Era Online
Encyclopedia
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
developed by Erling Ellingsen for the Windows PC
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. Work on the project began in November 1998, and continued under Ellingsen's direction until May 2000, when the work was discontinued. The game's codebase was released for the general public as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
to give the original author credit while encouraging free use of the materials at the same time.
Development
The game is designed, coded and produced by Erling Ellingsen, but is based on the ORE codebase developed by Aaron Perkins. Graphics came from multiple contributors while sound effects were mostly created by Finnish musician Sami Hakala. The world locations were implemented mainly by Ellingsen, Oddvar Røste, Kenneth Marius Gundersen, and Bjarte Bjellås. The project was non-profit and largely casual.The official project was terminated on May 2000, but multiple re-releases and spin-offs have been launched since then. Numerous projects have been launched by other developers using the codebase and the assets from Era Online (see Spin-offs).
History
Era Online's development was revealed sometime in 1999 when the creator set up a website inviting people to beta test. The website was hosted on a free webspace provider. The interest for the game picked up quickly and hundreds of people volunteered. Guilds and fansites started appearing on the Internet. News of the game also reached numerous gaming sites, such as the now defunct Betazine.An official online forum was soon established, and over the course of the game's development, the userbase grew to the thousands. An official newsletter was also established, which had about one thousand members at its peak. Later the game also got its own web domain.
Era Online received a lot of press between 1999 and 2000, despite it being an "underground" game. It was mentioned on several prominent gaming sites and even on Norwegian national TV and regional newspapers. It appeared on sites such as IGN Vault and GameZone. The game was never reviewed as it never left the beta stages, but multiple previews and interviews surfaced.
Gameplay
Era Online plays similarly to other MMORPGs, such as Ultima OnlineUltima Online
Ultima Online is a graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game , released on September 24, 1997, by Origin Systems. It was instrumental to the development of the genre, and is still running today...
. When the game was released in beta and administered by the original team, players could download the client from the website. Players were required to be online and connected to the Internet when playing.
The game starts with the character creation process where the player selects a name, a race, and three primary skills. In the latest version of Era Online, the player didn't select a class
Character class
In role-playing games, a common method of arbitrating the capabilities of different game characters is to assign each one to a character class. A character class aggregates several abilities and aptitudes, and may also sometimes detail aspects of background and social standing or impose behaviour...
– it was determined from which skill had the highest ranking. For example, someone whose highest skill was cooking
Cooking
Cooking is the process of preparing food by use of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions. Cooks themselves also vary widely in skill and training...
would in the game be defined as a cook. It was therefore a skill-based system, and the player would invest a given number of skill points at each level-up. Players would then venture through a fantasy world where they fought enemies and engaged in social activities such as crafting. Players were able to create items such as sword
Sword
A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...
s, furniture and food if they had the proper skills. They could talk to each other through a text-based interface, and they could go out and play online together. The goal of Era Online was primarily to explore, enhance a character, and gain money by finding and creating items.
Fighting was implemented in a basic fashion. A player would enter battlemode and then proceed to strike their opponent by pressing a key repeatedly. Crafting revolved around finding raw materials and working with them - for instance, a player would have to chop at a tree to create logs which would then need to be sawed into plank
Plank
Plank may refer to:*Plank *Plank , an isometric exercise for the abdominal muscles*The Plank , a British comedy film with no dialogue*The Plank , a remake of the 1967 film...
s which then could be used to build furniture. Magic
Magic (gaming)
Some role-playing games or game systems can include a set of rules that are used to portray magic in the paranormal sense. These rules simulate the effects that magic would have within the game context, according to how the game designer intended the magic to be portrayed...
was almost not present in the game, and was mostly limited to healing
Healing
Physiological healing is the restoration of damaged living tissue, organs and biological system to normal function. It is the process by which the cells in the body regenerate and repair to reduce the size of a damaged or necrotic area....
spells and a few basic attack spells. The graphical details was limited, both in regard to magic and fighting. The game had a basic interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
where players could click different icons to bring up windows such as the backpack
Backpack
A backpack is, in its simplest form, a cloth sack carried on one's back and secured with two straps that go over the shoulders, but there can be exceptions...
, spellbook and character sheet.
The game had numerous identifiable features that are uncommon for games of the genre, such as the ability to make campfires and sit around them to heal one's character. It was also possible to fish
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
, chop wood, cut wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
off sheep and mine for iron ore. Crafting - though basic in its implementation - played a central part of the gameplay.
Setting
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
, except the Haakis; the Haakis were a desert-dwelling people specifically created to populate the vast desert areas of the gameworld. The Elven people occupied the lesser continent (Centania) while the Humans and the Haaki took residence on the main continent (Titania). There are numerous cities scattered around the continents.
Five different deities ruled Menath: Hyliios, Veega, Bendarr, Griigo and Zeendic. Each represented a discipline such as war, commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
, wisdom
Wisdom
Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...
and love. Veega also represented birth and death. Religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
was present in the game where players could seek out temples to pray at. The deities were spawned by a master God earlier in the world's history.
The two continents are connected by an almost endless bridge called The Bridge of Bondage, created by Elven slaves
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. The Elven continent is halved by a wall constructed to end the battles of the two faction
Political faction
A political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
s. The Dark Elves are led by the evil villain
Villain
A villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have a negative effect on other characters...
Kain Benwick, who in the game is working on creating a plan for world domination. The Humans lead the Empire
Empire
The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
where the Emperor
Emperor
An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...
is the political leader. All nations are willing parts of the Empire, except the Dark Elves who have been subdued through centuries of war and thus forced into it. The Haakis are considered neutral, but are still a part of the Empire.
A story was written to function as background history for the gameworld. It contains information about the birth of the deities, their involvement in the creation of the world and how the political landscape has evolved over the years. The Menathian timeline
Chronology
Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...
is divided into Eras where the start of each signifies a world-changing event. The world of Menath is supposedly several thousand years old, but it is believed that there is a vast, but forgotten history that took place before recorded time. The Era universe, set around the world of Menath, is still being used in different works from the original creator.
Technology
The game displays 2D graphics much like that of the Nintendo Entertainment System'sNintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
Zelda
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda, originally released as in Japan, is a video game developed and published by Nintendo, and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Set in the fantasy land of Hyrule, the plot centers on a boy named Link, the playable protagonist, who aims to collect the eight fragments...
series and is fairly limited in terms of animations and effects. The game is coded in Visual Basic
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
and utilizes DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
7. The graphics are rendered using DirectDraw
DirectDraw
DirectDraw is part of Microsoft's DirectX API. DirectDraw is used to render graphics in applications where top performance is important. DirectDraw also allows applications to run fullscreen or embedded in a window such as most other MS Windows applications. DirectDraw uses hardware acceleration if...
. The system requirements were generally very low and the game required minimum bandwidth.
Players were able to equip different clothing sets, as well as equipment such as sword
Sword
A sword is a bladed weapon used primarily for cutting or thrusting. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographical region under consideration...
s and shields
Shields
-United Kingdom:* North Shields, Tyneside, England* South Shields, Tyneside, England* Shields Road subway station, an underground station in Glasgow, Scotland-United States:* Shields, Indiana, an unincorporated community...
. This was rendered on the character, but there were no fighting animations; combat information was shown in pure text through the chat interface. The monsters also did not have any fighting animations. All items - a few hundred in number - also had their own specific graphic.
The different parts of the gameworld all had their own specific graphics assets. The vegetation such as ground texture, trees, bushes and such were all different for the separate parts of the world. Architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
would also vary from place to place, and houses was drawn roofless to show the interiors. The world itself was split into different maps- over 200 in number.
Sound effects and music were mostly taken from freeware sound libraries. The theme song was, however, composed and produced by Finnish musician Sami Hakala. The project used the DirectSound
DirectSound
DirectSound is a software component of the Microsoft DirectX library for the Windows operating system. DirectSound provides a low-latency interface to the sound card driver and can handle the mixing and recording of multiple audio streams....
and DirectMusic
DirectMusic
DirectMusic is a deprecated component of the Microsoft DirectX API that allows music and sound effects to be composed and played and provides flexible interactive control over the way they are played. Architecturally, DirectMusic is a high-level set of objects, built on top of DirectSound, that...
APIs. The networking code used WinSock
Winsock
In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...
and not DirectPlay
DirectPlay
DirectPlay is part of Microsoft's DirectX API. DirectPlay is a network communication library intended for computer game development, although its general nature certainly allows it to be used for other purposes....
which would probably have made it perform better.
Spin-offs
After the development of the game was discontinued in May 2000, several people started building their own versions of the game. The first project was started immediately after the first, and the game was re-launched. The new team also started working on a new version of the game, which sadly was never completed. There have also been an attempt at making Era Online 3D and an Era Online 2. The latter was fairly successful, with a re-designed graphics engine and a game that was actually launched on the Internet. Era Online 2 was eventually discontinued as well. In 2003 Curve Software (formerly GameBay Productions) announced that an Era Online: Return of Menath was in development, however, the project was later renamed to Quintara and then announced as discontinued in late 2005.Several other teams have also launched Classic versions of the game in its original form. This would basically involve releasing the original version of the game and running an operational server that would accept players in.
External links
Further reading
- Interview on GameZone.com
- IGN Vault reference to Blinkingdot.com interview
- News article on Stratics.com
- News article on IGN Vault
- General information on Indews.com
