11 February 2011

Eternal Lands's is 8 years old now

Actually, it will be 8 on Sunday.
8 years for an online game is a long time. Some our first players were young children, and now they are college age. Some were 15, and now they finished college and got a job. During these 8 years, some people met and got married. There are even a few children born because of EL. And, unfortunately, some of our players died too.

The game graphics quality has improved every year, and we have big plans for the near future. I hope to finally have some terrain in the game by the end of the year, and a better lighting model too. There are also some new changes to the texturing management system, which will bring faster map changes time, and less delay when walking in crowded places such as storages. We are also thinking of moving the engine to OpenGL 2, which will remove compatibility with some older video cards some people still use, so that we can focus on even more graphic and improvements. But we won't do that any time soon, probably not earlier than late 2012, so people will have plenty of time to update their systems.

One last thing: We are going to have some contests and events this weekend, to celebrate EL's 8th anniversary. Some of those contests were announced on the forums, while other events were not. So if you want to win some nice stuff, try to be online this weekend.