Encephalon in Production : Day 13

An older blog draft by Roshan. I thought of posting this up for old-time sake.

8th February 2007

Dear bloggers, we are facing some minor problem in the production team. There will be reshuffling of roles in our team with more additional team members within a few days. Especially, the web development team should have more web programmers.

Last night, we attended a meeting by MobileMonday. It was amazing to blend with people from various backgrounds. Learned a lot from the successful entrepreneurs who were present yesterday. It shows how fast is the Information Communication Technology (ICT) industry is moving in Malaysia. Not to forget the lovely food and beverage served.

Quasr FAQ

Q: Qu- Qu- what?
A: It’s pronounced ‘qway-zer’.

Q: What does it mean?
A: The name came from the astronomy term ‘quasar‘, or ‘quasi-stellar object’. We used the name because… it sounded sci-fi. Or something. Please proceed to the other questions while no-wing figures out how the name came about.

Q: What happened to Encephalon?
A: For those who have been following our blog, we did mention about Encephalon more than once in the past. Encephalon was the old name of Quasr. Encephalon is Quasr.

Q: What is Quasr?
A: Quasr is a game. It’s hard to put it in a specific genre, but let’s just say it’s a Web Trading Card/Board Game. That’s quite a mouthful.

Q: Trading card game you say? I see no trading features on the site.
A: The beauty of web games is that development cycles are fast. At this point we’re still working on adding cool features and eye-candy to the site.

Q: Cool! So what features will you have? When will it be done?
A: There’s no such thing as ‘done’ in web development, we’ll be adding features and polishing up the game as long as we don’t get hit by a bus or something. These features should be available by the end of next month:

• User subdomains (http://username.quasr.com)
• Forum
• Art community
• A full-fledged game client
• Card editor
• Deck editor
• A lot more new cards

Q: Wait, an art community in a game site? Card editor? I don’t get it.
A: Quasr was developed with more than just a game in mind. While most trading card games exist in paper form, Quasr is fully online (though that doesn’t rule out a paper version in the future), and thus allowing both developers and players to have bigger degrees of freedom.

A big feature of Quasr is that players are able to modify their own cards, for example giving a card better stats or a new power, even naming the card itself or giving it new art from the art community. Quasr is not just about playing a game, it’s also about contributing to the community.

Q: That sounds like a great idea! I’m telling my friends about this!
A: We’re glad you feel the same way as we do 🙂 Please tell your friends about Quasr, the game gets better with more people.

What’s in the Alpha Launch

A working version of the Flash Game Client without much special effects.

A simple website that users can log in, register account and view their cards.

A FAQ and Tutorial page.

A simple Forum.

Edit: Quasr Alpha is up!

Encephalon in Production : Slow

3nd March 2007
Dear bloggers who have been with us since we started, we are sad to say that our production has stopped due to a public holiday. Every team member are still in the festive mood and some are unmotivated. The launch of our beta has to be postponed for 3 weeks because the lack of manpower in various aspect of the game development.

In this past 3 weeks, many events have taken place. Team has been reshuffled as mention on the previous posts. Some artistes have to leave us due to some personal reasons. As production was moving slow, our lead programmer, Suffiyan had to make it all the way to the office to motivate everyone in the office. It gave a new hope to the team.

Currently, most of the team members are working on it to prepare for the launch. So, we need your support to give the encouragement to the team to continue their journey to complete Encephalon. That’s all for the moment.

Thank you.