Very Sad News
Saura, 22 minutes ago, edited
It is my sad privilege to notify you all that Chris known by most of you as Hawkwing, HW, Penguin Feather, among other names through out his ORKFiAN career has passed away.
He was involved in car accident two nights ago while driving through St. Louis en route to his Family home in Raymore Missouri from Flordia.
He was critically injured in the crash, leaving him in pretty bad shape, but after tests this morning it was determined that there is no brain activity.
Funeral services have not yet been announced but I will let you all know more as I am updated. Please keep him, his friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
—————————————-
On a personal note, I know this post seems kind of void of emotion…I don’t deal with death well. Please forgive me that but, being as close to him as I was I know he would want you all to know what happened.Merry Part my dear friend…you will be missed
That is what is known at this point.
R.I.P Hawkwing.
I wish to pay him some type of tribute, my idea is to either create a new race Hawks with Hawkwing as elite unit or something like that, if anyone else has a better idea how to pay tribute and to have something to remember him of please get in touch.
~A sad Acwder
Interview – Sebulba
Hello there, today Im happy to bring you all a interview with one of the new Law & Order members in Alliances at War, Sebulba.
Q. What do you do for a living?
A. Im a IT tech/consultant
Q. What is your Orkfian history?
A. Started playing 2001 with OG, then after that played in Final Countdown and NWG. Stopped playing 2004/2005. Came back in 2007 and played in French pansys, [XNOX], Olympus Gods (was elder) and finally OG again teaming up with my old pal OrigenX from the old days.
Q. What do you consider being your biggest achievement in Orkfia?
A. Helping my elder out in making OG a great alliance again and becoming number 1, also having the biggest alliance ever at 146k until the record was taken from us by Death Note
Q. Explain your new role in Alliances at Wars Law & Order
A. My role is to bring some activity to L&O and stop the cheaters from cheating.
Q. What is the biggest issue you’ve faced so far as a L & O member?
A. I had to deal with someone who had 3 accounts, and turned one of those accounts into a landfarm before deleting. The last account he had got a suspension.
Q. Do you have any message to the players at Alliances at War?
A. Play within the rules, otherwise you will have me breathing down your neck (unless you like that type of thing 
)
Sebulba:
- Age: 21
- Country: UK at present, hopefully Australia again soon
- Sex: Male
- Ages played: Too many too count if i include the old days
Five Quick Questions:
- IRL or Internet
- IRC or MSN
- Attacker or T/M
- Download or Buying
- Graphical or Textbased
Q. Anything else you want to share?
A. Does anyone remember the wombats? I have asked so many people.
Id like to thank Sebulba for taking part in this interview.
Cheers
~Acwder
The History of Orkfia (Part III)
During this period in ORKFiA as more players became inactive, those remaining began to merge together to form new alliances from the embers of their former glory.
One such alliance was CORE which was made up of players from several former top alliances. Martel was one of these players. He had joined ORKFiA originally after hearing about it through his friends at school in Sweden and had played in many alliances before finally settling with fellow old timers Airro, VC, Wheelie amongst others to create CORE.
Describing that period in the game Martel said “it frustrated me a lot, bugs ruined my age several times”. Despite Martel’s obvious love of the game, at this time he was not involved with staff and hardly knew Skathen or fRoSt. He was an active member of the player community however and spent a lot of time in the #orkfia IRC channel.
After each age change he took it upon himself to create a printable guide so that people could compare the races more easily and a lot of players relied upon Martel for this.
Earlier in 2002 American player Scarlo had joined ORKFiA at the invitation of his younger brothers. Scarlo had not really expected to find much fun in a text based game but found he was pleasantly surprised. Rather than playing ORKFiA just to have a connection with his brothers who lived two thousand miles away he found the game stood up on it’s own merits.
He became an avid player and an active member of the community surrounding the game. After playing a few ages he was recruited by CORE and after the initial settling period that all new alliances go through. Scarlo and Martel emerged as co-workers, they worked together as the active elders of the alliance teaming up to devise strategies for the alliance in war and peace time.
Their partnership continued into staff as both Martel and Scarlo were invited to become staff of ORKFiA. Game Admin fRoSt had realised he needed to organise the staffing of the game so he set up divisions of moderators called resorts. He recruited a leader of each resort and those leaders in turn recruited extra staff to help them.
Martel had not initially been a popular choice for staff it seems, as after fRoSt initially approached him to invite him into staff, someone must have disagreed with the choice as Martel’s invitation was withdrawn. Martel still does not know to this day why this was or who had objected but it didn’t really matter as soon enough he was invited again to work in two of the staff resorts.
Over time Martel found himself more and more involved in the day to day running of the game and as fRoSt took even more of a backseat in ORKFiA things took a natural progression as Martel was made a co-Admin.
Martel was still supported by his friend Scarlo amongst others but he was finding it difficult to keep up with improving the game code, developing race changes, fixing bugs and of course resetting the ages.
At this point the idea for losing the age resets came up as players were unhappy with waiting a week for the game to restart every six weeks or so, it was reasoned that with no age resets this could free up time for actually improving the game rather than just maintaining it at the same time as providing more fun for players, and killing two birds with one stone… “ORKFiA Infinity” was born.
Infinity went live to players in August 2006 and whilst some loved the idea of no boring “inbetween ages time”, others longed for the ORKFiA of old with the excitement of beginning a new round and the bloodbaths that ensued to get to the top of the rankings at the end of age.
What remained of ORKFiA’s players began to divide into two camps – those for Infinity and those who preferred the original ORKFiA.
Scarlo had continued supporting Martel as an active staff member but the game was being taken in a direction he just didn’t agree with and he felt his concerns were not heard. Around the time Infinity began, Scarlo who at that time was Head of Marketing, deleted his staff and player accounts and left the game along with the Head of Development Airro.
A few months later Scarlo returned to see how things had turned out and decided to give Infinity a fair chance, he created a new player account and soon his alliance was dominating ORKFiA.
Despite holding the number one ranking he and his alli mates yearned for “old” ORKFiA and made the decision to quit.
After talking with a number of the old players Scarlo realised he was one of many who preferred the game style of the original ORKFiA and he began trying to think of ways to bring it back – if this version of ORKFiA was not prepared to change then the only solution was to get another version online.
Scarlo did not have coding knowledge himself but he knew there had been a past Admin named Natix who may be able to help, the trouble was that Natix had quit the game and disappeared from orkfia sometime in 2003 around the era when the game had begun haemorraging players.
Natix was a professional programmer who had been involved with ORKFiA throughout much of it’s history as a coder/Admin working in the background, he had even hosted ORKFiA in the beginning for a short time when ORKFiA had been kicked off sourceforge due to being too “resource intensive”.
In 2003 Skathen and Frost had given Natix the task of re-writing the code of ORKFiA as the buggy old code was to blame for a lot of the crashes within the game since it had not been designed to serve so many players. Natix had taken the task of the so called “ORKFiA 2″ and used many hours of coding time on it but unfortunately that version was never completed as, in Natix’s own words it was “too little, too late”. When the majority of his friends left the game in 2003 he too got bored with ORKFiA and quit.
Scarlo knew that even if Natix was not interested in ORKFiA at all anymore, he at least had a copy of the code which would be a start, so he decided the best hope original ORKFiA had was if Natix could be found. The trouble was that the only contact anyone had for Natix was an old email address which they were not sure if he even still accessed.
Call it fate or luck but even though Natix usually could go for months without checking his old MSN account, within a week of Scarlo’s call for help Natix read the request and got back in touch with Scarlo.
They spent many hours catching up over the following days and it turned out Natix is now a senior programmer in his native Canada and runs his own consulting company.
After hearing what Scarlo had to say Natix felt he wanted to help, with his coding knowledge having improved since his last foray into the ORKFiA code he decided a programming language called Python would be the best to use for the new “old” ORKFiA and he began the task of coding the game from scratch.
The new partnership named this version of the game “ORKFiA Origin” and set up a forum at the beginning of this month so that players, old and new could discuss ideas for the direction of the game.
As with Infinity there are no clear cut answers and everyone wants different things for the game but it certainly sounds promising.
And so we are up to date on the history of ORKFiA. Whilst there have been peaks and troughs in the game’s popularity, the community have always managed to keep the game alive. We are all involved and all responsible for the future of ORKFiA.
Whilst Martel and his team of staff in Infinity are striving to keep ORKFiA moving in a new direction, his past cohort Scarlo is separately breathing new life into the ORKFiA so many knew and loved.
Whichever style you prefer, the choice will soon be there for all of us, as players of this game things are only getting better as we move into the future of ORKFiA.
~ By Jamzi ~
This was the last part in a serie of three where Jamzi described the ORKFiAn History up to the point of Aug 28 2007, next I’ll try to write down whats happened since then.
Stay tuned for Part IV.
History of ORKFiA (Part II)
As MoDo and C4lv1n left the game, the reins fell to two other dedicated players Wish and Reaver. The pair had their work cut out as the code was very buggy and there were multis springing up everywhere bringing the game into disrepute.
It was a fight against time trying to delete the multis and keep some modicum of fairness in the game to prevent the regular players from becoming too disillusioned and quitting.
The community was still going strong though and the two admins vowed to fight against the cheaters and whilst Reaver continued fixing the code Wish was in charge of finding multi’s.
Wish was successful in finding multis but unfortunately for him he wasn’t pleased with what he found… Reaver was one of the players cheating.
This was a massive blow to the community to discover someone who they trusted could abuse his power and Reaver was removed from the game never to be heard of again. Wish was left on his own to tend to ORKFiA.
At this point a very active player volunteered to help Wish out. Australian Skathen worked in IT and had PHP coding skills which he offered forward. Skathen had been playing for some time already and didn’t want to see the game crumble.
Wish accepted his offer and Skathen began coding the next day. After less than a month Skathen became Admin and began becoming more active as the face of ORKFiA.
Wish was not around very long and within an age he lost interest in ORKFiA as he became busy elsewhere, thus Skathen became the sole Admin of ORKFiA for 2 ages following..
Around Beta 3 he called on long time trusted friend fRoSt and another experienced player Bekkar to help him in running ORKFiA.
fRoSt has continued to maintain the server from his native Germany to this day.
Editorial note: this was up to 2007
This was the core team for a few years although further additions in the Admin and mod team came and went as each age passed.
ORKFiA was more and more owned by it’s community as so many of them got involved.
In 2003 active tribes in the game were thought to be around 2300 (figure quoted taken from an interview with Admin Vince in May 2003). Another former staff member, DamadMoo put the figure around 3200 at ORKFiA’s peak.
People were recommending the game to their friends, it may not have had sophisticated graphics or be able to rival the latest console/PC games but the thing that was important was the community feeling in the game. This was ORKFiA’s main drawing point and what made it stand above other games.
Although that appeared to be the heyday of ORKFiA it was by no means perfect. Just like now there were plenty of heated arguments amongst players and staff always. The passion for the game was high, but like all flames it started to burn out for one reason or another and the player base began to drop again.
Where there had been consistency for so long, staff members were changing rapidly, bugs seemed to crop up everywhere.
Age resets due to bug issues were becoming common and players started leaving faster than new ones were joining. The staff in the game, including Skathen, fRoSt and Bekkar became less and less active.
Again speculation abounded as to whether ORKFiA could survive…
To be continued..
~ By Jamzi ~
Editorial note: This article was first posted aug 18 2007.
The History of ORKFiA… The Stories Behind The Game (Part I)
Hey there, we will here on the portal in a serie of articles try to describe the stories behind the game that became two, the first three articles is written by Jamzi and takes us up to around the part where Scarlo started looking for a way to launch a classic version of ORKFiA.
But lets start from the start and here is part one.
The History of ORKFiA… The Stories Behind The Game (Part I)
ORKFiA has been in the hands of many different people since it’s birth seven years ago and the behind the scenes history of the game is just as dramatic as the goings-on in the game itself.
The idea for ORKFiA came from a successful Utopia player named Kadagar.
Achieving “celebrity” player status in Utopia left him with a thirst for a game faster, more bloodthirsty and more friend orientated than Utopia.
Although the idea was Kadagar’s, creating a game was not something he had all the necessary skills for and so he concluded he needed help in realising his dream.
Through the Utopia player community he met fellow Swede C4lV1N who offered to design the graphical interface and Canadian MoDo who came forward to help with the programming.
With the new partnership formed the three set to work, with Kadagar coming up with the ideas and his two helpers putting them into practice.
MoDo later said their ambition for ORKFiA was “to start a small, personal, community type game. Just a game for serious players to have fun playing without worrying about mass inactives, multis and commercialisation.”
Unfortunately not long after the initial burst of ideas, Kadagar decided to lay down his ORKFiAn dreams and in an unexpected twist he left the game completely to pursue his career as a Ski Instructor.
Meanwhile C4lV1N and MoDo continued to build up ORKFiA. MoDo took on the public-facing role and hosted the server and C4lV1N was in the background learning his coding skills as he went along.
Both men had busy careers in the military and found they spent most of their free time working on bringing ORKFiA to life.
The game started to attract players – not only people who were close friends of the creators but also outside people who had heard rumours of a game faster than Utopia where you had real things to do every four hours instead of every sixteen. In a time when Utopia had tried to put a stop to people choosing which Kingdom they played in, invitations to regroup in ORKFiA, where you could play with your friends again spread like wildfire.
ORKFiA became a victim of it’s own reputation and the game which was intended to only be tested by a small number of close friends and Utopian Kingdom Mates of the three creators suddenly had people flocking (in their fives!) who wanted to try it for themselves.
With an overload of people putting pressure on the server it was becoming instable and slow. Bugs were being found and reported in such numbers that the pair of coders were finding it hard to keep on top of things and the reputation of the game began to drift from “whats hot” to “whats not”.
The duo realised they could not keep up with the demands of ORKFiA and came to the decision to quit.
They didn’t want all their work to be for nothing though and a strong community had already built up around the infant ORKFiA. They decided the right thing to do would be to leave the game to the community by leaving it open source. This meant the code was there, free for the taking, by anyone who cared.
They hoped this would protect their work but still make it possible for someone to help ORKFiA survive. They then left ORKFiA for good.
To be continued..
~ By Jamzi ~
Next part will be posted in a day or two.
Editorial note: This article was first posted Aug 11 2007.
How to: Execute a protection strategy
Hi there
One of the more difficult things for a new player is to do a proper protection, there is alot that could go wrong and the outcome has big impact on how competative your tribe will be. In this article Im going to try and write down the basic way of creating a decent/good strategy for your first 48hours ingame, also called the Protection Period.
First of you will have to decide which race, what class and what kind of main strategy you wanna go for (attacker, mage, thief, explorer). The choices you make here has great impact on how you should go about creating your protection strategy.
The main thing that race pick effects is exploration cost, this has to do with how cheap/expensive your specific basic soldier is, the cheaper the earlier and more acres will you be able to safely explore.
Sage is the one class that makes the most difference for your protection strategy, the extra income can really be a nice boost for your acres and army.
Now regarding if you are going attacker or an exploring mage/thief. Regardless direction you want to gain acres. But while explorers can focus to explore more acres and only train def attackers on the other hand has to get some offence aswell.
There are a few vital moments during a strat, first one is the explore section taking place during the first 24 hours, big misstake newbies do is that they do several small explores, the key is to make one big. The second vital part is the last 8 hours of the protection, here is where you train your basics at update 40 and at update 44 train them into defence (and offence if being an attacker).
Here is a basic strategy:
- Update 0
- Raze: 14 homes, 10 farms and 6 guilds.
- Build: 137 mines.
- Explore: 20 acres.
- Update 4
- Build: 20 homes.
- Update 11
- Train: X amount of basics, explained below.
- Update 15
- Explore: Max amount of acres that you can.
- Update 19
- Build: 5-6% farms, if you can’t build all your acres then the ones you cant afford should be going into homes, this is more explained below, whats not farms nor homes goes into mines.
- Update 20->
- Build: If you couldnt afford all your acres then keep building homes here.
- Update 40
- Train: Y amount of basics, explained more below.
- Update 42
- Raze: 20 mines
- Build: 10 guilds and 10 hideouts.
- Update 44
- Raze: If you are going for ml5 then now is when you should build them, raze 5.5% mines.
- Build: 5.5% academies.
- Train: Z amount of military, explained below.
- Update 48
- Out of Protection!
- Standard Attack: Try to find some free acres here, some people mess up their strategies and comes out of protection with no or low def. Can be a proper smorgasbord.
X: Here you need to do a quick calculation to see how much acres you can afford to explore 4 ticks later. The calc goes like this: (Current cr + (current income – ~14000)) / (1350 + Basic soldier cost * 10). This might look little bit complicated maybe but what you do is making a rough prediction on what your total amount of cr is gonna be the tick you can explore. Those ~14000 is a rough guess on how much you income will lower once you train your basics, you can be much more precise, just have in mind, each basic you train means a 2.2cr loss (one citizen produce 2 cr plus the income selfspell Quanta).
Generally this amount comes down to somewhere between 5800 to 7800. Big Note: If you know you have a high cost basic then you can wait 1-3 more ticks. Your main goal should be to end up on 850 – 1100 acres, you shouldnt wait anymore then 3 ticks, the later you explore the later will you have max citz to gain some proper cash, also dont explore earlier then tick 15, thats when you earliest got max citz and you need to have max citz or you’ll lose vital income later on
Y This one is kinda the same as X, what you do is that you take your current cr + the coming 4 hours of income, have in mind that you will have your income lowered due to trained basics so dont over train.
You want to make sure that you have atleast 60000 raw defence for your 1000 acre tribe, if you are around 850-920ish then you can maybe get away with things like 55000 raw defence but with this small playerbase you’re living on the edge, a proper Oleg Hai can come oop and grab anything at all due to their harpies. Dwarves can come oop with around 60-70k sendable mod offence, Ravens around 55-60k sendable.
If you are an explorer then this should be kinda easy to reach, some races even got the possibility to do a second explore around here, Wood Elf and Eagle both got the possibility to reach 1450 acres 4 ticks after oop the latest easily if only training defspecs. My general advise is to train so you have around 64k raw defence, having that said if you know there is no early attackers like dwarves, olegs, ravens and even high elves then you can lower this amount a bit.
If you are an attacker then its a little bit more tricky, you need the defence just as the explorers but you also need the offence to grab acres with, key here is not to explore to much, never explore above 1k, most attackers can settle for 850-1000 acres, if you have the offence but not the defence then you wont be able to hold your acres so dont go that way.
Z this amount is pretty much already covered in the Y section, train the defence required, you can also train a few thieves (like maximum 500), to get higher chance to succeed on gathering intel.
This strategy thats been explained above is just a general strategy, it can be finetuned for each race, but there is a few exceptions amongst the races.
Dragon, due to it low amount of citz you wont be able to explore that much, aim for having a total of 350-450 acres OOP, and they should be explored as early as possible but in sections.
High Elf, Uruk Hai, Mori Hai and Brittonians, these all have various citz bonuses or restrictions, have that in mind when you do your explore. For example Mori Hai, run them with 30% homes in the start and after your big explore just graduatly add the homes up to 45%, they wont do you any good if your citz is still recovering after the explore, have them in mines at first.
A note about the farms, since some races requires more food then other dont be to strict on the razing 10 at the start, this could resort in food shortage which is a big no no in running a protection period.
Always have your selfspells running, always, no exceptions, the difference between running a protection strategy with and without selfspells are huge
I think that pretty much covered the basics, there is several schools in how to do a proper protection strategy, some people releases military to either explore more or to release into citizens for more citizens, I havent included that here just to have it little bit more simple.
If you think I missed something or got questions about something here then either comment on the article or send me a email @ admin[at]orkfia.biz or contact me on irc.
Cheers
~Acwder
Orkfic Prologue
Welcome to the first weekly installment of the Orkfic series. These short stories are a window into the lives of the people of Orkfia and the events of their world. It is set in an age when new races are uncovered and introduced into the world, when old races are brooding, forgotten and planning something unknown and mysterious. New magic and wisdom brings new possibilities for all, including an end to some things that had always been…
***Prologue***
Clouds swirled in the skies, black as the swarms of birds flying about in it and crackling with ominous power. Together they blocked the light of the Sun and celestial bodies. Divine energy pulsed through Ancero as he willed lightning to form. Arcing from the firmanent, silver-white bolts surged into the attacking forces, incinerating the ravens and rendering their burnt forms into a fleshy hail that rained down upon the helmets and upraised shields of his Istari phalanx. No god dared to stay the destruction of this spell, no mystic possessed enough knowledge to counter it. His magic came from a higher authority. Black feathers and bloody forms littered all of the ground around, and more greasy ravens fell from the wrath of the heavens. Swift as they were, fleeing from Ancero’s retribution, he had still more power to unleash. Pursuing them with arcane sight, his storm heckled their forces for miles until but a remnant remained. And then they were gone, safe within their borders and protected by their brutal gods, as such they called them. At least, until the next time. He did not know who their leader was, but they were clearly acting on behalf of the Empire, so foolish in its futile plays of power and senseless violence.
Sighing, he surveyed the battlefield for the fallen. Ancero was still getting used to his new incarnation, one which he had never taken before. The Light Elves came from the realms of the gods, beyond the lands of Orkfia. For ages they had been content to watch the events of the world without interfering directly. It had only been when the demons had been released from their infernal prison that they chose to come into the physical existence. Though they were not entirely of this world still; their bodies unearthly and ethereal, it was enough to make them mortal, as the mauled and defiled bodies of the dead indicated. Even with every wizard under his command an asset, Ancero knew that you could only go so many, many lifetimes without the scratched faces and pecked out eyes all blending together and becoming an expected part of life. And if it was his fault for not being prepared, no one seemed to blame him. They never did, so in awe of his power. It was up to himself, alone in this world.
The tribes of these new elves were few in number. Still, the Elders from beyond had instilled in them ancient wisdom and lore, and their magic was strong. When he had died, from the age before, he had taken his one opportunity to try something new – and yet ancient. The cycle of death and rebirth had become stale. He had seen the side of every story, played the role of every character, remade himself time and time again endlessly. Alliances formed and disbanded, empires rose and fell. It had very much surprised him that there had been something he didn’t already know, and that was enough to sustain him.
“Order an expedition,” He ordered one of his bureaucrats; “I know we are close to it.”
The elf frowned at his cryptic words. Of course, they wouldn’t know. They never kept their memories over the ages, even these elves could not once they entered the world of Orkfia. But he would uncover the Library of Arathos. Much would be illumined by its lore. He had no time to waste, as he had so many times before. It was the first step, a key to unraveling the enigma of the Comet.
“As you command, Your Grace.” The radiant bureaucrat hurried off to convey the order. There would barely be enough time to bury the dead before the Istari would be on the march.
Entering the walls of his grand city, Ancero walked to the Academy district, observing the damages done to the buildings by the attack. Repairs were already on the way. The shining white walls of the towers came into view, colonnaded with alabaster pillars and set with reliefs of marble and silver. He passed through the outer cloister, allowing himself to relax. Sagely mystics gazed upon him serenely, though he knew how they really felt and did not care. The tall lattice doorways were laid open before him. Stairways spiraled upwards to the vaulted altars and airy balconies high above the rest of the city or the canopy of the forest.
“There is a message,” A young elf mystic bowed as he approached Ancero; “The Allies have called for a meeting in the World of Dreams tonight.”
Nodding silently, Ancero made his way to his Sanctum. Prestige was not everything; he had to climb the flight of stairs all the way to the top. Pristine, the Sanctum was warded by various magics that allowed no one but himself to enter. The walls were bare, though in a time before he would have lined them with books to humor himself. He no longer needed such props. Sitting, he waited meditatively to enter the World of Dreams. It was a sort of ritual, to expand his mind beyond his body to find the astral realm.
Enveloped in twilight and mist, it was here that he communicated with his allies from afar. He was not the first arrival. The translucent, incorporeal forms of Hairen and Svetia, a dark elf and an eagle, respectively, were huddled in counsel. “Greetings,” Ancero said stoically. “So, you are here now,” Hairen said, his voice an odd resonance in this place. Svetia watched him quietly, her eagle eyes both deep and sharply intent.
“Who has called us here?” Ancero asked, vexed by the situation.
“It is Blodir, he claims to have a plan,” Svetia answered, with the same strange echo.
Ancero’s frown remained. Blodir always was reckless, and had brought much ruin to his followers and allies. Not everyone learned from the past.
“I do have a plan,” A voice hummed from all around the dusky ethereal mist. Blodir’s current form was that of a man in priestly robes. Emblazoned on the white cloth was a golden sunburst – the mark of the pious Templars.
Ancero rolled his eyes and said nothing. This should be good.
“Long have the four of us defended our alliance from the ravages of the other mages. Only we can truly understand the significance of what I have to say,” The templar said sanctimoniously.
It was not exactly true, but Blodir had a flair for hyperbole. Ancero wondered what was going on in the physical realm. Surely it would be of more interest than airy rhetoric.
“The source of our power and destruction has long been the Comet, an instrument of Destruction. We had thought it was our only way to charge the power of the Guildstones, but we were wrong. The Light Elves have brought with them a new source of power into this world: the magic of Creation. With it we can dispel the Time Spell and destroy the Comet. The endless ages will be no more.”
Insane, Ancero thought at first.
“It’s been tried before,” Hairen spoke distantly; “And it was a disaster that brought misery and sorrow for all.”
“Of course,” Blodir responded dismissively; “Because we tried to fight fire with fire. Destruction can only bring about destruction. Our weapon shall be wrought of Creation, and through it we will Preserve Orkfia, once and for all.”
“You seem quite eager to die, Blodir,” Svetia said quietly.
“Maybe, but there isn’t much of a point in living anymore,” Blodir said harshly; “Time repeats itself. There is never any change. This is our opportunity to remake the world. I am going to take it, with or without your help.”
“I don’t believe it,” Ancero spoke, aghast; “For once, Blodir is actually right about something. Stunning.”
“Well, if you think so…” Svetia murmured thoughtfully.
“Then it is agreed,” Hairen concluded; “What exactly is your plan?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Blodir said with a triumphant grin; “First, we must learn to tap into this new source of magic. Ancero here should have a head start. Then we’ll have to wait until the end of this age to put our strategem into motion…”
The four talked of contingencies and elaborations, beyond space and time in the eventide realm. By the time Ancero returned, his body was tired and the sun was about to rise. He never got any sleep.
Only a little while longer, and then an eternal rest…
Interview with HaRRy
Hi, its been a while since we had any interviews done here on the portal, so in a response to the latest finished poll the portal will have much more articles, gonna have more funky functions and in general improved stuff. But at the same time trying to keep it quality over quantity.
Q: I think most Orkfian players recognize your nickname but what does it mean?
A: You’re probably trying to say “How and where did you get your nickname?” because it doesn’t ever really mean anything. Or if it does I don’t know it and would make a rather disappointing answer.
I won’t tell you where it comes from but I will tell a bit about my nickname(s). First of all the name isn’t English and should more be pronounced as the word “starry” while replacing the st with an H.
I also have a 2nd nickname and that is Henk(pronounced Hank), that one started when someone was too lazy to remember two syllables. Both the nicknames are often used by friends to introduce me to others, who are usually pretty confused when I introduce myself as René.
Q: What do you do for a living?
A: Apparently I get paid while answering these questions. Of course that isn’t what my job description is saying, it says something like “Draws, checks drawings from 3rd parties, attends meetings and shows initiative”.
My main job is draw, not design, homes, shops, schools, offices and homes(which is in order from small to huge) in archiCAD. In some cases I follow the whole building process from start to end.
Besides the normal things you come across during the process it also happens I have to make a 3D image + photoshop and that sort of things.
Q: How and when did your Orkfian career start?
A: I really don’t know it exact but I think it was around age 5 of the original series that my friends finally forced me into it. Played a few ages, went away a few ages, played a few ages, went away etc. etc. and it still goes like that.
For me it’s pretty time consuming because I keep looking even when I know nothing is happening so I have to take big breaks to keep my real life running as well.
Q: What part of your years in the Orkfian universe are you most proud over?
A: Maybe it was getting myself in BvS while I was still a bit newbish or maybe it was when the game was still holding a lot of players and I came to the top spots without support from a good alliance.
Either way, it was a lot of fun back then when I had a lot of undiscovered calculations.
That’s why I think this game should keep changing things to keep the vets thinking as well.
Q: What is your current position in Orkfia?
A: Dev staff in AatW only. I’m not as good with PHP as Martel is but I can be pretty creative in solving problems.
The biggest achievement so far is rewriting all the ingame links and making them work. That means that .com/index.php?page=alliance&id=1 is changed into .com/alliance/1/ which is a lot neater and more readable for humans.
Currently most of my work will involve javascript.
Q: Being part of the development team on Alliances at War, can you give any sneak peek on whats coming mechanics wise?
A: The whole bbcode function on the forums(and works in pm as well) is also made by me and I’ve already made a few changes to it that might be uploaded next age.
That includes an image tag and a greatly improved script for the buttons. The caret position/selected text will be used for inserting tags and didn’t fail in any of my tests. After pressing the button the caret will be placed back to the right position.
You should also be able to select text anywhere else on the page and then press the quote button to get that text quoted.
We’re also busy improving the gamespeed by use of ajax that communicates directly with the server without having to load visual data every time you want to cast a spell or send thieves away.
Other gamespeed improvements should already be noticeable.(like archiving forum topics)
There are always a lot of changes on the roll, just so little time and so much to do.
Q: Both Alliances at War and Orkfia Classic is suffering from deminishing playerbases, what do you think is nessescary to turn the tide around?
A: Except from expensive marketing I don’t really know. Mouth to mouth advertisement is the best we could have at the moment.
1 option might be merging with a big company that hosts a lot of other games but we would still have to refresh more game mechanics and the interface before we could actually make a chance. But that would also be selling our souls, so please no.
Another thing that could help the mouth to mouth advertisement is coding something very very cool. Please tell me if you’ve got an idea. I’m already thinking about some (mathematical) solutions to an abstract world map but even that seems impossible.
Q: How does your dream of a perfect Orkfia look like?
A: 4000+ players and enough people donating to support payment for a personal server in personal rackspace. The game has to stay free tho!
Q: What would you like to say to the new players out there?
A: Find your way into the community(irc) ,keep playing with people you like and brutally force other people in playing this game too.
Q: Five Quick Questions:
- IRL or Internet
- IRC or MSN – Completely different uses.
- Attacker or T/M
- Download or Buying – Pay for anything worth it.
- Graphical or Textbased – Both. I wouldn’t enjoy a LAN party with just text based games.
Q: is there anything else you would like to add?
A: If you want to know anything more you can find me on IRC.
With that Id like to thank HaRRy for taking part in this interview.
Cheers
~Acwder
