Due to personal situations among some of the developers, we have postponed any kind of demo a few weeks. Work will resume at some point, though for now things have stalled due to real world obligations.

There is a chance that we'll have a intro area demo out sooner rather than later, but please do not expect any screenshots/demos of the "real world" portion for a few weeks.

Crimson Horizons is the quintessential online game, a massively multiplayer RPG from Nexus, Korea's leader in online entertainment. Players take the side of the great wizard Merlin or the legendary sorceress Morgan le Fey in a centuries-long magician's war. Find a guild, take a quest, or trade with merchants in the hub city of Camelot in the Sky. Protected by the decree of Arthur, it is the only neutral ground in a massive battle between Merlin and Morgana the engulfs the eight continents beneath. Players must contend not only with the troops of rival factions but with creatures straight from a bestiary of the middle ages: stags, griffons, bears, antlion, and dragons abound. Choose from over 50 classes and 300 skills to form your party and win the war for your patron wizard!

If you can't tell, we've been working on world-building for the MMO as we start to plot out the course of the demo. We've settled on an adaptation of Arthurian legend as perceived by eastern Asia. The monsters and much of the MMO story will follow this theme, so expect a lot more classical monsters and less of the FF and D&D inspired undead, slimes, etc. Hopefully this theme will be established enough to have a good foothold in legend without being beaten to death like a lot of other common settings.

The demo itself is one to two weeks away, depending on how much time I (psy_wombats) find this week. Deckiller is working on a few map touchups and Dudesoft is getting the monsters and battlers ready. Here's a quick preview of the monsters for the first area:

And the very first encounter, (also the first boss):


There are a few unresolved art issues as we move further into the demo, ones that will be probably still be unknowns even after the first release. Right now, we're using RTP-style sprites with a largely refmap world. To solve this inconsistency, it's possible that our current composer Rei- may edit the refmap charsets for all 52 classes. In addition, we're estimating the amount of work required for hand-drawn battlers. Dudesoft is already in charge of out-of-MMO graphics, but this is a definite possibility.

The battle system is also being reskinned from the previous hideous graphics. Instead of MSpaint, we have a skin provided by K-hos that I'm currently integrating to the old battle code. Unfortunately, there aren't any screenshots available, but keep an eye out for images on the game page in the next few days as the system is put in place. After that, only the demo eventing is left. The systems and maps are in place, so hopefully this should be doable within the week.

Alright, it's been a little over two weeks since the start of the project and an update's in order...

It's Dudesoft's work phase right now, so he's the one primarily putting out material at the moment. Once portraits for most of the main characters are in place, a characters page should be coming that will elaborate a bit on the story. Dudesoft's also creatively in charge of the "real world" so those of you looking for screenshots of the university campus shouldn't have long to wait.

The scope of the upcoming demo (week of August 21st) has also been decided. All of the MMO portion of that demo has been mapped, and hopefully the first demo should give a taste of both the fantasy world, the real world, and the skeleton of the battle system. Speaking of the battle system, Disconnect will have a full CMS/CBS; here are some details:

- Combat takes place between parties of up to 9 characters in a side-view system. Encounters are triggered by touch.
- These characters are split into three ranks, a front rank, middle rank, and back rank. Characters receive a big physical defense boost for each character in front of them, but also receive a penalty to their melee attacks. Some weapons (like bows) behave a little differently and ignore some of these penalties and bonuses.
- Player characters start off as a base class (warrior/mage/rogue/healer) and then through promotion unlock skillsets of more advanced classes. There are three class tiers (novice, professional, master) each branching three times for a diverse selection of classes, with 52 available. If that seems like a lot, don't worry, each character can mix and match from the skills available to them regardless of their current class.
- Each character has a certain number of equipment slots to work with. These slots can hold anything from weaponry and armor to potions and skills. While a warrior might want full armor and a variety of versatile weapons, a mage might chose to carry only one or two armor pieces in favor of a wider selection of spells. You as the player must choose how to balance your inventory.

Expect more detail on all of these systems as they're implemented, and the in-game tutorials should clear everything up. Right now nothing looks too fancy in-game as we're using my MSpaint placeholder programmer graphics for the UI, but when the MMO style is finalized, everything should look a lot prettier. Most of these systems should have a rudimentary implementation by the demo. Right now the basic combat loop is completed, so here's a quick look at how the battles should look:



More to come, and we hope you'll enjoy the game as much as we're enjoying making it.