I want to first start by saying Thank You to all the players of Beyond the Veil. This game is my passion and to see people playing the game, competing with one another and being excited about updates really gets me fired up too. I have a lot of ideas for this game and I really want to see it become one of the biggest games in Second Life.
I want to start with a quick chat about an issue with Bloodlines players. These people are getting upset that a Beyond the Veil players have stolen a soul. This is a misunderstanding about the term soul within Second Life.
A Beyond the Veil demon was in a club cursing people and taking souls. Someone in the club had a device that allowed them to see all hidden chat and saw that a soul from a person they know was stolen. They thought that it would effect the bloodlines stats.
Avatars in Second Life do not have a soul. Linden Labs never gave them one. Bloodlines emulates this with a piece of information in a database. Beyond the Veil does the same thing however both "souls" are not the same. A soul can be owned in Bloodlines and owned by someone else in Beyond the Veil. They do not effect each other.
Now to prevent this confusion from happening again, when the HUD tells you you have taken a soul, it now does this in an IM to you. I was using llOwnerSay displays the message in local chat but only to the owner. My guess is his device could read Owner Say. I am not 100% sure if people can access private messages but I would think that would be a violation in privacy so wouldn't be possible.
Another frequently asked question from non players to me is the collection of information about non playing avatars and how that information is being used. I thought I would address that here.
The only information I collect about an avatar is the name. In the database I would have something like Name: Sigh Parx, Soul Condition: Blessed, SoulLocation: Raiden Faxel. If a player was to join the game then their avatar key would be stored also for in game reasons. Any and all information kept is solely for Beyond the Veil's use and will never be used for any other reason. The only time a non player will hear from us, is when a player speaks to them about the game and asks them to join. Non player's information will not even be shown anywhere except when they are scanned by an avatar and they must be within range. The information will not be visible on our website or any other location.
Okay, with that out the way lets have a quick look into what is coming. The next step for me is to build a Website to get all the stats for all to see. It will take some time to design and build so you have to be patient with me. I have a designer to do the design work. Some of you may know her as Bella Parx.
After the website comes the big update, the battle system. A lot of people have been asking me how this will work. Well to be honest, I don't know yet. We have started designing it and I'll give you an insight to the thought pattern.
First of all I do not want the battle system to be just target click dead. Although that would work I think you guys deserve a little more than that. I want to have more than just 1 button to click.
I am hoping to have multiple skill trees. These may be something like Range, Melee and Protection. You wont have to select a class and will be able to select skills from either skill tree. I want to add an experience bar which will give you skill points. These skill points will be spent on skills.
Range: Battle from a distance safe from harm of Melee attackers.
Melee: Up close and personal.
Protection: These spells will be things like heals, shields and things that can protect other players.
Now all of this is just theory. It's what I want but it's not a promise. Things may change. Also, when the battle system comes out, if it is done like this, only one of the skill trees will come out, then in a later update another skill tree and so on.
The next thought, and this as well is not a promise, just a thought; is animations. I want these battles to look awesome. Now my biggest fear with this is lag. If we get too many people doing these amazing effect it could cause bad lag. We will see what I can do.
The last thought, and my most favourite, a battle sim. I want a FULL sim where all Angels and Demons can come and kick arse. But it won't just be a place to kill angels or demons. No no. I want to add another objective to do on the SIM. This WILL be kept a secret though so until then, thats all the info you will be getting.
Okay so that's it guys. that's the plan and the idea with absolutely no promises.... except to the non players. I promise I will not use your information for any reason other than the Beyond the Veil game.
