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Ryzom Ring First Impressions - Choose your own adventure!

Nevrax opens up the Ryzom world to let you--the player--design your own online stories.

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The concept of allowing users to generate their own content is nothing new. Back as far as the late eighties, gamers were getting in on the act with packages such as Sensible Software's Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit. Since then, some developers have shipped tools within their games to enable players to create custom levels or missions, and such freedom soon proved popular as online communities flourished--Doom, Morrowind, and Neverwinter Nights were just a few to galvanise would-be designers to get creative.

You can customise every last aspect of the units you create.
You can customise every last aspect of the units you create.

Now, this idea is being taken a step further by Nevrax, the team behind the online role-playing game The Saga of Ryzom. The new content, called Ryzom Ring, is currently in the alpha stage of testing but will be freely available to subscribers to the main online RPG. In a recent visit to GameSpot UK HQ, Nevrax director Milko Berset took us through the basics, before leaving us a copy to get stuck into.

The first thing that should be noted with Ryzom Ring is that it's a pretty powerful tool. Essentially, it gives you the same level of power within the Ryzom universe as the game's designers have themselves. In other words, they're putting you pretty much in control. One key caveat, however, is that it won't be possible to create new objects or skins to go in the game's world--Nevrax is keen to retain control over the intellectual property within the game, and ensure that player-generated content won't offend or break advertising regulations.

Your route into online RPG design is actually fairly straightforward, and your first decision will involve choosing the area of land in which you wish to begin, and the time of year. There are five different environment types in all--desert, jungle, subtropics, forest, and the intriguingly named 'prime roots'--and around 30 predesigned parcels of land from which to choose in each.

You can group units at will.
You can group units at will.

Once in, you're presented with a landscape devoid of anything except environmental features, and from there it's up to you what goes on. You'll probably want to begin by placing random objects, just to get an idea of the different items you can add in to your new story. After a little while you'll probably have a whole bunch of ill-assorted characters surrounding a curious plethora of architecture and monsters, and you'll probably need to start over in order to make some sense of it all. In a way, though, that's indicative of how much freedom Ryzom Ring allows you, and it's worth taking a little time to work out the rough points of your adventure before you begin to place the components.

One of the onscreen boxes you'll become very familiar with is the palette. It's here that all the main action takes place, from setting down monsters and non-player characters, to arranging objects and defining areas and routes. If you're familiar with online RPGs, you'll probably have noticed that NPCs sometimes wander along a certain predefined route. This is controlled by a script in the game, with variables that relate to specific circumstances. In Ryzom Ring, setting up something like this is very simple.

First of all, you need to choose an NPC from a list of around 40 and place it in your landscape. Next, you'll need to trace the route you'd like that character to take, which is a simple case of selecting the route tool and clicking along the desired path. Then you merely open up the NPC's activity menu and attach him or her to that route. And that's it.

One of the simple delights of Ryzom Ring is the ability to immediately test any scripting you implement with the click of a single button--something that makes editing your scenarios much easier. When you preview your work, you'll be using the standard Ryzom interface, and you can choose to actually play a part in your story as well--your onscreen avatar can perform all of the functions that other characters in the game could, with the added bonus of being able to influence the outcome of battles.

For instance, if, when your story played out, you felt that a battle encounter was too easy, you can add hit points to that monster on the fly; or, if it's too hard, you can kill the monster on the spot. What's more, you can set off event triggers as you please, therefore giving you control over when certain events kick off. You can even take direct control of characters in order to further the plot. On the other hand, you can just become invisible and watch passively as the adventure unfolds.

Who's a pretty boy, then?
Who's a pretty boy, then?

You can programme NPCs to talk, assign quests, fight battles, or just wander around looking like part of the scenery. You can even get them to respond to each other, or hijack conversations a player has with other NPCs; all of this continually expands the options available to users, giving you a good wedge of creative power.

The theory behind putting together quests in an online RPG can be fairly complex, but whilst stories in Ryzom Ring can span several chapters and take in a number of different locations, a few hours is pretty much all it takes to construct a generally pleasing quest line.

Happily, Ryzom Ring makes the process quite painless, whilst still allowing you plenty of freedom, and subscribers to the online RPG will be tempted to give it a go. We'll have more on the editor as it nears completion later in the year.

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