Dev. Letter: 1 - Starting out

Hello, folks in the LOCO universe community! Welcome to the first development letter from the developers of Land of Chaos Online: II Revolution! In this letter, will touch on many things we have been working on since the beginning of the project, our future plans and everything else.

To the LOCO community following this project, We want to start off by saying that the next alpha phase is approaching months and years of patience and excitement are about to bear fruition. But to everyone from new readers to new players, or even those who haven't played the game for years and just heard about this project, this letter’s purpose is enlightening you about the current situation, and the full list of features and content coming in the next alpha stage update and our plans moving forward and more.

To give everyone a background story of how this project came to be; The game was originally released in beta by the Korean company in 2009. With each update, they made an agreement with alaplaya and released it to other countries. Everything was going well until 2011. The game had a bright future and a catchy side. But, after the Evolution update, the development of the game was stopped by the Korean developer company after the sadness and disappointment of the players. Later, alaplaya and Japanese publishing company realized the current state of the game and created a paywall for all in-game products, and unfortunately stopped publishing after the sudden drop in player numbers. *Haste makes waste*

So the LOCO community, who missed the old version of the game after the closure, made us deeply saddened by the fact that there was no response despite many petitions, campaigns and e-mails to the developer. Since there will be no tzatziki from Korean developers; I started the project of bringing the LOCO universe back to life alone in 2015 while high school years. After working on unity for the first time since 2015, and 1 year later I realized that I couldn't get enough efficiency, stability, updates, and qualification with Unity. Then I started to bring the LOCO universe to life from scratch with the Unreal Engine 4 game engine. LOCO fans who have not forgotten the spirit of LOCO after posting in-game footage on the internet over time, we started to form the new community after they're smelling this project. *The game may die but the community not*

The LOCO community is really supported a lot to us so far. We argued with some, had fun with some, laughed and cried. It means the world to me and it was a massive source of motivation. I can't thank you enough. After it became playable a few years later, minor releases, testing, events and updates were made. Once all went well, we released the first alpha phase as public play. After finding a lot of errors and bugs after alpha, we shut down the servers to continue development in a better way. We would like to thank everyone for the amazing feedback we have received from all of you over the course of the last couple of months, Then, with more people knowing about this project and hopes, we started posting it on discord with development videos, WIP, feedback, new features and changes from day to week without releasing their hype. *You still can see some works and news in our discord server.*

--Gameplay--

First and foremost, our main priority is and always will be gameplay. One of our main concerns was the balancing of the game, because equipment with a very different system from other MOBA games, 3 character selections, 10 different skill selections per character, 10 item slots, mining area capture, and many things that you will be unfamiliar with. (If you old LOCO player, you will not unfamiliar at all!) So that means 2x the extra effort of a regular MOBA game. In this project you can come across a few changed parts from the old version.

*Match 3 character swaps are no longer available with P2W scrolls

The probability of winning the game was very high for the player who was a whale in the old version. That's why we've also removed P2W stat effects from costumes that would affect the game changer. You will now be able unlimitedly swap your character with gold you have accumulated during the match!

Cost for swapping: Level*100+200 Gold

*No longer Jump Dashing bug

In the previous game, you could dash by jumping and prevent stamina consumption. but since the real physics is affected in this game, it regains old speed when dash is cancelled.

*Remaking effects and skills balance

Since there is a huge difference between the old game engine(UE2) and the current engine version(UE4), the old effects do not function in the current engine. While we take care to keep the same spirit by making new similar effects, it's also important to work on skill balances to bring more fluidity and fun to the game.

Old Partizan's Flame Arrow, can now call Phoenix within controllable by holding LMB

*New map

No matter how old the map of the old game was, it was not possible to make it as it was. As I said that nothing from the old game can be transferred as it is, I did everything from scratch myself. So I made a lot of things myself, such as new monster spots, 2 different atmospheres (Force of Nature, Army Of Purgatorium), more attractive stylized graphics, and revamp characters, monsters, buildings textures&shaders.

*Open World

Lately I've been thinking a lot about this. I even thought of creating the lobby map as openworld, like town map. I will work on this in the coming days. maybe it will be available in the next alpha stage. so you can interact with other players & NPC's, create groups, play the colosseum (survival pve mode) and grabbing the ranking in the arena. Then you'll able to have premade teams, guild's, and some visual interacting in the open world map.

--Characters--

In this project, you will see not only old characters, but also new characters that you have not seen before. So new character can also be inserted until I add the last character.

*Unlocking

Locked characters can now be unlocked with in-game currency, leveling up and premium currency. *Leveling a character is a bit different, and not the account level. and still experiemental. it may remove or changed after the alpha stage.* To bring a character back to life, you give them food, teach war, gains experience. Then you will be able to enter with character into battle with full experience. By owning the characters you do not have, you enter the war with the existing characters and give half of the XP you earn to the character you owned. So you can be together. ♥ What about leave XP in halfway and complete rest of the XP with in-game currency? Yes, you also can do that with premium currency too. However, the character you can owning and sharing XP is limited to only one until you cancelled or completed feeding.

*Character Physics

Indispensable character physics will be available to all characters by available in the next alpha phase.

*Due to the lack of bone structure of some characters, you may not see enough physical effects in some parts.* I also prevented the character head accidentally going anywhere with a physical glitch xD anyways,

--Balancing--

As we just mentioned above, one of our main concerns was the balancing of the game. We made many interesting calculations from the equipment stat calculation to the item stat calculation. First of all, the thing that affects these stats the most is the character stat chart. You can see the stat multiplier chart that the character has in the upper left part of the character menu.

This means that the effects of ADC, Mage, Fighter, Asassin, Tank and Support roles of the character are different. By default, all characters have the same stats except attack speed and ranges: (Values may change until the game's full release. This is the stat used in the current alpha stage)

Attack Damage

45 Attack Power: 45 Crit.

Chance

0 Crit DMG: 175 Armor: 60 Magic Resist: 60 HP: 500 MP: 350 HP and MP Reg.: 1 Stamina: 50 (5+1 second dashing time)

Stamina Reg

10 (1 Second per regen dashing time)

Run speed

800 Dash speed: 1600

and some special stats: DMG reduction: 0 Crit Defense: 0 Monster DMG/DEF: 0 Tower DMG/DEF: 0 CDR: 0 LifeSteal: 0

I can hear you why it's not different by character. Because as we just said, these stats are already affected by the character stat ratio(CSR).

if explained basically: You bought a item in the match store, Thats ItemStat*CSR=A A/50=B B+ItemStat=C C+CurrentValue= your final stat in the match.

To give another example: You bought 100 HP item in match store with HP CSR is 4: 100HP*4=400 400/50=8 8+100=108 Then 108+500(as default HP)= You will get 608 HP total instead of 600 HP from 100HP item.

*What about equipment system?

They just increase your character final stat per level with CSR. Not affect and related match store items at all. They are in seperately area. Like if you equip a Glove which is gives 300 MP That 300 MP is your latest character level(20th) stat, so if you are in 4th level you ill get 60MP total. and if we calculate it with CSR it'll be: 1st level EquipmentStat(15)*CSR(5)=A(75) A(75)/50=B(1,5) B(1,5)+EquipmentStat(15)=Per level stat value (16,5) no matter recalculate at multiple levels. we doing this once time at the start for performance. and it multiplies Level * MP only when you got new level.

--Visual--

I still improving on the old interface visuals. In terms of interface changes and ease of use that will come in the future, you can expect new interfaces that are modern and preserve the spirit of LOCO.

Tiers will be Militia I-V, Vanguard warrior I-V, Vanquisher Cavalry I-V, Land Master I-V and Lord of Dimension I-V same as LOCO on release. More tiers may come with big updates.

In addition, when the first 2 tier stages are completed, it gives you a free character slot that you can swap character during the match.

With more over and more of visual improvement by time, you can see something in a video:

*Crosshairs

Crosshair shapes now vary by character.

it also comes with animations specific to AI, Player and Critical hits. This way you will be able to clearly distinguish whether you are hitting the Player or the build/minion.

If you hit to player critical, you will see a more attractive crosshair animation.

Also, it is movement sensitive and you will see different crosshair effect when you run or dash.

*Damage, Scoreboard and announcer

Who died? who killed, how many damage? Who's fighting with who, what's going on?

I've added some unobtrusive, easy-to-see death and announcement animations to understand exactly what's going on in the game. *Now everyone will be able to experience the sadness and excitement when one of your team dies or kills in your match.* Here are previews of the ingame and scoreboard layouts:

--Performance--

My mission is make the game as playable as possible with any hardware.

The game has received countless optimizations and improvements, It has become almost playable even on mobile phones. However, we were disappointed recently that Unreal Engine 4 has discontinued 32-bit support. So, we will not be able to build the game for 32-bit systems unfortunately. If you still have 4GB ram, you can upgrade to 64 bit and play! This game has low ram usage. (May change usage until game's full release.) In addition, we took care for not to make changes in the graphics settings that would affect the game and the player. *Like; you hide in the grass but on the opposite low graphics setting the player can easily see you* Plus, I've added a few setting to lower the hardware temp and reduce the power when you're in the background or under the game.

--Networking/Server and hacking--

Let's come to the part of the game where it is the most difficult and complex as a black hole. How its complex? yes, yes lets see how it feels like:

Well, Mostly all MMO games have servers where the player will distribute their position, movement, attack/skills, character data and status to other players. Unlike the others we do, we use the server simulation that we call the player simulation that comes with UE4. So, any changes you make in-game that affect others and the game will be rejected as soon as they reach the server.

Imagine

You pressed a skill, then hack the skill cooldown by multiplying game time for fast reduction. After cooldown is done, you still not able to press that skill again. Because in the server side, your skill is still in CD.

Same for movement hacking

When you pressing a movement button, it actually move your characters on the server side. So whenever you exceed the speed of light by multipyling delta time, the server will recognize that your movement is above the limit and will return it to its previous position.

In the first alpha tests, this was a bit of a strain on the servers. sometimes it would cause the not to close exactly match or get stuck in a infinite loop causing the game to freeze. Therefore, although it makes most of the server cost, we were able to reduce this cost with sufficient optimization and bug fixes. (Left unoptimized - Right optimized) So i'm sure next alpha stage will work well with a lot bug fixes and optimizations

--Music&Ambient&SoundFX--

Since I was 2 years old, I can't distinguish some sounds because I've been deaf after having a seizure. I left the audio stuff for last so maybe I can find someone who can help. *Thank to my friends who helped me.*

Here is some nostalgic sounds you can hear:

You may think some sounds are not the same as the old game. i used different tones to make the sounds similar to keep up with the todays modern and the game theme. I Still looking a Sound FX maker to make other skill, hit, Interface SFX's, so not completed yet. Here also you can listen some SoundTracks:

This letter was a brief summary of what I've been working on so far. More will be available in the next letters or announcements! I hope you've had a wonderful vacation this summer! Stay tuned and make sure you join the Discord and follow the WIP-Announcement channel for more updates and previews in the coming days. See you soon again! ♥