Gather your party before venturing forth!
Our leader, Kyoku, remembers having a discord server for VERZ Online up since 2019. Very handy. There DuSTman, Sylos and Mihai are invited and join, forming group with development skills but for the moment no dedicated artist. Then Kyoku realizes he has Xolarix on his contact list. Invited, Xolarix joins the same day.
Among folks who joined Balmz suggests to get Zac Quicksilver onboard, for his game mechanics knowledge. Funny coincidence because Kyoku has been looking for him too. Balmz has Zac’s email addres and gives it to Kyoku who sends a message. Zac himself arrives the same day.
In next few days Rainmaker joins; not long after him Dashlander arrives, promising to take care of more troubling aspects of managing a discord server. This makes a party of eight already – a small team ready to face challenges of creating a fan game.
Hexagons are bestagons and celestial coral reef
Early in those days we had to answer many questions about game’s fundamentals. What is the shape of navigation grid (hexagons = bestagons but squares prevailed), how hard or soft the science fiction world of VERZ Online is going to be (do celestial coral reefs or space kelp fit?) and decide on technology. For front end it has been ECMAScript without a framework for now. For back end Python prevailed because everyone knew at least a little of that programming language. Nobody was really proficient in it though.
One of first sketched things was a view how navigation could look. Planets taking multiple squares turned out to be prophetic interpretation of original design.
Beginnings of species design
Eager to have some progress Kyoku started to draw pixel art portraits of species available in game and following up with some code for random portrait generator to have that tested in practice. There was plenty of candidates to choose from.
The firstborn of VERZ Online are the Kodai. An enigmatic species of aquatic dwellers with telepathic abilities, they embody warrior monk culture. Portraits may depict them with large scars across their faces.
There was another species in the works but that one fared poorly and has never seen the light.
Bonus!
Xolarix found his old creation: Famiso Drug Trade. Ah, nostalgia.
