Hello Folks,

I am happy to say we can achieve a level of productivity again that almost puts us back into full production.

Just a quick update for the community

- We have on-boarded a couple of new Devs, and they are in the process of getting up to speed and in line with the new master plan.
- They team in general is starting to materialize and a lot of new faces are coming on as we set up

What does this mean for me?

Well, we re-stabilizing this release, and I think we are weeks away from a properly playable release. Keep in mind that this may seem slow but restarting, and rebuilding takes time, and once everyone is all trained up we will be able to move a decent pace again. We just need a little more time and tangible results you will start to see

So what is the plan? It has been so damn long now!

This information is coming soon, we are not promising anything until its close or near done this time. We are not going to do any interviews or big releases until its done. We will not re-enable sales until its ready.

Upcoming Patch Notes
- Fixed massive graphical lag issue for older video cards
- Fixed Jolah Male animations for sprinting
- Implemented a new matchmaking system
- Removed steam session server architecture to make way for private hosted servers and other platforms (This has taken a little time)
- We have rebuilt lighting themes
- Optimized shadow map performance

*** The game is NOT currently playable really right now, just an FYI ****

Thank you for being patient, we are getting there very slowly but surely.

Cheers,
TK

Hello Folks,

I am happy to say we can achieve a level of productivity again that almost puts us back into full production.

Just a quick update for the community

- We have on-boarded a couple of new Devs, and they are in the process of getting up to speed and in line with the new master plan.
- They team in general is starting to materialize and a lot of new faces are coming on as we set up

What does this mean for me?

Well, we re-stabilizing this release, and I think we are weeks away from a properly playable release. Keep in mind that this may seem slow but restarting, and rebuilding takes time, and once everyone is all trained up we will be able to move a decent pace again. We just need a little more time and tangible results you will start to see

So what is the plan? It has been so damn long now!

This information is coming soon, we are not promising anything until its close or near done this time. We are not going to do any interviews or big releases until its done. We will not re-enable sales until its ready.

Upcoming Patch Notes
- Fixed massive graphical lag issue for older video cards
- Fixed Jolah Male animations for sprinting
- Implemented a new matchmaking system
- Removed steam session server architecture to make way for private hosted servers and other platforms (This has taken a little time)
- We have rebuilt lighting themes
- Optimized shadow map performance

*** The game is NOT currently playable really right now, just an FYI ****

Thank you for being patient, we are getting there very slowly but surely.

Cheers,
TK

Good Day,

We are currently recruiting and rebuilding the team right now and this process can be fast and time-consuming. We continue to make NO promises in the short term until we get up to proper speed and productivity.

General Notes
- We have added some new members and they are being trained
- We have (4) new NPC's that are in the pipeline
- We have completed our assessments of the Siege map to add new gameplay
- Engine upgrades
- Linux and OSX testing continues

Bugs
- We been pushing some builds to fix some of the issues with action bar, today's build should solve that issue
- Lots of other bugs but we are slowly getting out processes sorted

We are looking to make some announcements soon but only when we are ready. We are far from dead folks its just taking its time.

Cheers,
TK

Good Day,

We are currently recruiting and rebuilding the team right now and this process can be fast and time-consuming. We continue to make NO promises in the short term until we get up to proper speed and productivity.

General Notes
- We have added some new members and they are being trained
- We have (4) new NPC's that are in the pipeline
- We have completed our assessments of the Siege map to add new gameplay
- Engine upgrades
- Linux and OSX testing continues

Bugs
- We been pushing some builds to fix some of the issues with action bar, today's build should solve that issue
- Lots of other bugs but we are slowly getting out processes sorted

We are looking to make some announcements soon but only when we are ready. We are far from dead folks its just taking its time.

Cheers,
TK

Good evening,

We have finally got development back under with the team; we will be pushing some updated builds out over the next couple of weeks. Our plan is to target every Wednesday evening while we get things back up to spec. We are not going to make any promises or big announcements until our work is done. The point of this update to set expectations back in line as you see builds being updated.

This is what we can say:
- The engine is back to UE4; Bigworld remains out of our price range
- The app will continue un-purchasable until we are ready to release our news with detailed plans (over the next couple of months)
- We remain that the people who stuck with us will be highly rewarded with looks of goodies

December 22 Patch Notes
- New login screen and user management system
- Fixed action bar bugs
- Engine upgraded to 4.11.2
- Art updates
- Lighting Enhancements on siege


It's been painful road folks but we are not dead and going forward I will do my best to update you every Wednesday.

Merry Xmas and all that,
TK

Good evening,

We have finally got development back under with the team; we will be pushing some updated builds out over the next couple of weeks. Our plan is to target every Wednesday evening while we get things back up to spec. We are not going to make any promises or big announcements until our work is done. The point of this update to set expectations back in line as you see builds being updated.

This is what we can say:
- The engine is back to UE4; Bigworld remains out of our price range
- The app will continue un-purchasable until we are ready to release our news with detailed plans (over the next couple of months)
- We remain that the people who stuck with us will be highly rewarded with looks of goodies

December 22 Patch Notes
- New login screen and user management system
- Fixed action bar bugs
- Engine upgraded to 4.11.2
- Art updates
- Lighting Enhancements on siege


It's been painful road folks but we are not dead and going forward I will do my best to update you every Wednesday.

Merry Xmas and all that,
TK

Hey there,

To keep things running lean, we are moving servers to another datacenter right now, and servers are down for a couple of days.

Cheers,
TK

Hey there,

To keep things running lean, we are moving servers to another datacenter right now, and servers are down for a couple of days.

Cheers,
TK

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be fixing some major bugs while we work on the re-release of factions. It may be live right now but we will up and down while we resolve some major upgrade issues. We have been quiet for awhile and once we have completed some house cleaning and resolve some issues we will announce what our plans are.

Cheers,
TK

PS, An update will come in about one week from now.

* Currently build has game breaking issues right now.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be fixing some major bugs while we work on the re-release of factions. It may be live right now but we will up and down while we resolve some major upgrade issues. We have been quiet for awhile and once we have completed some house cleaning and resolve some issues we will announce what our plans are.

Cheers,
TK

PS, An update will come in about one week from now.

* Currently build has game breaking issues right now.

We have some announcements coming soon. Stay tuned far from dead folks just been working on the back end.

Stay tuned.

We have some announcements coming soon. Stay tuned far from dead folks just been working on the back end.

Stay tuned.

So, we putting this together and trying to do this as fast as we can here. Here are some facts:

- We did not run out of money, we just never had any
- We are going to bring the BG back (UE4)
- We are testing this right now
- Except a massive price drop (it will only be the BG going forward but we have some plans to make it unique)
- The store will be changing to reflect the next game
- Once we are complete we will enable sales again
- All things are very fluid right now
- MMO develop is on-hold while we look at funding options.



We did not give up.

TK

So, we putting this together and trying to do this as fast as we can here. Here are some facts:

- We did not run out of money, we just never had any
- We are going to bring the BG back (UE4)
- We are testing this right now
- Except a massive price drop (it will only be the BG going forward but we have some plans to make it unique)
- The store will be changing to reflect the next game
- Once we are complete we will enable sales again
- All things are very fluid right now
- MMO develop is on-hold while we look at funding options.



We did not give up.

TK

We are looking at options right now, we may put the UE4 battleground back up to play. Remember this is NOT an MMO and the MMO is on hold.

Just a little update while we sort things out on the backend.

Tk

We are looking at options right now, we may put the UE4 battleground back up to play. Remember this is NOT an MMO and the MMO is on hold.

Just a little update while we sort things out on the backend.

Tk

The Second Sunset

Greetings everyone. You may have heard already, or will hear directly the details soon regarding Burning Dog's suspension of the development on Origins of Malu. I'll be leaving the specifics of that announcement to the big boss man and instead will go over something of a summary and postmortem on our development on Malu, attempting to explain and frame our decision and path as best I can. I'll start by covering what progress we've made, then go into the major barriers in our path and wrap up with what is in store for the future.

So to begin, despite this suspension, we have had a long and fruitful journey in the development of Malu. We survived three engine changes, we developed a wealth of lore, a robust library of art, assets and code, and did so on a negative budget. We have much to be proud of in our development. We were invited to one of the main floors at PAX 2012, people enjoyed the sample demo we arranged, we had a small partnership with Dell and Alienware, and made good friends and contacts with representatives of several other companies whilst stumping for our game. We developed an active combat system, a player housing system and built a large world that had it reached it's end, would have been vast and instance-less, with territory fought over and staked out by our players. We got greenlit on Steam, made an Early Access build and kept improving and adding to it as best we could. Much was done and in complete honesty, Origins was nearly finished as a complete system, mostly requiring just additional content in bulk. This is a lot accomplished. With pride, I am glad to say I was a part of it and everyone on the Burning Dog team feels much the same way. What we managed to do without a publisher, without investors, without much system support of any kind was an amazing feat. In a brutal industry, that grinds up indies and projects by the dozens and hundreds every day, we managed to push forward past all adversity to this point. So, if we had accomplished all of this, why is Origins being suspended?

Boiling down our troubles, in my opinion, it comes to a head on three major points: funding, scope, and time. Long time readers (or those trawling through the archives) of my dissertations will note that I mention funding, money and the lack of it a lot. Even to me, it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. However, its still the number one factor and issue with our progress. Our boss man has been self-funding the Origins development out of his own pocket for the better part of a decade. A decent chunk of his paycheck from another job went towards servers, licenses, websites and other overhead during the long development of Origins. Basically all of us developers and artists working on Origins were doing so without pay of any kind. We continued to work on Origins because we believed so strongly in it, and with the hope that once 'it made it' that we would be compensated for all our years of work and labor we've poured into it. However, this lack of money was a huge hindrance in every sense imaginable. Without money we were less important to software companies whos support would have been crucial to Origin's development, and thus were often not given the time of day, or were given cursory promises that never panned out because they ignored or dismissed us. Without money to pay all of us developers, we had an atrocious turnover which resulted in loss of work, loss of experience, loss of time and the loss of professional or veteran labor help. People need to pay rent, and people need to eat. Being a developer on Origins would help with neither of those in the short term, sad as that may be. Even some of our most stringent and diehard coworkers who in better times would've stayed on and continued their work had to walk away because they needed to dedicate themselves fully to a paying job. Acquiring investors was a huge hurdle, because while most were very enthused and supportive of our goals, vision and work, they would not commit to investing capital into us until we were further progressed. The ironic thing is that we needed the funding to be further progressed. Crowdfunding was an option, and one we were openly exploring for a long time, but with some of the formats being a zero-sum setup requiring you to meet your funding goal or no funds at all, and with all of our efforts to court investors directly, we lost out on our attempts at that path. The few investors who were actually willing to put money down, wanted to do so with draconian contract terms and stipulations. Smaller amounts than what we needed, for a massive controlling stake and nullification of the shares that us developers accrued over our time working on Origins up to that point. A devils bargain by any definition methinks, and one we had to refuse.

The scope was another major point of consternation. An MMORPG is an audacious undertaking by any imagination. A first-time indie developer studio made MMORPG was downright Sisyphean in scope. All of our major pillars added to that challenge: massive open world with no instances and tens if not hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. An active combat system with projectiles, spells, dodging and quick fluid movement. A level-less character progression system. A player building system for structures of all sorts. An elaborate crafting system integrated into all of the above. All of these pillars, and the game genre itself was a massive challenge. We were put to the task and did the best that we could but as of right now, it has the best of us. Tying back to my first point, funding would go a long way to blasting through this roadblock, but again, the size of the scope makes gaining that funding a challenge all on its own. Additionally, though we are something like 70-80% complete on those pillars, the last bits would be fairly tough all on their own and as I've said before, generating all of the additional content within the world supported by those pillars would take just as much time and labor as creating the systems did. Were Burning Dog an already established studio, with a revenue stream, a full time team of developers and several titles under their collective belts, such a scope would be much more feasible and could have been accomplished in a much shorter timeframe.

Time has also played a huge factor in why we've decided to suspend our development. Origins of Malu was first conceptualized and pre-produced about a decade ago. Looking back to that time, roughly 2006ish, it would have been a novel and groundbreaking game. All the pillars of the development I described above hadn't really been put together that much in the gaming scene. Had it dropped into the market right then and there I imagine it would have done quite well, even with some faults. Every delay, every lost labor, every change wrought by our other problems and issues though, added to the clock of development. As time progressed other studios and companies realized the potential of the pillars (not from us, but just from seeing the gaming trends in general) and started development on their own versions. The open world survival games, the bulk of the sandbox genre, the active combat MMORPGs, they've all been produced on a large scale and there is a glut of them in the market. What would have been new or unique 10 years ago is old hat now. What could have attracted additional support and funds had we been where we are now, 5 years ago, is trite and mundane. What we could put out a few years ago would have been enough, but as time goes on, you have to develop more perfectly and flawlessly a game, otherwise you are just running with the pack and have nothing to stand out with. I still feel our combination of these game mechanics, aesthetics and IP would have been unique enough to warrant a decent go of it, but business ventures feel otherwise.

Not all is doom and gloom, however. Origins may be on ice, but it is not yet dead. The work, assets and labor poured into it are still there. Technically we do have a working game, as evidenced by the players of our Early Access, but it is not the game we want to bring to the world, nor would it be at that level in the near foreseeable future. On the subject of Burning Dog, we will still exist as a studio and will still be doing game development. We just have to change tactics and scope way down. Produce smaller, more limited games, get some revenue, get a solid paid workforce, get some heft to the studio and in time, revisit Origins and see what we can do. We've attempted something like this in the past, but we never stopped our Origins development. This was another mistake. By working on Origins and on side projects our attention and limited resources were further strained and diffused, made far less effective if directed towards a singular goal and project. We didn't have it in our hearts to stop developing for Origins. We've reached a point where it just simply has to happen though, and so we'll being going after these newer smaller scope projects with the same fervor we had for Origins. We have assets, code and experience with development behind us, and with a far narrower development, I feel we can put out some decent, enjoyable, quality games that can help get us on solid footing. Additionally we do have some investment potential on the horizon, though ironically or not, it isn't for developing a game, but a piece of software. You take what you can get though, especially when it can lead to paycheck and continued development on your passion piece.

I and the rest of the Burning Dog team are deeply and sincerely grateful for all the support we've had from fans and players over the years of development. It is my hope that we can be as quick in developing other titles and as successful as we can in those endeavors to get back to Origins as fast as possible, for us and for you. The status of our current Early Access will be addressed by our boss in his own statement, as will any further details on our future work. Thank you all again for your love and support, through all of our adversity and trials, with luck and hard work, I hope to have better news very soon.

Respectfully,
Virgil Davis &
Origins of Malu Team

TK Update

We have a couple things we are working on in the backend, we also conferring with Steam to get some details sorted. The servers will remain up for now.

A couple options
- back to crowd funding
- Go F2P right now as is (not ready yet)
- Wait for talks with investors


Since things are as stated above we felt it best to suspend sales in the short term.

if you purchased this game in the last 6 month, you can contact myself at support@burningdog.com.

More to come,
TK

The Second Sunset

Greetings everyone. You may have heard already, or will hear directly the details soon regarding Burning Dog's suspension of the development on Origins of Malu. I'll be leaving the specifics of that announcement to the big boss man and instead will go over something of a summary and postmortem on our development on Malu, attempting to explain and frame our decision and path as best I can. I'll start by covering what progress we've made, then go into the major barriers in our path and wrap up with what is in store for the future.

So to begin, despite this suspension, we have had a long and fruitful journey in the development of Malu. We survived three engine changes, we developed a wealth of lore, a robust library of art, assets and code, and did so on a negative budget. We have much to be proud of in our development. We were invited to one of the main floors at PAX 2012, people enjoyed the sample demo we arranged, we had a small partnership with Dell and Alienware, and made good friends and contacts with representatives of several other companies whilst stumping for our game. We developed an active combat system, a player housing system and built a large world that had it reached it's end, would have been vast and instance-less, with territory fought over and staked out by our players. We got greenlit on Steam, made an Early Access build and kept improving and adding to it as best we could. Much was done and in complete honesty, Origins was nearly finished as a complete system, mostly requiring just additional content in bulk. This is a lot accomplished. With pride, I am glad to say I was a part of it and everyone on the Burning Dog team feels much the same way. What we managed to do without a publisher, without investors, without much system support of any kind was an amazing feat. In a brutal industry, that grinds up indies and projects by the dozens and hundreds every day, we managed to push forward past all adversity to this point. So, if we had accomplished all of this, why is Origins being suspended?

Boiling down our troubles, in my opinion, it comes to a head on three major points: funding, scope, and time. Long time readers (or those trawling through the archives) of my dissertations will note that I mention funding, money and the lack of it a lot. Even to me, it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. However, its still the number one factor and issue with our progress. Our boss man has been self-funding the Origins development out of his own pocket for the better part of a decade. A decent chunk of his paycheck from another job went towards servers, licenses, websites and other overhead during the long development of Origins. Basically all of us developers and artists working on Origins were doing so without pay of any kind. We continued to work on Origins because we believed so strongly in it, and with the hope that once 'it made it' that we would be compensated for all our years of work and labor we've poured into it. However, this lack of money was a huge hindrance in every sense imaginable. Without money we were less important to software companies whos support would have been crucial to Origin's development, and thus were often not given the time of day, or were given cursory promises that never panned out because they ignored or dismissed us. Without money to pay all of us developers, we had an atrocious turnover which resulted in loss of work, loss of experience, loss of time and the loss of professional or veteran labor help. People need to pay rent, and people need to eat. Being a developer on Origins would help with neither of those in the short term, sad as that may be. Even some of our most stringent and diehard coworkers who in better times would've stayed on and continued their work had to walk away because they needed to dedicate themselves fully to a paying job. Acquiring investors was a huge hurdle, because while most were very enthused and supportive of our goals, vision and work, they would not commit to investing capital into us until we were further progressed. The ironic thing is that we needed the funding to be further progressed. Crowdfunding was an option, and one we were openly exploring for a long time, but with some of the formats being a zero-sum setup – requiring you to meet your funding goal or no funds at all, and with all of our efforts to court investors directly, we lost out on our attempts at that path. The few investors who were actually willing to put money down, wanted to do so with draconian contract terms and stipulations. Smaller amounts than what we needed, for a massive controlling stake and nullification of the shares that us developers accrued over our time working on Origins up to that point. A devils bargain by any definition methinks, and one we had to refuse.

The scope was another major point of consternation. An MMORPG is an audacious undertaking by any imagination. A first-time indie developer studio made MMORPG was downright Sisyphean in scope. All of our major pillars added to that challenge: massive open world with no instances and tens if not hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. An active combat system with projectiles, spells, dodging and quick fluid movement. A level-less character progression system. A player building system for structures of all sorts. An elaborate crafting system integrated into all of the above. All of these pillars, and the game genre itself was a massive challenge. We were put to the task and did the best that we could but as of right now, it has the best of us. Tying back to my first point, funding would go a long way to blasting through this roadblock, but again, the size of the scope makes gaining that funding a challenge all on its own. Additionally, though we are something like 70-80% complete on those pillars, the last bits would be fairly tough all on their own and as I've said before, generating all of the additional content within the world supported by those pillars would take just as much time and labor as creating the systems did. Were Burning Dog an already established studio, with a revenue stream, a full time team of developers and several titles under their collective belts, such a scope would be much more feasible and could have been accomplished in a much shorter timeframe.

Time has also played a huge factor in why we've decided to suspend our development. Origins of Malu was first conceptualized and pre-produced about a decade ago. Looking back to that time, roughly 2006ish, it would have been a novel and groundbreaking game. All the pillars of the development I described above hadn't really been put together that much in the gaming scene. Had it dropped into the market right then and there I imagine it would have done quite well, even with some faults. Every delay, every lost labor, every change wrought by our other problems and issues though, added to the clock of development. As time progressed other studios and companies realized the potential of the pillars (not from us, but just from seeing the gaming trends in general) and started development on their own versions. The open world survival games, the bulk of the sandbox genre, the active combat MMORPGs, they've all been produced on a large scale and there is a glut of them in the market. What would have been new or unique 10 years ago is old hat now. What could have attracted additional support and funds had we been where we are now, 5 years ago, is trite and mundane. What we could put out a few years ago would have been enough, but as time goes on, you have to develop more perfectly and flawlessly a game, otherwise you are just running with the pack and have nothing to stand out with. I still feel our combination of these game mechanics, aesthetics and IP would have been unique enough to warrant a decent go of it, but business ventures feel otherwise.

Not all is doom and gloom, however. Origins may be on ice, but it is not yet dead. The work, assets and labor poured into it are still there. Technically we do have a working game, as evidenced by the players of our Early Access, but it is not the game we want to bring to the world, nor would it be at that level in the near foreseeable future. On the subject of Burning Dog, we will still exist as a studio and will still be doing game development. We just have to change tactics and scope way down. Produce smaller, more limited games, get some revenue, get a solid paid workforce, get some heft to the studio and in time, revisit Origins and see what we can do. We've attempted something like this in the past, but we never stopped our Origins development. This was another mistake. By working on Origins and on side projects our attention and limited resources were further strained and diffused, made far less effective if directed towards a singular goal and project. We didn't have it in our hearts to stop developing for Origins. We've reached a point where it just simply has to happen though, and so we'll being going after these newer smaller scope projects with the same fervor we had for Origins. We have assets, code and experience with development behind us, and with a far narrower development, I feel we can put out some decent, enjoyable, quality games that can help get us on solid footing. Additionally we do have some investment potential on the horizon, though ironically or not, it isn't for developing a game, but a piece of software. You take what you can get though, especially when it can lead to paycheck and continued development on your passion piece.

I and the rest of the Burning Dog team are deeply and sincerely grateful for all the support we've had from fans and players over the years of development. It is my hope that we can be as quick in developing other titles and as successful as we can in those endeavors to get back to Origins as fast as possible, for us and for you. The status of our current Early Access will be addressed by our boss in his own statement, as will any further details on our future work. Thank you all again for your love and support, through all of our adversity and trials, with luck and hard work, I hope to have better news very soon.

Respectfully,
Virgil Davis &
Origins of Malu Team

TK Update

We have a couple things we are working on in the backend, we also conferring with Steam to get some details sorted. The servers will remain up for now.

A couple options
- back to crowd funding
- Go F2P right now as is (not ready yet)
- Wait for talks with investors


Since things are as stated above we felt it best to suspend sales in the short term.

if you purchased this game in the last 6 month, you can contact myself at support@burningdog.com.

More to come,
TK

Greetings everyone, below you'll find a short list of some of the changes and improvements we have made to Malu in today's patch. It isn't as much or as extensive as we would hope, but that is almost always the case right? Without further adieu lets get into it:

Build improvements

Shaders and lighting caches were rebuilt and regenerated, this should mean less odd shadows or baked-on dark patches where things were altered in the environment.

Worldspaces updated and improved. Worldspaces are the actual 'tiles' of terrain and they are all stitched together like a quilt. We just went through and fixed a bunch of bad tiles and metadata associated with them, given the size of the world of Malu, its not likely that you have run across a bad WSpace, but it could still have affected performance, no longer.

Merchant system upgrades and populating. We are now building race and type specific merchants and their inventories. This will mean that you won't have Qulinta armors being sold on a Toljon encampment's potion merchant, for example. Each merchant as a table of item codes for what they carry, how much, the cost and when it is replenished, we are now in the process of making new merchants and giving them these unique tables of items.

Various errors fixed or noted. There were and are a lot of general and random errors within the build its self and as with every patch we try to find, understand, and solve as many faults, errors and bugs as possible. This patch has those fixes as well, and in cases where we couldn't figure out a fix just yet, we've noted errors for later fixing. Keep reporting anything you find though, its always good to have more eyes on a system.

In-game systems and functionality

Quest system upgrades and improvements. Still very much a work in progress, but nearly every aspect of questing has been targeted for overhaul and expansion. Quest givers, quest building, quest components and even quest logs have been looked at and an initial pass has been completed in this patch for those systems. Expect further enhancements and increased functionality as we bring more manpower and time to bear on this very important system.

Malu coin system prototyping. Malu coin is the placeholder for our in-game currency as a free-to-play system for real money transactions (RMT). We're in the middle of initial testing and implementation of them, and setting up the back-end to support them. Things like making sure each transaction is logged, currency exchanged properly, content delivered to the customer as ordered and safety measures put into place to protect both us, and our players from any problems, hiccups or malfeasance. Given how important this system is, it will likely see extensive testing and validation (which means further patch updates for a long-term period) before we make it a full-on live feature.

Mini-map and GUI improvements. Regarding the mini-map we are bringing to bear quality of life improvements in terms of information feedback. Things like differing colors and symbols to denote the various entities and landmarks in the world around you the player. The GUI improvements are more generalized, and encompass things such as better button shapes, colors, placement and information feedback like showing what is selected or not, moving through lists, and tooltips or item descriptions. This transits nicely into the next improvement which is the inventory system, which involves a lot of the GUI improvements, as well as scripting fixes and optimizations to make inventory and inventory management an easier and smoother experience.

In-game assets

We've created from scratch, improved, or transplanted from our UE4 build various assets into our BW build. These include the Boba, Thorn and Twisted trees as well as several revamped grass textures for the flora generation system. A few particle FX were also added and enhanced and several static assets already placed in the world have received some minor tweaking of shape, polycount, texture or material to generally improve them.

Finally we've had some world building passes. Specifically the Jolah areas got some extra attention to beautification with additional meshes, NPCs, spawners and terrain formations. At the same time the Swamp area continues to be populated with a similar list of assets as we build it up to the same level as our starter areas. Expect further swamp updates as that work continues on.

Thats about it for this patch, again, not as much as we'd like, but given the amount of things to do keeps growing, its good to get patches out often, and get feedback on what you have, than to wait too long and change too much at once, in my opinion. News of the next patch will be along presently, as it becomes available, it will be pushed to the forums as soon as possible. For now, enjoy the changes we have now, and please give us feedback as you go out into the world of Malu! We strive for constant improvement and your input is invaluable to that improvement process! Have fun out there people!

Respecfully,
Stormtempter

--- BEGIN TK ---

We are working on release dates on fourms, this information should be fairly soon. We are not moving as fast as we would like but we have brought new people back on the team and we are slowly speeding up production as well.

--- END TK ---

Greetings everyone, below you'll find a short list of some of the changes and improvements we have made to Malu in today's patch. It isn't as much or as extensive as we would hope, but that is almost always the case right? Without further adieu lets get into it:

Build improvements

Shaders and lighting caches were rebuilt and regenerated, this should mean less odd shadows or baked-on dark patches where things were altered in the environment.

Worldspaces updated and improved. Worldspaces are the actual 'tiles' of terrain and they are all stitched together like a quilt. We just went through and fixed a bunch of bad tiles and metadata associated with them, given the size of the world of Malu, its not likely that you have run across a bad WSpace, but it could still have affected performance, no longer.

Merchant system upgrades and populating. We are now building race and type specific merchants and their inventories. This will mean that you won't have Qulinta armors being sold on a Toljon encampment's potion merchant, for example. Each merchant as a table of item codes for what they carry, how much, the cost and when it is replenished, we are now in the process of making new merchants and giving them these unique tables of items.

Various errors fixed or noted. There were and are a lot of general and random errors within the build its self and as with every patch we try to find, understand, and solve as many faults, errors and bugs as possible. This patch has those fixes as well, and in cases where we couldn't figure out a fix just yet, we've noted errors for later fixing. Keep reporting anything you find though, its always good to have more eyes on a system.

In-game systems and functionality

Quest system upgrades and improvements. Still very much a work in progress, but nearly every aspect of questing has been targeted for overhaul and expansion. Quest givers, quest building, quest components and even quest logs have been looked at and an initial pass has been completed in this patch for those systems. Expect further enhancements and increased functionality as we bring more manpower and time to bear on this very important system.

Malu coin system prototyping. Malu coin is the placeholder for our in-game currency as a free-to-play system for real money transactions (RMT). We're in the middle of initial testing and implementation of them, and setting up the back-end to support them. Things like making sure each transaction is logged, currency exchanged properly, content delivered to the customer as ordered and safety measures put into place to protect both us, and our players from any problems, hiccups or malfeasance. Given how important this system is, it will likely see extensive testing and validation (which means further patch updates for a long-term period) before we make it a full-on live feature.

Mini-map and GUI improvements. Regarding the mini-map we are bringing to bear quality of life improvements in terms of information feedback. Things like differing colors and symbols to denote the various entities and landmarks in the world around you the player. The GUI improvements are more generalized, and encompass things such as better button shapes, colors, placement and information feedback like showing what is selected or not, moving through lists, and tooltips or item descriptions. This transits nicely into the next improvement which is the inventory system, which involves a lot of the GUI improvements, as well as scripting fixes and optimizations to make inventory and inventory management an easier and smoother experience.

In-game assets

We've created from scratch, improved, or transplanted from our UE4 build various assets into our BW build. These include the Boba, Thorn and Twisted trees as well as several revamped grass textures for the flora generation system. A few particle FX were also added and enhanced and several static assets already placed in the world have received some minor tweaking of shape, polycount, texture or material to generally improve them.

Finally we've had some world building passes. Specifically the Jolah areas got some extra attention to beautification with additional meshes, NPCs, spawners and terrain formations. At the same time the Swamp area continues to be populated with a similar list of assets as we build it up to the same level as our starter areas. Expect further swamp updates as that work continues on.

Thats about it for this patch, again, not as much as we'd like, but given the amount of things to do keeps growing, its good to get patches out often, and get feedback on what you have, than to wait too long and change too much at once, in my opinion. News of the next patch will be along presently, as it becomes available, it will be pushed to the forums as soon as possible. For now, enjoy the changes we have now, and please give us feedback as you go out into the world of Malu! We strive for constant improvement and your input is invaluable to that improvement process! Have fun out there people!

Respecfully,
Stormtempter

--- BEGIN TK ---

We are working on release dates on fourms, this information should be fairly soon. We are not moving as fast as we would like but we have brought new people back on the team and we are slowly speeding up production as well.

--- END TK ---

Targets and Tribulations

Over the next couple of months, we will working hard to transform the MMO version of Origins of Malu to an exciting F2P sandbox. This will involve improvement in many different areas. We will also continue to push out small patches as well to restore the systems to their proper glory!

Jan 19th, 2016 minor patch and Current State

• AI is currently being fixed as combat is wonky right now and not where we want it, though we have many different systems in place we are resolving issues from a previous migration
  
• Art is being updated and don't except any miracles here but we do have series of improvements planned that will start to be implemented right away
  
• New character will now start with 2000 credits rather 100 credits
  
• The tier one player housing system pieces from the merchants have been reduced in price to 1 credit per piece
  
• Spawning has come a long way and we will continue to improve it that's to the hard work and is starting to take shape. This is one of the larger issues as when you land you need to kill in order to gain skill XP and also sell the loot to earn some money.
  
• The economy is basic right now
  
• You can build almost anywhere in the world soon we will post some more detailed information on the building systems
  
• We are close to getting there how ever it will take some time and some serious work.
  
• All races have access to tier 1 abilities
  
• Base stats and Armor are currently working
  
• Weapons are equitable however some stat bugs
  
• Weather systems are currently working however there are some minor transition issues
  
• Points of interest exist but there are scatter far and few in a very very large world
  

• I (TK) have a habit of being to overly optimistic we are still a very small development team with limited resources, we will be recruiting and we have a couple other streams of business development going on under the hood but we want and have to do this our way. So we will do our best to keep in touch and be honest about were we are at.
  
• We will be doing wipes but we will try our best to announce when we do them
  

• We will enhance and resolve a lot of the combat issues
  [LIST]
  
• Speed of combat
  
• Physics of projectiles
  

Well shhhhheeeettt ;)
It has been a busy holidays and as we look forward to the new year things will be busy and our aim is to improve upon our efforts of the previous year. So grab some popcorn and sit back and enjoy.

The Sandbox MMO

We are going to launch our Big world MMO as pure free to play on steam, this will be happening in a staged manner over the next couple months. We have to fix up the world and solve some of the issues that we have left our. We will be updating our Trello site and for the people who have invested into our early access please feel free to add your own issues and experiences here: https://trello.com/b/ndD1aCG6/early-access-roadmap

We will drop the price of our early access when we have things sorted out, so until then the folks who bought early will get a special treat and some nice rewards. We will announce these soon we are just finalizing some details and to be very honest we have been setting things up and getting the machine in a proper state

Long story short, give a week or two and things should be running smoothly and we can get back to features on the MMO.

The Mobile Game

• Everything we have developed in UE4 is going mobile, we are putting together a top down story based action shooter, we are in the design phase and more information will be announced soon.
  
• We have mostly an independent teams working on the mobile and MMO, due to a couple factions, for the most part we are not splitting our reasons unwisely
  
• Targeted platforms are for IOS and Android and we have begun testing on devices to ensure we have get a smooth frame rate and early testing has been very positive
  

• We are working on the new forums, it will take some time but slowly should improve to where it used to be.
  
• The updates are going to come here first and then aggregated out other sources
  
• Give us some time with this as stabilizing the MMO is our first priority
  

• We have been and continue to work with investors to find a solution to our labor pool and resources, we have other plans but we are moving forward as we are going at this alone.
  
• We have been working with groups and different companies for the last couple of months which is has been partially the reason for our silence.
  

We are reverting to our full sandbox version of the engine (Big World), what does this mean? I will try to keep it short.

So here is a little history lesson of how we ended up here....

History

• We started development in HE (A long time ago)
  
• We realized as great as HE was, it did not fall in lines with the goals we had so we moved to Big World
  
• We spent a long time developing and then War Gaming purchased BW and the future became unclear (There are a lot of reasons and history here to which we will not go into)
  
• We lost a tonne of resources and we were left with a skeleton team and we needed a smaller scope and a more indie main stream engine
  
• We decided to map the PVP battleground idea and then with funding move to the PVP battleground to a MMO direction slowly
  
• We were wrong…
  
• We jumped to trying to make a the MMO with Unreal 4 to try to fix this and we have had some reasonable success but it will take alot more work.
  
• We have been and still are working with investors for funding but we have realized we can not wait and be dependent on the outcome as to properly make UE4 a MMO engine will require more resources then we have and more time.
  
• So our timelines have been slow and we have been working hard to try to bring the MMO as fast as we can on a limited budget (To be frank, we have barely sold any copies because we froze all our promo when we realized we were wrong.)
  

• Player housing (Fully working)
  
• Loot
  
• The full world of Malu (Swamps / Wastes / Plains / Deep Forests / Etc)
  
• All creature’s in
  
• Progression
  
• Etc lots more
  

• We are in the process of configuring the engine for steam, this should be live to people who purchased early access with a week or two, no longer.
  
• There OSX and Linux versions are a little far off in the future, if you purchased early and can not refund, we will setup a section in members only in the next couple of days and make sure to make it right.
  
• For the people who purchased this up to this announcement (We have a Top Down Mobile action game in development that they will receive for free)
  

• The Steam store page will be update this week to reflect the engine change.
  
• Once things are stable with the new engine, we will change our pricing model as we are going to go F2P, (Don't worry no pay to win)
  
• Proper forums will be popping back up again very soon as well
  
• We are also have a mobile game (Top down action) in the pipeline that will be available to all who purchased early access (More details coming in the next month or two)
  

We know you have been super patiently waiting on news from our camp here and updates have been thin. We are about to change gears a bit and we are testing a couple of things. The servers will be down a couple days while we sort out some of these issues. This post is vague but we are working on a larger one as I mentioned last week. We are not dead and we have some changes to our model that will be implementing sooner rather then later. I hope to have our update (Announcement only) out before or on December 13th, 2015.

Thank you for your continued support,
TK

** Changed the date to Sunday, as we are working on the announcement

Hello Folks,

We have a large update coming in about (1) month. This will be a rather large update. We are super busy in the background preparing and look forward to sharing soon.

A couple preview highlights:
- Content comes along
- Further GUI fixes (Major Overhaul, almost done now)
- Skill Progression system
- Better housing and placing systems
- Massive back end changes
- large announcement concerning our status
- New Store page ( content / screenshots / videos )

So we know its been quiet but you will love this patch as we inch closer to our final goal!

Cheers,
TK

Patch Notes

This is not a full list as the list spans hundreds of lines of small changes and enhancements and clean up.

• Fixed spam array warnings
  
• Error checking added to GUI’s
  
• Clean up of quest icons not affected by lighting
  
• Stopped Twitching effect when sprinting on 0 energy
  
• Fixed GUI tracked quest issue
  
• Toljon Male – Melee updates
  
• Energy Loot drop fixes
  
• Consumable explode hit particles added
  
• fixed damage number events for beam effects
  
• Adjustments to how the character loads into the world (note this is a issue in progress)
  
• Fixed bug for inventory window with key press
  
• Fixed moving backwards rotation
  
• Added the Jolah dragon staff
  
• Intractable where floating sometimes, this has been fixed
  
• Combat idles and Toljon Blade directions have been fixed
  
• Particles for clear mind added
  
• Character network improvements
  
• Fixed capsules on intractable objects
  
• Crosshair adjustments
  
• Speed of projectiles adjustments
  
• Fixed projectiles homing issues in terms of distance
  
• Fixed an issue with the inventory thinking that the merchant window is open
  
• Fixed the quantity popup window not closing when the main window is closed
  
• Added adjustments to particle materials
  
• Fixed water bottle quest
  
• Range added to loot
  
• Can no longer target NPC actors
  
• Fixed layering issue with quest windows
  
• Jolah female animations update
  
• Testing Merchants – Coming soon
  
• Major wastes changes and adjustments
  
• Character sheets and paper dolls are currently only prototype and very not presentable but changes are coming and GUI’s should be sorted out very soon.
  
• Added wind particle barrier
  
• Adjustments to damage co-efficient as stats are coming in soon
  
• Crafting window work
  
• VR testing
  
• Much more, we will get some one to help us document and communicate these patch notes very soon.
  

Good afternoon,

I think it is about time we drop another update to the folks out there who have been following this little project. We are going to release another rather large patch here targeted for September 25th, 2015.

So whats new?

• Further refinement of mounts (well one currently available mount
  
• Many bug fixes across the board (We will be sure to update the patch notes when we push the build
  
• We are doing some adjustments on the backend server infrastructure and we are excited this will bring some performance and stability enhancements.
  
• Adjustments and enhancements to the player building system - This system is very much experimental right now.
  
• A lot of new GUI's across the board, they may not be fine tuned by that time but will be shortly after.
  
• Weapons (Caster based), Melee weapons are close behind but require some more work
  
• More content continuing to open up and we prepare for the upcoming escape zeta.
  
• Character stats / Equipment Stats
  
• More gear
  
• We have upgrade our core engine to the newest version of there platform
  
• Initial testing with VR and its looking sweet, one thing to note VR is not planned for later in the Early Access pipeline but we did have a little time to test it and start thinking about it
  
• If things go well a OSX and Linux client may come in that time frame ;)
  

• We have been working on some partnerships over the last couple of months that may possible make all our goals and hopes come true. Stay tuned as it is too early to tell but we are VERY VERY excited about it.
  
• We plan on updating the Steam store page over the next 2 weeks tor reflect what is current so look forward to some new screenshots and promo items.
  
• We are working on a FREE..... demo for our game for the folks to get a perspective on the game before they buy, we are almost there. There will be a twist though and I think people will enjoy this, and in the end it will benefit the people who purchased game already first. (More details to come but its going to be cool)
  
• After we have made it these milestones we will open our keys to the press again and streamers for reviews and what not as we are approaching where we should have been..
  
• One more note, we have started to work on basic crafting and we will be posting some press on that fairly soon as well.
  

Bender 1.0

We have been very busy on the backend and working hard to bring out more features and continue to polish the game. We are getting closer but we are far from done yet. The good thing is over the next couple weeks you should see a lot of changes coming and new features to prototype and test out. The below is not the full patch notes but a summary of the larger items. We are solving some of the server issues we have been seeing and over the next couple days things should stabilize.

Game General Notes

• Many performance enhancements
  
• Quality settings is currently being refactored and is in testing
  
• Steam is integrated now; your account is now attached to your steam account there is no longer the option to create an account. This will change later on as we add other platforms but for now steam is the only way.
  
• GUI’s are underdevelopment and subject to a massive overhaul
  
• Paper doll is currently missing and will added when the new system in brought in
  
• Housing is in a very prototype stage and very experimental and is also currently has not interface. This system will expand and is no where near close to its final implementation but we figured we would let you play with it.
  
• Basic quest system is currently implemented as well, same as above experimental and subject to massive changes
  
• Loot is currently in and once again is experimental and subject to change
  
• We have added a mini cave area into the mountains
  
• There may or may not be a mount quest in there…. Currently only working for the Jolah Male
  
• Inventory adjustments
  
• Improved flora system
  
• Increased base energy
  
• Increased base health
  
• NPC Dialogues starting to make their way in
  
• New particle effects for many spells
  

• Mac and Linux client, its coming and won’t be long now
  
• Improved quest system
  
• Improved mini-map
  
• World map Implementation
  
• Ability system and ability progression
  
• Prototype crafting system
  
• So much more.
  

Good evening,

Busy day here, yup so here is where we are at today. We are setting things up for the next patch, the servers will be down one more day. We have a couple last minute issues that we found that impacting gameplay, We should have this sorted out by tomorrow.

Cheers,
TK

We have to update and test alot of things, the servers will be down most of the day, we will report back once it is live. Full patch notes will follow.

Cheers,
TK

So whats going on?

We have had a busy last couple of months and we are working hard on providing the baseline version that everyone expects from the early access version of Factions: Origins of Malu. Things are moving along nicely despite our less then desirable circumstances.

We have been very busying getting this to up to spec and we are pleased that we have made some major strides here. We have not pushed a new build in a bit because our focus is to deliver the initial content in August.

Road map Link: Click here for Trello Road map

Bender Patch Target August 22th, 2015 – 9:00 AM (MST)

The Brass Tax

We have been working hard in the background developing and getting ready to bring the goodness of Malu that our community has been waiting for. We have been slowed down more than we would have liked and so some updates have been pushed a little back. Going to be honest here it is going to take us a little more time than we hoped however we will be sure to keep pushing updates and communicating our progress.

Progress
We have made our main develop branch live due to us switching our systems from the BG to the Zeta Scenario that community will need to solve to leave the moon and travel to Malu. There are some clues in the world right now and more on there way. Quests are not far behind we hope to get them in sooner rather than later.

Highlights
- Core engine updates and upgrades
- Too many to list (If you really want it, we can post it)
- Performance Improvements - %30 Improvement across the board
- New abilities being readied to be brought in for testing.
- Lore objects have been continued to be added into the engine preparing for the leave of Zeta to Malu.

Timeline
We aiming for the 1-2 months to get the remaining systems in and back into the fold, unless we are able to acquire more resources for development and get this baby back into proper ear. Remember we are a small indie with very limited resources and until we can people in a full time capacity we have to deal with this most unfavorable circumstances.

Target Scope
- Quests
- Loot
- Lore Content
- Zeta Storyline
- All AI Functioning
- Finalized integration with Steam Accounts

Why so slow, well and I feel like a broken record, we lost a key Dev to which cause a massive delay in our ability to push out changes. We are a team of about 10-20 people which few are Devs. We are still working on fixing these issues but it will not be fixed until we get a proper marketed release or have secured funding to do. That is the cold hard reality that we are living in and our hands are tied, we could just throw up our arms and quit but we are behind this idea and 99% of our issues have been not able to secure full time dedicated resources due to funding.

Something Extra
Over the course of the next month, we will putting out an Art book and Official Soundtrack to the paid folks a little treat while people to appreciate the world. For the people that have stuck with us and patiently waited and supported, I can say that a special armor set will be available for you once we hit this milestone and will only be available for the people have stuck by us.

Price Changes
Once we are ready to get back to marketing and the baseline criterea is met we will annouce 2 new price tiers. For now please do not purchase unless you want to support the team.

Reviewers Waiting
We are currently no accepting any press keys at this time (it is in a cue and once the game is ready for review will accept it.)

So there you have it, we will are here working away and within the next couple of weeks, we will be back to update on progress.

*Side note, we are very happy steam is offering refunds for people who buy this title without reading as they can get there refund back.

Thank you for your support,
TK