Beta is officially over

Dear players,

We wish to say our thanks to every player who joined us for the beta. It's been a long development, and we are proud that the game is ready for release.

I wish to say special thanks to all those players who took part of the community, either by working for or with a corporation, helping or trolling on the channels. It's been a great experience for us, and every one of you contributed to the beta feeling in some way. We saw great pvp battles, corporations working to gain new technology levels and outposts... annoying bugs. :)

We hope to see you guys again after the release.

In the end, I wish to show you some nice videos from the community. :)

Screenshot gallery update

Our Screenshot gallery has been updated. Make sure to check it out! ;)

Press Release - October 6, 2010

AVATAR CREATIONS ANNOUNCES OPEN BETA AND EARLY ACCESS PHASES FOR THEIR OPEN WORLD ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME, PERPETUUM

Free for all testing of Perpetuum will begin on the 18th of October, 2010.

2010 October 6, Budapest - Avatar Creations Limited has today announced that after one and a half years of closed testing, the publicly available Open Beta testing of the persistent world Massively Multiplayer Online Game Perpetuum will begin on the 18th of October, 2010. During the Open Beta phase players from all around the world will be welcome to play Perpetuum and explore the alien planet of Nia.

Early Access

Perpetuum will be available for early subscription after the start of the Open Beta phase. Players with Early Access subscriptions will be able to enter and play the game once the Open Beta phase has ended, one full week before the official launch. Early Access subscriptions will include 30 days of playtime and will be priced at 9.95€. The exact date of when early subscriptions will be available and more information on the Early Access period and official launch date of the game will be announced at a later time.

About Perpetuum

In the sci-fi world of Perpetuum players engage in exploring the alien planet of Nia with huge robots. Remotely controlling these robots from Earth, players are thrown into a foothold situation where they need to build a stable economy while battling the natives and rogue human agents, all in order to supply Earth with precious energy.

Key game features

-Completely open, persistent game world on a single server

All the players in Perpetuum play in the same unsharded world, and the actions of players have permanent consequences which can only be changed by other players or the natural physics of the game world.

-Highly scalable combat

Fights in Perpetuum can range from one on one to whole armies battling it out, and thousands of items and versatility of the game world guarantee no two fights will be alike.

-Complex crafting system

Perpetuum features an advanced item crafting system ranging from mining raw materials and gaining knowledge to the mass production of items. Players will be able to reverse engineer technology found in the wild and even build special prototype items with the knowledge they amass over time.

-Player driven market

All game systems in Perpetuum have been built towards the goal to rely on each other, thereby creating constant supply and demand between the players of different specializations and encouraging trade between players.

-Time based character progression

Experience in Perpetuum is gained over time on each active account, even when the player isn't logged in the game. Extension points gained this way can be used to purchase skills on any character on the account.

-A living world

The environment on Nia is one that is constantly changing. Plantlife is fighting for territory while large battles leave barren wastelands where a forest of alien vegetation used to stand. Minerals in the ground require regular scans to find, and later even the face of the planet will be deformable by players as they start building their own settlements.

More information on Perpetuum can be found on the official website: http://www.perpetuum-online.com

About Avatar Creations

Avatar Creations, located in Budapest, Hungary is a small, independent game development studio of about 10 people. The company was founded for the development of their first game, Perpetuum - a completely unique, open, persistent world where players are able to engage in a wide variety of interactions ranging from combat to complex economics. The goal of Avatar Creations is to continually develop this world in the coming years to provide a game which a growing number of players can enjoy worldwide.

Beauty Patch

Hello there everyone!

After a long silence from the blog, I'm happy to share with you that today we finally released our newest patch. It was a bit tough for me to stay silent until this moment, because... we wanted to make it a surprise! :) So it's here, it's nice and shiny.

Take a look at the Change log, check out the uploaded soundtrack files... and get into the game.

Intrusion system preview

As the development continues, we’re constantly adding new features to the game. One of the most awaited features will be the ability to build your own settlements and terraform the area around them.

We’re not quite there yet, but to enable our players some form of territory control we’re introducing a new system where they will be able to take control of certain outposts. This system is called Intrusion.

So what’s it all about?

The idea is that under the right circumstances, player corporations can claim ownership of certain buildings. (Namely the outposts on the beta islands in the free PvP zone)

To achieve this, they will have to compete with other corporations for the ownership of the property by completing objectives at certain times.

From time to time each base will have a maintenance session, when extra parts of its structure will become visible for the players to interact with. Native Nians used these Service Access Points (SAPs) to perform regular maintenance on an outpost's systems, however these vulnerable points can also be used to bring down the main defenses of it. These events will be what we call Intrusion.

Each SAP requires players to perform some action to take control of it during the Intrusion event. If any one corporation has control over all of the access points associated with a certain outpost they gain ownership of the outpost. At the moment there are four different access point types:

Destruction: Destroy the access point. The corporation dealing the most damage takes ownership.

Specimen processing: Be the first to bring certain specific items to the access point.

Active hacking: Be the first to hack the access point (requires a unique hacking module)

Passive hacking: Hold the surroundings of the access point.

When the required objective of an access point is achieved it closes until the next event and ownership is transferred to the winning corporation. Of course things brings up the possibility that access points associated with an outpost are owned by different corporations.

If at the end of the Intrusion event not all of the access points are controlled by the same corporation the owner does not change, however the individual access points retain their controlling corporations for the next Intrusion event.

Example:

At the beginning of the event corporation A holds the outpost. This means, that sometime in the past they captured all access points claiming ownership of the base. It's however entirely possible that in the meanwhile other corporations took control of some of the access points for that base.

To make sure that corporation A doesn't lose ownership of their property the only thing they need to do is to prevent any one corporation from taking over each access point.

This can be done by completing access point objectives before others or simply preventing other groups from completing objectives.Meaning that capturing an outpost requires good teamwork and precise timing.

Corporations are required to register for Intrusion events at least 12 hours before the event begins. If a corporations wins an event by taking control of all access points they get the registration fee back.

The rewards of controlling an outpost are high: from each transaction that happens on their outpost the controlling corporation gets a share. This share varies with the type of the transactions. This in effect means that the controlling corporation can use the base facilities at a much reduced price and everyone passing through will generate money for them.

However winning an Intrusion event doesn’t automatically transfer control of the base to the winning corporation. The corporation does become the new owner, but the base still needs to be claimed by them. Each base has a large pool of money with a fixed maximum. Each time a corporation wins an Intrusion event or when they successfully defend a base they get a portion of this pool transferred to them. To gain control over the base the corporation needs to fill this pool to its maximum first, otherwise they won’t get a percentage from the transactions flowing through the base.

This opens up the possibility for groups to make some cash in the Intrusion events without paying the high fee of taking control of the outpost. Also the chances of someone taking over an outpost whose owner just recently changed are greater as the pool will be filled up and as a result claiming the base will cost less. This makes controlling a base a risky business.

As the timing of Intrusion events will be randomly determined on the server it’s possible that an event occurs at a time when the owning corporation is unable to defend it. To counter this problem the system has a feature called Intrusion Protection. This system will allow the owner of a base to skip an Intrusion event completely, but this option is of course limited: after every third successful defense of a base the owning corporation will get a protection token. This token can be used to skip an Intrusion event at any base the corporation currently owns. The tokens accumulate but their number may never exceed the number of bases under the control of the corporation.

Last Mech Standing event

Dear players! There will be another event, this sunday, so make sure that you have time to join the fun! Here's the details from our forum:

Date: Sunday 25th July
Event Preparation Starts: 19:00 Server Time (CET)
Event Start: 20:00 Server Time (CET)
Location: Hokkogaros

All times are in server time.

‘The Event’

‘The Event’ is a gladiatorial battle for supremacy in a closed environment designed to promote strategy, tactics and PvP prowess. All may enter, however only one must survive.

Anyone may participate in The Event and the rules are simple. Kill everything. Regardless of who participates in the event and their allegiance only one Mech must survive. That Mech will be awarded the main prize and claim the title of the first “Last Mech Standing Victor”.

Event Information

A unique arena has been constructed in order to house the event. The arena is circular an approximately 2 kilometres in diameter. Terrain will be harsh and unforgiving. Bunkers, ditches and firing ranges will be common place.

Players that wish to take part must be on Hokkogaros so that they can be teleported by a GM to the arena. The chat channel “LMS” has been created which all participants must join; this will make the GM’s lives much easier when finding players to teleport and provide a central channel of communication.

Event preparation will start at 19:00. GM’s will teleport players to the arena from 19:00 until 19:50. The event will start at 20:00. Do not expect to be teleported after 19:50.

Once participants have been teleported you will be assigned a location at the edge of the arena by a GM. Fighting must not commence until a GM has given the go ahead.

Once inside the arena and the event under way the rules of engagement are simple. Kill everything. The main prize will be awarded to the last Mech standing. If there are multiple people alive at the end of the event and they do not wish to fight then they will all forfeit the main prize. Only one Mech must survive.

All robots killed during the event will be reimbursed by a Dev/GM.

Prizes

A fully fitted Tier 4 Heavy Mech will be awarded to the player who wins the event. Various other prizes will be awarded to participants, both individuals and corporations who show organisation, a good strategy, tactics and general PvP prowess although the value of these prizes will not exceed the main one.

Perpetuum Extension Planner

The whole developer team was amazed by this little community created wonder. Although we keep track of a few tools that our players craft in their free time, this one just fantastic. You can plan your extensions (depending on your attributes!) or gain informations about them. The little application has many features, from setting up your current extensions and calculate requied ep from that point... load/save data and has an update system too. Truly, amazing work! Thank you very much Mark Zima for this great tool!

You can download the application here!