That’s right. the game we are trying so hard to hide from everybody is now in open beta. Instead of reading this boring text I suggest you head here.

Make sure to stop by our stwalt forums to let us know what you think.

Also, I wish to say thanks to all the good folks in urb.com and the collaborators for the help.

>>Click here to access the chat<<

The u.r.b. chat is a great way to not only get your way into special betas of all kinds, it’s useful for talking about the betas too! Converse with others that enjoy the game that you yourself are having so much fun with.

Who knows, you may even catch the big guy himself. Happy Testing!

-Tazaraki

Well the closed beta is going good. And it is time for some numbers crunching.

From all the games of Stwalt being played 20% of them are resulting in a successful quest.
Average session length is 30 min and a play last 4:30 min average.
A player will play in average 5 games per Stwalt session. That’s a bit low for a ‘testers’ rate but I’m confident this rate will go up in open beta.

More stats are to come but I’ll need more testers for that. Onward to the open beta soon.

Stwalt being stable, solid and expansions ready will soon hit the jungle of mochi. But first, before it gets distributed, we will have a in house go at it. Stwalt has it is contain 6 basic classes, 25 items, 22 monsters about 15 spell and infinite replay value.

For those who just joined us,  Stwalt intend to be a fast paced rogue like with a strong old school (Gary Gygax era) DND flavor with a clear tribute to its classics. Stwalt follows the URB pattern with a randomized world full of dangers and treasures.

For now, one quest is active and is a fair challenge to complete (mostly luck based). This will be toned down by adding random events and NPCs helping the player to find the location of the quest item.

So stick around guys, i will post the url of the game fairly soon.

>>Click Me for Preview!<<

This is just a minor yet juicy preview to the upcoming U.R.B. title. The game is still in closed alpha, but rapidly advancing and increasing in playability each day. Join Valthero through one of his rather lucky gameplay expirences through this highly addictive rogue-like game that he so glady took time to record.

Stwalt is progressing at a very fast pace, taking a toll on my personal hygiene and sanity. The game is now solid alpha with the magic system and quest engine to be finished. Once that is over we roll on the beta, fire off a couple of email to kong and mochi plan a release date and unleash brutality to the world once more.

Here you can see 3 of the 6 characters of Stwalt. From the left to the right, The Ranger (expert traveler), the priest (an hybrid between caster and warrior) and the fighter (no gear restriction hit points factory).

The other 3 characters are of course the mage, the thief and the 6th one is not sure yet but if we stick to the basic DnD red box will be the halfling or the elf or the dwarf.

No a secret for many but I’m currently coding a fast paced rogue like game  named Stwalt. This is being done since the last week in a marathon of coding and in order to squeeze this bad boy in between Recon and the xmatch patch. The game is set in a funny old school DnD inpired setting and the player can expect to kill classic monsters, save babes and rake phat lewt all in a few minutes. The game interface is minimalistic compare to what you guys are used with urb games usually.

Bang load of items, monsters spells and random events mixed together for ultimate re playability in a package that could be qualified as Last winter on roids. told you guys lot of free time lately, lot of code being crunched.

The game encompass all the DnD cliches, dragons, swords, mages (even classic modules names) and is played in a rich random map. Games are pretty fast paced and can last from 15 to 45 min. The expandability of the game is limitless (truly) so expect a lot of patches with new content.

A beta will be avail to urb.com readers shortly.

The game is 80% done and -should- be a holly day release.

Early game board

Weaponz0rz

As the orb was slowly and carefully extracted from the ocean waters by the sub states, the consortium started to build a space fleet. The task was now possible due to the newly gained knowledge and assistance from the visitors. The new capabilities that were unthinkable few years before were now what would propulse the human race in space for good.

Such a leap forward and especially in such a short period of time has its own challenges. Although capable of traveling through space at incredible speed and the fact that ships were made of advanced alloys, they would be unable to emit short wave radars signals (judged too powerful for the very sensible hyperspace sensor equipment notably) in order to keep track of their immediate surroundings. Everything had to be done old school with the help of basic detection systems and some very keen eyes. Ships would be able to modulate frequencies inside a light spectrum and transmit it across unthinkable distances in matter of seconds but  internal ship communications would be line based through a phone in order to avoid even the slightest interference within the ship’s internals.

For the human race, and the consortium more particularly, it was a bet they were willing to take in order to be able to reach across the solar system and even beyond. As the tenth year of cohabitation with the visitors ended.. the orb was now aboard the biggest flag ship of the two. The human race was mining across the solar system and the sub states were mass producing huge carriers, mother ships and many variation of fighters. The visitors grew a little suspicious when a sizable human force under the banner of the consortium was orbiting around earth and conveniently formed a blockade as they were about to leave with their precious sphere.

Trapped and shocked by this daunting betrayal, the visitors knew that they couldn’t fight the entire consortium fleet even if judged archaic by their standards. Especially with only two heavy flagships. Being out of options and having the preservation of the egg has their priority, the visitors asked the consortium to speak their terms. The surrendering of the egg and the total access to the visitor’s flagships for reverse engineering was demanded by the consortium officials. Surprised by the greed and the arrogance of the consortium, the visitors called for reinforcements and decided to hide inside the oceans..  A place often forgotten by the human race and poorly explored. A place were the human race didnt ventured much even after all those years.

While being besieged and waiting for reinforcement, the visitors made contact with the most powerful sub states. Having already a multitude of spaceships in their yards the visitors had only to convince the sub states to rebel against the almighty central power in order to divide the humans. Technologically helped by the visitors, the sub states rose against the consortium and ferocious battles not seen by the human race since the 20th centuries were fought on the fourth corners of our solar system. Meanwhile the visitors form the bottom of the oceans were watching the human fleet erode itself before the arrival of the retribution party.

to be continued in part 3

It been a blast, urbanprophet.com served us well but now it is time for this old bucket of bolts to go to sleep. So if you have something you want to salvage over there, I suggest you do it this weekend.

It’s been a blast but it is now time to move on with what’s been planned for the urb community with basicaly a more modern, self policing and clean environment that is refreshing for me (urb) and you .

Mud and Blood recon is the new title in the mud and blood series. It is being worked on towards an playable alpha since May 2010. In mud and blood recon you will be in charge of a small unit of highly specialized soldiers who operates behind the enemy line in the vietnam war setting. Unlike the previous mud and blood titles, careful planning and inventory management will be needed to be successful. The emphasis of this mud and blood title will be on realism and stealth.

Here’s a collection of the announced features of mud and blood recon in the mudandblood.net forums:

- You will be most likely in Laos and Cambodia on the border of north viet nam, looking for the supply trail in there, deep in the enemy lines. Using their own doctrine (hit and run tactics) against them. Gathering intel ect..

- AI allies may pop in your battlefield. Like a joint operation, you can also call in a QRF (quick reaction force) if things get hot, at this time a 1rst cav contingent will be be inserted to take the pressure off your shoulders (that is a perfect scenario of course), you can meet local rebels, downed pilot you have to secure or a plane you have to destroy. It’s all random and on the fly, as long as you monitor your radio you’ll be fine.

- Weapons in the game: tommy, grease gun, m-14, m16, car-15, m60, m79, m1 carbine, FN FAL and M12 shot gun. A weapon pack will probably be avail later on.

- Most of your soldiers will come in as Pvt or Cpl you have one specialization per rank. Each time a soldier rank up he/you get to select another specialization or even keep specializing in the same branch. so after a while you can have a Sgt that is a true expert at finding booby traps, or a king RTO (signaller) or a kickass combat medic.

- Lessons learned from LW the field is limited now. But so far it is 5000 x 5000 pixels it’s a nice playground all pickled with random stuff such as rivers, roads , rice paddies, weapons cache, villages, ruins, statues, wreckage, rat holes, mine fields , booby traps, enemy patrols ect.. If the map will save if the game is ended in mid way is still to be determined.

- You are fighting Viet Congs and most likely the NVAs.

- Airstikes. You need to vector in air assets tho. Most comonly coordinate with them to have them flying over you for a while. Constant aircover is a luxury that few can enjoy especially in an unofficial theater such as laos or Cambodia. You will be able to call for huey’s gunships, hueys transport (they still have m60s better than nothing), most likely cobras, AC-47, f4s and ac-130

- Your squad will be persistant.

- I don’t expect this to be a hit on kong to be honest. This purely a fun project made for urb.com fans/hardcore flash gamers.

- With only a mouse over you can have a look at your soldier and 3 major things will be displayed. It is possible to have more detailed window of you soldier but that will come later.

- Wounded move slower, if they carry less they move faster. A soldier that carry less equipment will be more silent as well. note that some gear produce more noise than other.

- You can’t just leave a man behind in recon.. proper extraction has to be called or esle it might deteriorate your career and your squad morale greatly.

- Wounded soldiers will have to stabilized. Moving a soldier that is bleeding profusely might not be good for a long period of time. In some cases, it might be the only option.

- Equipement and by the same time planification will play a crucial role. The thing is, a perfect mission would have all the required items. Having all the required items will slow your guys to crawl, preventing them to catch their breath and more importantnly to create distance when under contact. Each item will have to be carefully planified based on the intel you have on your mission area and your style of play (hit and run, ambush, intel gathering, capture/kill, cache hit, long range patrol).

- Recon is mostly infantry due to the nature of your ops.

- No tp your are entirely accoutable for the loadout of your squad which is at this point already dooming them or saving them depending on intel , mission type (Lurp, Recce, hit and run, capture kill, ) and dudes used.

- Vehicles will be in the game. You will hit what you think is a small patrol but in fact it is the advance party for a brigade full fo t55/btr/bmp2 ? NVA mayuse Mi8.. if you come under contact and they start droping guys with choppers it’s gonna be a bad day. On the other side calling gunships, c130, hueys is comon, you are rangers behind the enemy line and ressources are avail.

- Traps; as metioned before depending on your mission, trap set up is important as well. Mostly claymore. As for long term constructions such as defensive positions, you might find that being mobile is more important, but you can use fortified positions if you encounter some, especially handy if beside your LZ while being chased by 200 NVAs.

- Cam will be selectable. Rule of thumb: The more cam you get the more it gets in your way to act freely when shit hits the fan.

- Since your are controling 4 dudes more control will be given to the player. Stance is one of these. Plus, may i add, in recon yourguys are not draftees, they are good at what they do, you tell them to stealth they stealth good. nothing to do with the NYC cab driver drafted in mnb2.

- Lots of ribbons is the goal, will be added progressively such as in mnb2.

for more details and discutions about recon you can head to the home of all mudandblood