The Alphaville Herald

Dark Life 2 Arrives

by Pixeleen Mistral on 17/06/07 at 7:52 pm

Monsters and killers level up in SL

Heartun Breaker, Monster Killing Correspondent

Dark Life 2 is finally here, sort of. The much anticipated upgrade to Second Life’s longest running adventure role playing game is up and running in Istaria Prime while the game’s home sim, Navora, is being renovated to bring in new monsters and a new look to compliment the newly renovated game.

Mark Bush – Dark Life honcho

“The game in Istaria is mostly temporary while we renovate Navora, to allow players to get used to the new features,” Mark Busch, Dark Life owner and co-creator told The Second Life Herald. “Completely re-doing Navora will take at least a month, maybe as long as the holidays, but certainly everything should be in place by the end of the year. And we’ll likely open Navora before everything is done, but when we have enough of the build done to go with.”

Dark Life, and Dark Life 2, are games where players use magic and swords to kill animated monsters for experience points and game gold that they use to raise levels and buy better weaponry — too boost their attack abilities. Essentially a 3D hack and slash version of the old pencil and dice game Dungeons & Dragons. It costs $499L to buy the backpack that holds the stats and scripts to play the game, but after that players buy new stuff with game gold. There’s some argument among the founders as to when Dark Life was started, but it is some time in late 2003.

Upgraded features in the new release include a heads up display, or HUD, that tracks game information that used to be accessible through command line orders, similar to old DOS commands. The ability to team up for group attacks on monsters is also controlled through the HUD. Completely new features include a ‘blitz’ attack, a move that doubles damage if successful. Success is determined on the speed of the attacker and the monster, and some monsters have the blitz attack as well. There are also a ton of new spells in the upgraded game, both more powerful attack spells and spells that temporarily enhance a characters attributes or diminish those of a monster.

Weapons and magic items also degrade over use and time in the new version, so a player needs to go to an automated blacksmith non player character to have them repaired. Items in Dark Life have always been fully moddable so players can get the look they are after for whatever scripted item they are using to battle bugs, rats, the undead, or whatever. But with the new version players can add any sound or animation to the item too for a much more enhanced experience.

That game experience is being intensified by the new look of the monsters and surroundings, supervised by Dark Life Creative Director Crash Prefect. He’s had a lot of help from many other developers, like Logan Bauer, a texture art specialist, but Crash ties together the look of the whole she-bang.

“I’m a multimedia design college student and am about to graduate,” Crash told the Second Life Herald. Some of my major influences include “Guillermo Del Torro, Tim Burton and Todd McFarlane… we also take a lot of tricks and production method inspiration from Blizzard and games like Zelda. I like (an environment) that looks like you are walking through a comic book or a cartoon or an animated series of some sort, it becomes more immersive.”

“As a hard core RPer, one of the biggest downsides to the old Dark Life was the lack of immersion,” said Jurgi Harlan, DL2 player. “The new monsters and locales (in DL2) are vastly more detailed and interesting. “I run a 10th level pack in Navora, spellcasting in both white and black magic. My girl has a warrior specialization, so she tanks for me while I heal, buff and nuke.”

Players of DL1 will be given a free DL2 pack when Navora opens, and have their stats and levels transferred (actually, they will be given a roughly equivalent number of ‘level up’ points as the old pack had) and SOME game gold will transfer. How much? A cap is being discussed, to keep down inflation, but nothing is set yet.

Pirate Cotton

What’s in store for future advancements? Co-designer and Promoter Pirate Cotton says the future looks bright.

“We’ll be adding PvP (player vs. player combat) and quests,” said Pirate Cotton. More immediately though? “We’re going to expand back to Navora, add more game content and depth, and then maybe add more sims so people can rent land and run guilds.

This reporter has been a frequent player of the original Dark Life and has spent several hours playing the upgrade, and the new game does indeed stack up. The improvements are well thought out and the interface is very professionally done. The only complaint from most players comes more from the temporary location than the game itself. Istaria Prime has been horribly plagued by lag, sometimes rendering game play impossible (without dying). Going back to Navora will be a blessing.