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Dear Shinobi, Today, we are happy to celebrate the 1st year of development of Nin Online in it's current form! To celebrate, I've written out a short article in hopes of getting you to feel my joy. Back in the days Back in 2006, when I was just 12, I got really into the Naruto series. I thought to myself "how cool would it be to have an online game where you could be a ninja in this universe". This was way before I even knew what copyright laws were. I had set too high expectations for myself and started a community in which I could not satisfy, and I ended up disappointing them time and again. In 2009, I announced the end of the game's development. I knew I wouldn't have been able to finish the game with my abilities. I was 16 at that point. It's been 1 year since the day I opened Adobe Photoshop and re-envisioned the game of my dreams as it is today. On this day a year ago, I restarted the project which I had attempted to create as a kid, the game which back then I realized I was too incompetent to create, with the promise in one final email to my supporters that "I'll bring back the project one day, and make it work." A ray of hope With the knowledge and experience I had gained in the years following Nin Online's death, I decided to bring back the game. I didn't expect much, I set my targets low. I just wanted to make a simple RPing game as a tribute to the old times. I opened my usual design tools and started pixeling away at what would now be the basis of Nin Online's new visual style. Overwhelming support Then came everyone in this community. A large community of members flocked here and put their hopes in me and my new attempt. We managed to launch a great, successful first alpha test where hundreds of members logged in at once to explore the world developed by our team. An overwhelming amount of people with faith in our team have donated to the game to keep the project funded, allowing us to have conveniences such as a server to work with 24/7 and to commission artwork for the game. Helping hands from Eclipse community ensured the smoothness of the alpha, with people familiar with the engine providing us support in our time of need and offering support to the members of the forum as well! Determination This support from our community of course powered our determinations to create a great game and to continue to grow our vibrant community here on the forum and here we are a year later, with our developers working hard at creating content and features for the game and our moderators managing the community and all it's spunk. Words of thanks No words can express my gratitude, which goes out to all the long-standing members of the community, the ninjas here who have stayed with us since the start of the project. The whole team is thankful for your support, and we hope that you continue to do so for as long as it takes for us to create this game! Personally, I am moved by the enthusiasm that everyone has shown since day one. Your community and game There has been so many occasions in which the opinions and ideas of the community members has impacted the decisions made on the game itself, and as such, your criticism (though I make myself out to be a authoritarian leader) has shaped the game to what it is and will be in the years to come! Alpha Test 3 Now for the announcement you've all been anticipating. We are set to open the game world for testing again on the 31st July for all Gold/Silver Ninjas. This will be in a matter of weeks! There is a lot of new features and contents, and we've refined out base systems a lot, ironing out old bugs. However, as we anticipate new bugs and problems, we will be weeding it out to our biggest supporters, the Gold/Silver Ninjas before opening it to everyone. Once we've done substantial tests with this closed group and deemed the game stable enough for an open release, we will open the servers to everyone. I hope everyone is as excited as we are! Sincerely, Rory

Rory's Development Log #5 Hokage Building / Office Hey everybody! For the past two days, I've been live streaming my progress on Join.me, it's been pretty fun, having company while I do my work. It's always been my goal to have an open development process, for everyone to watch as we create the game, and this is just one way I can think of that will accomplish that. The link to my Join.me is.. https://join.me/ninonline But I might move to a Twitch.tv Livestream soon, because it's free, and I can have audio on it. It took two days to finish this, but I'm finally done with the biggest building so far, which is the Hokage Office/building. As promised, I'm going to work on the Konoha Hot Springs next. This will be a fun add, especially when we release the game late this month. Note about the "Release" The release we talk about late/end July will be a very basic demo/alpha version with little content to keep you playing. But for the hardcore fans who are staying around watching the development. You'll have a nice little place to chill and hang about rather than the forum Shoutbox! The releases will also be prone to wipes. Without further ado, here are some screenshots of a test map with the Hokage building in it. Once again, thank you for all the members who were with me while I worked on this! If I do choose to live stream what I do next, I'll post the link in the Shoutbox. So stay alert for that!

Rory's Development Log #3 Will of Fire Monument / Konoha Memorial Training Grounds WIP Hey everyone, Here on time to provide another development log. I'd like to mention that any tiles I do, I create bearing in mind making it as re-usable and ready for in-game use as possible. I normally go through 3-4 hours of spriting, plug the tiles straight into map editor, and it will work perfectly because I had already thought it through. In the past, I used to create buildings and tiles more like creating mock ups. I wanted to get it to look good, not bearing in mind the scale for the game, the size, whether I could divide it into 32x32 tiles like I needed to. This led to a whole bunch of useless graphics that needed rework before it saw any practical use. This time round, I've done the Will of Fire / Konoha Memorial. To explain what I just mentioned above, look at this.. I use those walls for a lot more than you see right there. The graves are actually using the same base. So only one 32x32 box is changed, but there can be 8 variations with those few tiles above. The stairs are reused a lot as well. The curved background is a pretty unique structure, so it's only going to be used once. Alright, so on with the Training Grounds. In the Naruto series, you have a bunch of training grounds, a lot of them being very dark looking. Like the forest of death. The one which I've done the entrance for is.. http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Zeroth_Training_Ground The darker tileset is done for.. http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Mount_Jofuku But they will also be used for many others. Like the famous Chunnin Exam Forest of Death. Now that gate looks a little plain eh? Well I have two signs I plan on re-using else where, that I made into separate tiles. Together they will look something like this. Well that's all for today's entry! Thank you for your support, and do leave comments and your opinion thus far in this thread.