Frequently Asked Questions
What are the limitations of the alpha/beta releases?
These are just initial version for preliminary testing of real-world multiplayer use so we could get some comments and 'stress testing' as we finish enhancing it. Registration codes and the list server are already active and capable of handling multiplayer users, the major concern is with the actual player data itself - since the world formats IS changing an existing 'alpha/beta' release player WILL PROBABLY NOT WORK on the next release (so you'd have to re-create your player). Also if you've received a multiplayer 'alpha' or 'beta' code from Author, it will expire in a month or two (NOTE: Actual 'purchased' registration codes WILL NOT EXPIRE and will be good for at least a year).
What new features are being added? and what does the future hold
BETTER GRAPHICS & ANIMATIONS! And of course more monsters, more attributes, more commands, smarter monsters, more (and better) images/sounds, more spells, more world customization ability. Faster logic, and ANYTHING COOL that players want to contribute! All of these things are planned. Far away in the future? 4.0? We hope to "break on through" to the surface - what is it going to look like?
What happens after I register?
After you check (or credit card) clears you will get a registration code, we also add your ID & code to our database of registered users that can use the list services. Once you enter the registration code info into your installed version of Lords of Irongate you can activate portals to travel to other multi-player worlds, or you can enable others to visit your world (activate server mode). NOTE: You DO NOT need to download another copy of Lords of Irongate the free version is complete, also the registration key is good for all future releases/updates to Lords of Irongate for at least a year. Guard your registration info! We'll disable your list service account on abuses (multiple use of 1 code is not permitted).
If I turn on portals to allow other players in my world (server mode), how do they know how to find me?
If you have server mode active, when you enter the game the server starts up and registers itself with our central list server. Other players who teleport through portals will request a list of available worlds from our list server then automatically direct connect to one of them. NOTE: In both cases, to be added to list server as available world, OR to obtain a list for teleport, YOU MUST be a registered owner of Lords of Irongate.
If a friend has an earlier version (v3.0 alpha 2 installed) and I have another version (v3.0 beta 1 installed) with new database of images/spells/items. How can he play on my world?
He can't, it would be impossible since our list server would NOT hand out an incompatible list of available worlds for him to travel to. He could continue playing in his universe of v3.0 alpha 1 worlds, or upgrade to beta 1 and possibly enter your world (assuming he is a high enough player with some control of where a portals will lead).
I've turned on server mode and no players are coming to visit my world?
Five possible reasons come to mind immedietly:
(1) You didn't register with us, or violated your license agreement by using the same code on multiple machines at the same time [write us e-mail and we'll confirm this], or
(2) Your machine's IP is not accessible by internet [ie... you're behind a firewall or NAT router which means you need to change your hardware configuration], or
(3) You're just picking a slow traffic time, or
(4) The worlds have moved on to another universe and you're still in the old one - ie.. upgrade to the latest version?, or lastly
(5) High Server to Client ratio with round robin dilema - remember since each LOI client is capable of also being a server it is possible that with 10 players each could be running a world and yet playing in a different world - no 2 on the same world! We ran into that a few times during testing with 3 players all playing on each others world (none at home, and never 2 on 1 world). As LOI gains popularity we expect players to outnumber servers and potential visitors will increase to every server world. BE PATIENT & TELL YOUR FRIENDS TO PLAY!
I've turned on the portals to travel to other worlds but when I enter I teleport randomly in my world?
This happens in a couple cases:
(1) No list of available worlds [servers] were available - which could possibly be because www.enchantedgoods.com is temporarily down? but if you're reading this I doubt it.
(2) You're in a zone with few or no servers (available worlds) at the moment, try changing to a zone further away [Top selection in multi-player settings dialog from world options panel], or
(3) You got a list of available worlds from the list server and the machine you tried to connect with was down so it put you back to your world, this is the most likely reason and can happend since there is some time between heartbeats from a world server and our list server when the world could have gone down and the list server hadn't detected it yet, Lastly
(4) If you are also running in server mode - you could have teleported to yourself! lucky you...
What happened to Lords or Irongate 1 & 2?
They did exist and were both done by the same author however Lords or Irongate I originally came out for only the Amiga back in 1993 and was mostly text based written in C. It was expanded to be a BBS game in 1994 for both Amiga & IBM/PC based machines and then known as Lords or Irongate II. Shortly thereafter the Internet gained popularity and BBS's were mostly phased out and replaced with web servers. It wasn't until recently (late 2001) when the author decided to re-write the game in pure Java as a stand-alone multi-threaded client-server Application with graphics.
I keep seeing the same monsters/items, are there tougher monsters in the lower levels?
Absolutely, new and wonderful monsters & treasures down below, OR through the portals! The rewards truly become much greater too. Initially there is a cut-off around level 200 where the monsters/item rewards have basically 'maxed out'. You can continue to wander to level 30,000+ if you want variety or to find ones that haven't yet appeared (always a random chance) but don't expect the monsters to be much different 'in toughness' from those seen at level 200.
Is player killing allowed?
It is our belief that worlds should be highly configurable by the Lords and that includes the rules (but not the rewards). As such, we had planned to make player killing (PK) a configurable option that can be turned off for any world. However, it is currently available and anyone can (in theory) kill anyone else - doing so IS discouraged and we ensured it will yield little reward. In addition, remember a Lord could always exist and he ALWAYS has "Home field advantage" (given that he/she has no network packet delay to contend with).
What happens when my player dies? Do I have to start all over?
NO, you will loose experience points, items, possibly gold, and be teleported back home. But it is not permanently lethal. Experience Levels are significantly important in that once you achieve a new level (with new spells, skills, etc..) that LEVEL of mastery is permanent to your player - any experience points ABOVE that can be lost, but you can't go from being a 4th level wizard to a 3rd level just for dying. Where it works against you is that you can loose a random number of items EQUAL to your experience LEVEL. So a 4th level wizard, may loose up to 4 items (randomly picked) for dying. Ooops, there goes your Staff of fireball!
Can I design and configure my own world, with my own images, items, monsters/sounds?
YES, and NO. But to answer this lets seperate the world structure (layout & location of items/beings) from the actual resources (item/beings, their attributes, images & sound). Regarding world structure - we want everyone to be able to configure the parameters and eventually design their world to the highest degree practical, we also realize that in nature there is a certain 'randomness' that cannot be ignored and must yield some control to it for each world/monsters, and especially treasure.
As for what resources are available for the 'creation process' to locate. Those must be handled differently since they are NOT transfered between clients-server machines when traveling through portals. They must be common for all linked machines (and they are) for each release of Lords. Lords uses its own custom SIMPLE database system to manage all the resources and it is easy (for us) to add/modify them without having to rebuild the code however for anyone to use them, everyone needs to have the same resources. Therefore we are considering publishing the specifications (possibly for the more ambitious and elite users) allowing them to submit updates to us which we can evaluate, combine & put into future releases so the game can quickly grow to thousands possibly millions of items, monsters, spells, rooms, structures, ideas, etc...
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