Hey all Townforge followers, thanks for sticking with us even through this quiet period of time. And it has been a quiet year indeed. Real life has been not very conducive for Townforge work. Hope you still are willing to weather out the storm with us.

Still, a lot of new stuff has been ready for a while now, and I think it’s best to roll what we have into a new testnet soon. I’ll try to wrap things up so we get something ready to play once that’s done.

Among the new features since the previous testnet:

  1. open seas and lakes
  2. auto-classified user nameable geography features (islands, peaks, beaches, coves…)
  3. private messages
  4. 3D avatars (OK, a bit rickety atm, but you can see other players move about)
  5. fishing
  6. merchant ships

So I’m going to try and get this new testnet out the door so we can take stock and see how far from a mainnet launch we are. I expect there’ll be a fair bit of tweaking needed since there’s a lot of new stuff that got added, so don’t be expecting a mainnet right away, though. I’ll post again when the new testnet’s about ready to go.

As usual, the project is open and free for all to contribute - any good contribution or expert advice would be very welcome, as with the current team we’re always short on contributors. Shout out to thr0lu5 for various improvements to the graphical part of the game: more textures, SSAO, FXAA and more.