto testing. We’re also setting up supporting stuff for Root Access, such as bug trackers for our alpha users, as well as ‘official’ game information on this site. We’ve had a Twitter account that we’ve been tweeting to during the development of RA (link to it is on the footer navigation at the bottom of this page), so there’s some interesting stuff on there if you wish to follow us. There will also be a Facebook page that will be launched too, once we get the ‘official’ game info up.

The last couple of features that need to be implemented into RA is the ability to attach a file to a message and send it to another character/player. Once this is done we’ll be able to write some Steal-type missions where the player is required to download some data from a target server and then message the file back to their employer. We’ve already got quite a few Delete-type missions, in which you’re just required to gain access to a server and delete data… but remember to clean up your logs or you’ll get caught!

by Jargon | Type: Standard

Filed Under: Development Tags: Facebook, Root Access, Twitter, Website 1 comment

Mar

Almost There…

So, we’ve been working on Root Access for quite a while now and it’s getting pretty close to an alpha release. Just got a few more things to take care of first with the game and then get an installer/updater developed to go with it.

For those of you who don’t know what Root Access is, it is Deadworld Studios’ first title that will be officially released. The game takes a lot of inspiration from Introversion Software’s Uplink, a pseudo-hacking game, which is extremely fun and highly addictive. The only flaw with this game is that it is only single-player and Introversion Software have mentioned that they’re only interested in innovative and unique games and as a result will not develop an Uplink 2 or an Online Uplink game. Introversion Software aren’t the only game development company that have developed a hacking game which does not include multi-player and from our point of view, this is a significant oversight as the nature of hacking does usually involve a human target.

Therefore, Root Access is an MMO pseudo-hacking game where players are pitched against computer players as well as each other. We’re hoping the human versus human aspect of Root Access will give the game a whole new layer of strategy that is missing from all other single-player pseudo-hacking games.

For more information on what Root Access is all about and how it will play, please check out the Root Access project page.

March 26th, 2010 by Jargon | Type: Standard

Filed Under: Development No comments yet