| A Tale in the desert is een 'massive multiplaying online roleplaying game' gemaakt door eGenesis. Het speelt zich af in Egypte rond de tijd van de pharao's en de piramides. Het spel is constant in ontwikkeling terwijl je speelt, er wordt dus vanalles aan gebouwd, veranderd en verbeterd. Je bent zelf een persoon die bijna alles kan, van kunstwerken ontwerpen tot vissen in de Nijl. Lees verder hieroner... (engels) |
Long ago, in ancient Egypt, a vast new land was discovered, with all of the conditions required to settle there. There was a system of rivers, grass, sand, clay, and deserts as far as the eye could see. All that was needed were a few brave settlers to try and conquer this land for Egypt, not through war with other people, but through hard work and determination. After the pharaoh’s engineers and architects had explored the land and built roads and universities, the pharaoh decided to let the people settle this new land in the name of Egypt.
This is how your life in A Tale in the Desert begins. You are transported to a new land you’ve never seen before, and expected to fend for yourself and settle there. Luckily, there are many other people to help you out at all times, and even people whose job it is to make sure you know what you’re doing.
ATITD is a very social game. It’s a massive multiplayer online RPG, but this time, the focus isn’t on fighting the enemy or even each other. It’s about working together, being social, and trading with other people, all in the name of a unified Egypt. It may sound a bit strange, and even a bit boring, but let me tell you, it’s one of the most addictive games I’ve played in a long time.
When you first start out, you don’t know anything. You don’t know any people, and you don’t know where in the vast world you are. This can seem like a very daunting start to your game, but that’s almost the point. ATITD forces you to be social. Your first task will be to seek out a mentor, who’ll show you the ropes and help you learn all the skills you need to become a productive member of society.
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Your mentor will teach you how to gather wood, forge a stone blade, make a wood planer, make boards, make bricks, and how to get other vital materials. All that is asked in return is a shrine to that person that he or she can worship at. If that person mentors three people and prays at each one of their shrines, they are initiated into the discipline of leadership, which I’ll explain a little later on. This kind of interaction takes place all of the time and it really helps you along.
Your mentor will also teach you how to control your camera, which is quite a vital part of the game. Before I found my mentor, I was very unsatisfied with the camera, but once I got it working the way I liked, I found it quite intuitive. You click where your character needs to go and he or she will run there. To rotate the camera, move your cursor to the far left, right, top or bottom part of the screen. I found it awkward at first, but after getting used to it, I quite like it, and probably wouldn’t change it.
After your mentor has taught you all you need to know, you become a citizen and can start living your life. Personally, I started up a small camp near a guild, and started to live there. It was quite hard at first because it’s quite a lot of work to get even the basics.
Not that this is a problem, though. Actually, the complexity of the game and its open-endedness really make it stand out from the rest. You literally start with nothing. Say, for example, you want to make a small distaff, which is a mechanism that makes string, twine, and rope, which can be used for all sorts of projects. To build the distaff, you need twelve boards, one hundred bricks, and ten wood. The trick is that you have to make all of that yourself. To make the boards, you have to gather wood from trees and make a wood plane. To make the wood plane you need a certain amount of wood and a stone blade, which is made by gathering slate from near the river or lakes. To make the bricks, you have to plane wood on the planer into boards and collect them, then make some brick racks. Then, you place the brick racks on the ground. After, you have to gather mud, sand, and straw. Grass is dropped and then dried in the sun for a while to make straw, and both sand and mud can be obtained near the river. Once you have all the materials, you can make your bricks, and then you’ll have enough for your distaff, but you won’t be able to use it until you plant some flax, process it, and then load the distaff with it.
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As you can see, it’s amazingly complex, but this complexity makes the game kind of fun. When I started out, I had no idea how to make these things, so I had to go to the university of architecture and learn a few skills by paying some small tuition fees. After learning these things, I had to ask a few people how to do things, and they were very obliging. To this day I haven’t found anyone unwilling to help me out. It’s an extremely helpful community in general.
Not only is it complex to build things, but it’s also tough to learn new things. There are seven disciplines of man that you are to try and learn, but you need only to focus on one or two if you like, so the game is very open ended. The seven disciplines are architecture, art, body (exploration), leadership, worship, conflict, and thought. Each one has its own unique skills to learn and paths to take. Everyone needs to know some basic skills, but as the technology and learning gets better, your levels in these disciplines will get higher, so the division of labor will become more noticeable.
Graphically, the game is a bit lacking, with some blocky characters and objects with slightly jerky animation, and only six different player models to choose from. Each model can be customized by using different colors on your clothes and such, though, so it’s not like everyone looks the same or anything.
While the characters and objects may not blow your mind, the sheer size of this game definitely will. If the map was completely flat and had no obstacles whatsoever, it would take you over two and a half hours just to get from one side to the other! It’s excessively large, even beating out Morrowind in the vastness department. It truly is mind boggling that you can just go and explore for hours on end, and still find new places all the time. The travel is slow, but once your navigation skills improve, you can use waypoint travel to warp back and forth.
Not only is the game large, but it’s also quite nice looking. The grass sways in the wind and the textures on the mountains and ground are quite crisply done. The terrain may get slightly repetitive, though, but it’s really not a huge problem, it just makes exploring a little bit bland in some spots.
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The only real thing that got on my nerves about ATITD is that there is hardly any sound at all. There’s one sound for your footsteps, one sound for the menus, and only a few other faint noises to be heard. That wouldn’t be such a big deal to me if the game had music, though, which is one thing that I found desperately lacking. If it had some grandiose song that played all of the time or something like that, it would improve the game a lot, but as it is, I had to turn on my own tunes, and that hardly seems fair.
Even though the sound is weak, the good far outweighs the bad, in my opinion, and one of the coolest things I have seen in ATITD is the law system. You can go to the university of leadership and apply to become a leader. People have to click on you personally, and they’ll get a menu. Under that menu they can choose the legal option and sign your initiation petition, and once you get twenty votes, you’re in. That’s not the best part, though. Anyone in the game can make a petition dealing with the game. If you and your friends don’t like something, you could make a petition and have that particular part of the game changed if you get 40 signatures, and two thirds of the population vote yes on your proposition, as long as it’s reasonable. (No rocket powered, monkey-navigated, flying machines, I suppose.)
If your petition is passed, the programmers will implement your idea into the game, and it becomes law. This means that you can make all sorts of laws and have them apply to your area, as long as most of the population agrees. This makes sure that the game is constantly changing, usually for the better, and it allows the users to have a say in what goes on in their country, just like a real colony.
| Screenshot vind je hier: http://www.atitd.com/screens/thumbs.html Er bestaat verder geen nederlandse communitie of wat dan ook van dit spel, ik ben net begonnen en ik vind het prachtig  Helaas zijn mijn speeluren (24 uur die je zelf mag verdelen over 30 dagen) afgelopen en ik ben cker bereid om 13,95 dollar per maand te gaan betalen. Alleen ik moet nog uitvinden hoe  Meer tips etc. vind je op www.atitd.net En voor vragen, post maar  |
Voor de beta:
Simply go to the beta sign up page (http://www.ataleinthedesert.com/nt-beta.html) on the official site and download the client and enter your email address to sign up. IF you don't enter an email address you can still play but you won't get notified when official playsessions are
http://egenesis.centralserver.net/atitdf.exe
(tnx to JelleStoel
)
[ Voor 5% gewijzigd door Verwijderd op 01-05-2003 23:36 ]
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