The History of Wograld

World Lore
Introduction
No one really knows when the world began. That is not the point. Did it begin in conception, or when the first sentient creatures set foot upon the sands, grasses, and rocks of the world? Did it begin with the divisions between the four races, or were they supposed to have some common origin. Elves hold that orcs are corrupted or fallen elves, while orcs, hold that elves are a dying race. Humans see undead as humans who should have crossed beyond the realm, while undead see humans as mere mortals not worthy of consideration. The history itself seems to have been lost. The last known remains destroyed by the tyrant King Cazuis of Nezrax. Although there are vague recollections of what may have gone before, held by the various races, a consensus on the past cannot be reached.

Reign of the Tyrant King
The king, in addition to many ordinances, passed nine laws immediately upon his ascension to the throne.

1.Anyone speaking any ill of him would be put to death
2.Arranged marriages only, anyone caught in any other relationships would have one partner imprisoned while the other was put to death, keeping the lovers separated for as long as possible.
3.Fighting back against monsters or defending oneself would be cause for being sent to the insane asylum, the tyrant would point to the traditional virtue of survival to justify this law.
4.All orders were to be obeyed without question, all actions were to be made without hesitation.
5.All frontiers were closed, anyone caught going outside of the known lands would be punished.
6.Many items necessary for survival could not be bought or sold without prior authorization from the king, this was to keep track of all taxes and control all commerce and economic activities.
7.All crafts guilds and guard orders had strict tests for membership, one failure of the test and a person would be barred from that guild or order for life, there were to be no second chances for anyone to try again.
8.The king also passed a law against questioning anything he said, especially with regards to these 9 laws.
9.Any disputes would be passed to either the king or one of the lesser tyrants, who would always decide in favor or himself or herself. For instance if there was a dispute over who owned a piece of property, the official would take it for himself and leave both people involved with nothing.

At first the populace was relieved to have some sort of order, unlike the random fighting that occurred before hand. Yes, it was good to be unified under one central organization that could be effectively administered. But soon people began resenting the control that the crown had over every little detail of their lives. However, few of them dared resist it openly. Fortunately, there was an answer, found in the very popular, yet weak principles that many people held as being good, but for the most part thought very little about. These were turned into strong, extreme ideals that were held together as a sort of order. The idea was that no one would be willing to go against the crown at the cost of their own live or their own limited freedom, but perhaps there would be some who would be willing to do so given the proper training.

Every clan, tribe, family and guild had a least a few members who were somewhat lacking in the common sense department. Although they tried to follow the laws set out by the crown, they would find themselves going against them, in spirit if not in letter. The concern was that sooner or later, these people would be caught and would end up in the insane asylum, imprisoned, or put to death. However, if all the fools rebelled at the same time, the crown would not be able to keep up with all the law breakers.

Therefore, the fools were given something to do in the meantime to keep them out of trouble. The shrines were places to meditate on the principles, that had become gradually stronger and more anti-life. Each one also had a dungeon, that was created to test the strength of the principle within the fool who went down into it. If the fool was able to complete the dungeon, then he or she was said to have mastered it. These nine ideas became what are now known as the nine stupidities.

The tyrant never saw any of this as the threat, since they were all obeying the laws of the land, nothing had to be bought or sold in the construction of the shrines or dungeons, and it just seemed like a good way for people to amuse themselves while the king looked for more ways to make himself more powerful and wealthier.

Within a short while, the power of the nine stupidities had grown to tremendous heights. The populace had forgotten all practical concerns and instead focus on improving their stupidity. The dungeons were always packed with new adventurers seeking to take the stupidities to new heights of foolishness. The shrines had loads of devotees offering everything from ancient reagents to broken plates up to the principles and things that they stood for.

Eventually, Cazuis caught on to what was going on. He worried that his kingdom was slipping out from underneath him, even though everything seemed to be in perfect order. He decided to make a tour of these so called shrines himself to see what the big fuss was all about. Unfortunately, that is what lead to his downfall. At the shrine of Vengeance, Cazuis was greeted by an angry mob made up of all the friends and relatives of people he had imprisoned or executed. They decided to descend on him like a hive of hornets. Since Cazuis had visited all the other shrines prior to this, he was not left with any defenses against the angry horde, who quickly, violently and brutally slain the so called tyrant king.

There was great rejoicing through out the land, and for a short while, the various races and factions put aside most of their difference to celebrate the victory over the tyrant king. This, however was short lived, and people soon found things to fight over, and the realm mostly descended back into the chaos that it had before. But there was still the order to the land, for people do not forget the stupidities so easily. They continue to hold sway over the choices and paths that a human, orc, elf or undead may take in life.

Development History
Ultima Online Replacement
Originally, we wanted a replacement for Ultima Online, the famous Mass Multi-player Online role playing game. UO was very addictive, and it could replace your whole life. This is because it has a lot of virtual world aspects as well as traditional questing and adventuring. You could go stop by a vendor mall, decorate your house and, have you friends over.

Coding in C
Looking for an easy way to make a UO like game, of all the free software projects currently out there, Crossfire seemed to have the closest match for the code base. It already had several features such as being on line, multi-player, while also featuring some very limited virtual world aspects. Still, the game is very lacking in features. Given that Crossfire is written in C, the first task was for the programmers to learn the C language, since the only thing we got in school was one lousy semester of C++ taught by teachers who didn't care about it.

The Website
That's when I realized that more programmers would have have to be recruited. Two people trying to figure it out might have been able to handle it, if there just were not so many things that needed coding. The best way to get people interested in the project would be to have a website. The main problem then was designing the website and figuring out what essential information to put on it. Obviously the whole game design philosophy would have to be put up, otherwise the game might turn into something it is not, such as an fps or an rts.

The Blog
The website was not as easy as I would have thought, First I wasted time trying to get drupal to work, then I fell in love with the idea of CSS. Finally, I decided to just throw something up there with plain old html. In the mean time, I felt that for all these many months of work, no one could see any progress. That's when I decided to start the blog to keep motivated about the project and feel that I was doing something about it every day.

Artwork
The artwork is the easy part. Unlike the rest of the game, art is easy to make in the simplistic colorful glossy cartoon pix-elated style. Not trying to get it perfect, but instead focusing on making it appealing helps. Even the lead programmer preferred doing the art to the code on some days. Art does not make you think the same way other things do. You can immerse yourself in the work and not worry about things not compiling or that you couldn't figure out how to upload something. Team Member History

Wograld is hosted on SourceForge!

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