Empire of Sports.com

As you are no doubt aware, the game is in the Beta stage at the moment. There is still a lot of work to be done but many of the important features are being tested by our precious Beta testers on a daily basis. (We are still regularly adding people to our beta so make sure to sign up if you haven’t done so yet!)

The feedback of the Beta testers is absolutely vital to us in identifying and correcting bugs and problems as early as possible. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank some of the people whose feedback has been instrumental. Leonim Khaan for example has been giving us feedback, both via our forum as well as our support section that has proven very valuable in identifying and solving bugs. Waaha is another regular poster whose, not always very positive, feedback is important to us. Thank you to both of you but also to all the others who’s names I can’t possible all mention here. Thank you all for providing us with feedback, and lots of it. Wetter it’s positive or negative, it all counts and it is all important. Please keep it coming!

With most of the sports in advanced states we have been running events several times a week. We do this both to test the sports and the platform in general but also to allow our Beta users to compete on the high level we want Empire of Sports to offer. And this has already spawned some real Empire of Sports Stars! Mike is the first one I want to mention. He has an unbeaten record in the 3 Tennis tournaments he has performed in so far and I fear it may take the emergence of Empire of Sports Tennis legend Christian Mueller himself to beat him.

I had the pleasure of playing against Mike myself on several occasions and I can assure you that it is heartwarming to see someone who started playing the game a couple of weeks ago play as good as he does. I have been playing our tennis for nearly a year as it was going through its early alpha builds and all that practice and training simply isn’t enough for me to stand up to him. It’s inspiring it really is. Frustrating as well of course, but in that good and motivating sense of the word.

Some others that have made a name for themselves already are Teydi, who’s been performing very strong in both Ski and Tennis as well as Daniil D, who is regularly involved and a tough competitor.

Keep up the competition guys, and keep the feedback coming!

Kind regards,

Nic van ‘t Schip aka Xalin
Empire of Sports Team

Empire of Sports

So heisst das Phänomen, das mich und meine Kollegen im Bann hält. Wir haben seine Entwicklung verfolgt und es heranwachsen sehen, wir haben es mit unseren Ideen gespiesen, haben vertraut. Und mit jedem Release haben wir beobachtet, wie es sich der Vision in unseren Köpfen nähert…

Momentan befinden wir uns in der Version 0.50 von Empire of Sports und wir können mit Stolz behaupten, dass sich unser Spiel so gewaltig anfühlt wie noch nie.

Speziell die neusten Änderungen lösen in mir ein Gefühl der Euphorie, ein Gefühl eines nahendem Sturms aus. Gerade kleine Änderungen lassen EoS vom Bildschirm ins Blut
übergehen, denn es sind jene wichtigen Dinge, welche einem Online Spiel das Leben einhauchen.

Und EoS lebt! Zu gewissen Zeiten wuseln die Spieler an allen Ecken, es ist etwas los.
Die Athleten erstellen seit dieser Version ihre eigenen Clubs und Gruppen, sammeln sich vor den verschiedenen Sportarten und liefern sich sportliche als auch verbale Wettkämpfe.

Im Chat geht es oft drunter und drüber. Es wird diskutiert, welche Maschinen im Training Center benutzt werden sollen. Es wird gefragt, wer wohl endlich den mysteriösen Equinimer im Tennis schlagen wird. Es wird gemutmasst, mit welcher Ausrüstung wohl der aktuelle Ski Rekord geknackt werden könnte.

Und schliesslich mein Lieblingsfeauture, der Talentbaum. EoS nähert sich der Komplexität, die viele der erfahrenen MMO Spieler schon freudig erwarten.
Mit dem Talentbaum geben wir jenen erfahrenen MMO Spielern das Werkzeug in die Hand, mit dem sie ihren Charakter individuell mit speziellen Fähigkeiten ausrüsten können.
Von nun an wird sich kein Charakter mehr gleichen, unterschiedliche Ausrüstung mit Attributs Boni und viele ausgeklügelte Fähigkeiten bereichern den sportlichen Wettbewerb.

Ja, EoS lebt und wächst. Es wächst mit grossen Schritten in die Vision hinein, die wir davon haben. Doch die Vision ist noch nicht ganz ausgewachsen, hunderte Spieler bereichern sie mit ihren neuen Ideen.

Willst auch du helfen MMO Geschichte zu schreiben?
Registriere dich zur Beta!

Hello,

My name is Gaëtan and I’m a 3D graphic artist at F4. I’m here to tell you what it takes to develop a city in Empire of Sports.

The creation of a city starts with a rough model that allows us to shape the general structure of the city and divide it into zones whose size is defined by the technical constraints of the game engine. As in most games, it isn’t about the number of polygons – current video cards are pretty powerful in that regard – so much as the size and number of the textures. We then decide where the portals are, allowing us to connect the zones one with each other and allowing the engine to display only visible zones. The zones are then dispatched to various members of the graphics team to be modeled and textured in detail.

The people behind this process - the art director and the game designers – are crucial to its success. The art director gives general artistic orientation through sketches, artwork and photographic references. Then we create a documentary reference pool and the color range that will allow us to keep the visual consistency between the different zones in each city. The game designers, on the other hand, are responsible for organizing the way the city works and which services can be found in each zone: housing, shops, services, signage, etc.

The pivotal zones gather the more useful player services, such as the training center and the shops. But even though we have this same organization in all our cities, each has a very distinct personality. For France, we drew much of our inspiration from Montmartre with its short and tiny streets and its rose-grey facades. For Germany, reliefs are smoother and the buildings’ walls more colored. For the UK, we created a mix between Piccadilly Circus and the red bricks of Covent Garden shops like Neal’s Yard.

In order to create the typical zones in each city, we do a lot of research on the Internet. It’s one of my favorite tasks, as it really plunges us into the atmosphere of the city we want to create. The photos allow us to see the architectural details of the city buildings and to better know their colors. Our artistic director helps us select the best pictures, which we then use within the Maya software package to model our 3D buildings. We then go to a bank of textures, select the best fits, and change them with Photoshop by correcting the colors, adding substance, dirtying them in places, and so forth before we apply them to our buildings.

As the style of Empire of Sports is quite realistic, we have to observe certain constraints. As we are several artists working on the different zone of the same city simultaneously, it’s also a good team work exercise: we really have to work together in order to unify our styles. But the futuristic approach to some areas of the cities also allows creativity and the global result is undoubtedly very rewarding, as we create more than just a series of buildings – we create an atmosphere. And then we have the pleasure of seeing the players live in our creations!

Once each zone has been created, we apply the finishing touches: we tweak the lighting, we build the collision mesh (defining the places where the players won’t be allowed to go) and we add the entry/exit points for the buildings (where the players can connect with other parts of the game). Maya and our in-house tools allow us to do these things very simply, with pulls and buttons, without any coding.

Last but not least, we go into the debugging of the city: we collect all the zones to create one large unified zone. This is where the city is actually built. We divide the zones into 3D objects for display purposes; we indicate which zone sees which zone through the portals and check that the portals work properly. Even if it’s not my favorite part of the job, it’s an important and interesting task that goes further than the usual role of an artist: it gives us a more global vision of the game and makes us feel more committed to the final result.

Gaëtan