John VanderZwet (Paratus), Programmer/UI

Hey there!

I’m John, Star Vault’s UI guy and web developer, although most of you know me as Paratus. Your new community manager, Black Opal, has been cracking the whip so we’re getting these developer blogs back on track.

While most of you probably think of me as being the “launcher coding guy”, I’ve been working with SV in other areas for a very long time. Lately most of my time has been spent in UI development, working on a bunch of new stuff for Dawn as well as what will in the near future become the total UI overhaul. In addition to UI stuff I handle the launcher, web development and some general programming work.

As I write this I’m hard at work on more user interface stuff! Most of the flash UI that is introduced into Mortal Online comes from me and is integrated by myself or one of the SV programmers. Erik and Mats take care of the graphics though, as like most programmers I have absolutely no artistic talent.

While we have a few pieces of flash UI in now, such as the library window and parts of the HUD, you haven’t seen anything even close to the cool-factor of what’s in the works. For example, books and paper where you can write notes or entire stories and trade them with other players. When you send a message via mail with a tangible item and not a magical message written in the mail interface like other games, interception of information becomes a real risk.

Books aren’t as simple as having a picture of a book or page which you can write on, though. Like most things Mortal, we want depth and detail! If you have a blank book you’ll also need inks to write in it. Ink is permanent, so you’ll need to be careful about what you’re writing as a mistake means tearing the page out of the book (don’t worry though, you’ll still have that page as a separate item) and starting anew.

You’ll see this feature with Dawn, and this is just the tip of what’s being done with the flash user interface. I can’t wait for everyone to see what we have in store!

The launcher is getting some much-needed love with Dawn, as well! You’ll be seeing a very big overhaul of the launcher including both a new user interface as well as an entirely new patching engine running behind the scenes. This means that those crazy long patch installation times will soon be no-more, file corruption will be very rare and the whole patching process will be both fast and more user-friendly!

I’ve always really enjoyed working on Mortal Online and being a part of this great community, but right now even more so than ever. This is really an exciting time for Mortal Online; things are picking up in an incredible way and there are some great things on the horizon!

/Paratus