PoKéQuesT

I had planned not to work on PoKéQuesT until sometime during or after college, once I had garnished a further understanding of the basic and advanced concepts of computer science, networking, and the like.  However, I may soon be pulling it out of hiatus and return it to Private Alpha as an Official Project of 子猫ちゃん.

Due to this, PoKéQuesT will be pursuing a different direction than what I had previously planned (until I have further knowledge of Computer Science, Networking, Game Programming, and etc.)

Please, do not request to be in Private Alpha.  Only employees of 子猫ちゃん and a very few select people will be eligible to participate, due to bandwidth and hosting restrictions.

Despite this, however, we hope to see you in game soon!

Even with our hiatus on game development, our friends at Nnooo have fallen in love with our ideas, and along with Nintendo’s blessing, have acquired PoKéQuesT to be the first official Pokémon MMORPG planned with a full release to Nintendo DSi and Wii in Q3 2010.

Along with this acquisition, a business plan has been put in place.  The game will retail for $25 on the DSi and $40 on the Wii.  Subscriptions for online will be free for the first three months, and then continue at the price of $10 per month.  More than Runescape, but less than WoW.

We greatly look forward to serving our fan’s even better in co-operation with Nnooo.

- Navarr Tethyr Barnier
- Founder and Head of 子猫ちゃん

I have good news, and bad news, you can click the one you want to read first.

Good News

The good news is that we have two new programmers and that I’ve been working on some classes and some code to start getting a test server up, and that the PNC (committee in charge of the protocol) is getting more activity.

Bad News

Lethargy is hitting me really hard, as well as the fact that I now have a girlfriend I need to pay more attention to, the fact that school is starting, the fact that I’m taking Japanese, and the fact that I need to get a job, will probably give me less and less time to work on it.

More Good News

With two developers and the committee working hard, we should be able to start moving forward with or without my activity.

Thanks for all of your support through this.  I know a lot of you are annoyed with how little that gets done around here, but we promise you, we are definitely working on it, and are definitely trying to clean up our acts.

It’s really self-explanatory.

The word Nnooo describes not only how I feel about this official competition, but the name of the company that is providing it.

Nnooo, the company responsible for the release of the WiiWare game PoP has pitched the idea of a Pokémon MMORPG.  This would be a great leap in the progress to create a Pokémon MMO, but would however be detrimental to the fan community that has been working on creating one.

This is where the problem comes, we fully support the idea of an official MMORPG, but will it be what we want?  Will it support the things we want, and will Nintendo even approve and license it?

Another interesting thought that has come up is, would Nnooo be interested in joining the Pokémon Net Consortium?  The group of developers from Pokémon: Den of Ages, PoKéQuesT, PokéGlobal, and some other top Pokémon MMOs who are working together to provide interactivity and portability between the different games.

What would they gain?  What would they loose?  It would certainly provide more backing from the fan-community for them to have roots with the fans involving ideas and maybe even data portability.  I do wonder where this will go.

So, I have a couple of questions about what to do with PoKéQuesT.  You see, I’m only now learning Java, and am nowhere near C++ yet.  So, it is unlikely that I will be able to give you a full, working, lovely program anytime soon.  So, because of that, we have three options.  Please comment, anonymously or with a name, which one you would prefer.

1. I can continue slowly working on the website, learn programming languages, and wait for a new programmer to join the team [Slowest Option],
2. I can work on coding a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon)-like system which will be text-based but will pave way for a 2D or 3D program later down the line, or
3. I can start work on a browser-based AJAX-game while setting up the backend, paving way for a future game.

Two or Three is what I’m sure that you will probably choose.  I’ve already created some work with #3 (In school, when I couldn’t work on PoKéQuesT) and came up with an interesting Pacman-like game that showed the basics of what I had been programming.

The first step for enabling DataPortability concepts is finally complete.  That’s correct, PoKéQuesT will now officially support OpenID.

This goes for both logging in, and registering.  (That is also correct, we support the OpenID SReg Namespace)

What does this mean?  Well, if you have an OpenID provider that supports SReg, you can register on our website with most, if not all, of your settings perfectly in-tact.  (Amazing, no?)

However, if you don’t, you can still register using an OpenID, allowing you to login with only a URL or Screen Name.

The next hard part will be for the importation of an FOAF file (because it’s XML and I’m not yet proficient enough with code to parse an XML file).  However, we will get there eventually.

Just making sure to keep everyone up to date on how things are going.

Anyone who has been around here long enough knows about the old new website layout over at Labs.  Recently though, because of a lot of problems I end up having with that layout, I’ve been working on constructing a new website layout that is a lot better.

Now, before I give you the link to this website, I recommend opening it in IE7, FireFox, Opera, or Safari as I have not yet been able to properly test and work out the bugs on Internet Explorer 6.

None of the links are working yet, and I’m still programming the backend.  The front end contains some place holder text and is definitely open to change, but It has reached the stage where I’m happy to show you the new website layout!

Enjoy, and don’t forget to tell me what you think of it!

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