The Shining Source

Bowie Online is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) It’s based on a game called Shining Force II, so if you ever played that you’ll probably know where you’re up to. The graphics are 2D and almost every day new tiles will become available.

We’re going to make tons of maps so you’ll be spending hours if you want to collect all items and find all secrets.

Features:

• 30 playable characters
• Over 90 monsters
• 2 original worlds from Shining Force II
• All items, spells, names, … are from Shining Force II
• Shining Soul battle system
• Many secrets
• Battle Tournaments
• Events (like giveaways, trivia’s, …)
• New maps every day

Other info will follow.

It’s been a long while since we have any progress to report, but we finally have got things moving again.

Noma has once again begun mapping, as has linus, and we have a new mapper on the team, known as “shining assassin.” His map looks promising at the moment, and with practice, they’ll be on par with linus.

Now, you’ll also be wondering what I and AG have been up to. we’ve been looking into the mechanics of the game engine, changing things around, adding new colours, and finalising the GUI, and I have been working on the level up dynamic, using the script file to change the way we will level up.

Let me tell you, the GUI is now a thing of Beauty. We even have the official SF font installed, and it looks fandabidoozie.

I’m also working on the other areas of the gui, such as login and credits, adding images to make it look awesome.

From stordarth of the Bowie Online team:

We have encountered a bit of a setback. The lead programmer of the engine we were using has decided to hang up his spurs, and is no longer programming the engine. This means we are stuck with the features that are there at the moment. The source code for engine has been released however, and one of our staff is looking into it to see if he can continue with the engine. Whilst I am confident he can do a bit, I fear we may be stuck in a rut. If there is anyone out there who knows how to use visual basic 6, and is interested in building on an online game engine that is already established quite well, I’d be glad to hear from you, as my staff are spread thinly enough as it is.

Failing that, we may be forced to work without features that were due to appear in the next release that was planned, and that will put the game back a lot.

There’s been another big shake up at Bowie Online folks.

We recently discovered a new game client thanks to our old employee Bowie.

We wrestled with some hard choices:

stay at player worlds, keep the maps, and pass up the swanky extra options, or move to our new engine, lose the maps, and be swept up in option heaven.

we chose to move ultimately, and because of the move, new things have developed.

we are implementing a dual promotion system for each character. in other words, each hero can be promoted twice.

we are therefore expanding our sprite collection massively (which will benefit the TRAP as well), and including a selection of edited sprites based on the originals, to give a total of 360 hero character sprites (instead of simply having the 30 promoted sprites we have now.)

The bad news is that we are effectively beginning afresh as far as the game goes, and a release is once again no longer on the cards for the near future, but the wait will be worth it.

Yes. It’s true. The admin team got their heads together last night, and we have thought of a way to release this game quite soon.

Of course, the game will not be completed, the world will continue to undergo expansion during this release period. But what we plan to give is a taste of the game to all those eager to try it.

We are currently working on the finalising of monster statistics, the construction of the entirity of south grans island, and the starting location. a few other matters need discussing also, but these will be ironed out soon I hope.

As this project continues to grow, i will also add any updates to the TRAP through devlyn.

With luck, this project will be released soon. i refuse to give a date, as there are many issues still under discussion.

That’s it for now.

Hello everyone at the Shining Source. I am Stordarth, Leader of the Bowie Online project. Here’s a few facts about the project at the moment:

This game uses an engine called Player Worlds (PW), and is an Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG). You will be able to join up with your friends in a massive online world, and battle foes, each other (once level 10 or higher) and solve quests and gain items.

The game is primarily set in the world of shining force 2. Our mappers are working hard to remap Grans Island and Parmecia with great accuracy, using tiles ripped directly from the game, to provide the shining force 2 authenticity we hope for. However, true authenticity will not be possible, since the style of Bowie Online is very different from the game it is based around. Bowie Online is not a turn based war game, it is more of the style of Shining Soul, in that you wander the world, destroying enemies in a hack-and-slash game engine.

Every character sprite from SFII is featured in their promoted forms, and the staff, and those who earn them, can have their own snazzy custom made sprites, marking them out as special individuals.

Mapping is progressing steadily. Grans Island Overworld is already complete, but the slow rate of tile ripping is this project’s limiting factor, and since im the one doing it, besides all of the other things i have to do, its no wonder its going slowly.

This said, beta testing has already begun amongst the moderators of our forum, and is reprotedly going well. a special town, unique to Bowie Online (BO) and an accompanying dungeon are already completed for the purpose of beta testing, and will also be the main location for newbie players to get to grips with the game upon release.

We dont intend to leave it there either. Once the world of SFII is finished, we plane to create our own lands, all linked by the secret place, the tunnels of the ancients (where claude the golem resides in the original game).

That about covers all the news I have right about now. Once some big developments occur, ill post here again. until then, farewell.