Hey all,

 

It seems someone is attacking the webserver skyon.be is hosted on. This means the site is experiencing errors as the server struggles to keep up with all of this. If you're getting errors (email, registration, ...) please bear with us, we'll try to fix this as soon as possible.

 

 Update: All issues should be resolved.

 

 

Hey guys,

 

Just a small update to let you know we're getting somewhere. aPhRo is almost finished with the Devkit which will allow us to add content to the new version of SVO. Deku and the gang has a ton of cities and quests for you all figured out!

 

Darkfrost and I are working on a MySVO module on the forum so you can manage your characters, check out the ranking, ... on the forum. We also have a potential new programmer on the team, all the way from Greece comes Jux (or JuN if you like). We hope he can help speed up things a little so we can get you guys that well deserved update this summer :)

 

You might also wanna read this news post.

 

 

I know there has been a Mother 1 twitter adventure before but the account has disappeared. This time we’re doing an Earthbound twitter storyline.

 

 

 

 

 

Today 15 years ago Earthbound was released in the US. It's amazing that after 15 long years there's still a huge fanbase around the series, Starmen.net being the proof of that. That being said, if you're getting bored of playing EB over and over again I have no doubt you'll love the way we're going to tackle the Earthbound and SVO storyline. This way you'll be able to play EB with friends, which will give the game a completely new dimension. As a birthday celebration, I'm going to pop the cartridge in today and kick some Shark butt.

 

 

I figured I should explain to you all why it'll be around 12 months after the last update that you'll see the new version of SVO. First of all there is the engine switch. Going from one engine to another (which uses another programming language) takes a lot of time converting features so we didn't bother adding new stuff to the 'live game' which is still running on the old game engine.

 

The fact that Netgore, the new engine, is still in development means stuff changes frequently (they went from Microsoft's XNA to SFML for example). Creating a project where multiple people need access to it isn't easy this way. Luckily some features (such as Guilds, called Troops in SVO) are there by default. aPhRo is currently rewriting bits and pieces of the engine so it works the best with what we want to accomplish.

 

However, the current SVO has some features the version we are working on has not and we decided we do not want to release a new version with less capability. This also means we'll need to convert all items, enemies, npcs, maps, ... to the new engine's format. This is a great opportunity to 'start over' with the SVO maps and storyline. As Dekuben worked very hard creating a storyline worthwhile, most of the maps in the current SVO game won't make it to the next version.

 

We also want the next version to be better than the current, this means we want an Earthbound battle system and the much asked for PSI. These two things are pretty complicated and require a lot of coding and testing. Since we're also just people like you, we also have 'real life' stuff to attend to and we develop SVO during our free time because we like working on it. But of course it takes less priority than real life matters.

 

Tl;dr: the next version really is coming! Don't think the project died because we're working on things behind the scene. We'll release the next version when we're satisfied with the Earthbound battle system and other Earthbound game mechanics. Our goal is to give you guys a new, fresh, awesome version of SVO this summer and we'll try to deliver that as soon as we can.