Impressive Title
| Impressive Title | |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | KovuLKD |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing |
Impressive Title was a free-roaming 3D Role-playing video game game inspired by The Lion King, created by KovuLKD. The game allowed for exploration of a massive world with a wide variety of biomes to explore, from a frozen tundra to a roiling volcano. Players could form and join into prides which could claim territory and fight other prides for the control of their territory, or go hunting to win prizes such as accessories to customize their characters, such as collars or decorative bubbles.
Players could create and customize their characters with features such as manes, wings, tails, and decorative tufts, to name a few. Members had a wide variety of settings they could initially choose for their characters, allowing for customization of the head, manes, tails, and markings. However, some manes were limited to certain head types. The player could then choose to alter the coloration of these features, changing aspects such as their eye or fur color. The player could also add markings to their characters that could be distributed to different subsections: Body, Head, and Tail.
The successor to Impressive Title is FeralHeart, which was released in January 2011.
Gameplay
Players controlled their "character" in the game world, either in "First Person" view, or in a "Third Person View". The player could explore the many biomes of the world, hunt prey, and interact with other members. The game had no storyline, being marketed as a virtual world similar to Second Life. The game was free to play, with no paid subscription required.
Once an account was created in-game, the player was allowed to create multiple characters on that account. Members had the option to switch from different "dimensions" (dims), or servers, with the ability to private message throughout these dims. The game was mod-friendly, with a feature that enabled members to create and share user-created maps, as well as meshes and 3D objects to add to maps via software such as a Blender file converter. Members could also create their own personal 'campaign' through coding. There was even a feature that enabled players to submit custom-made skins for their individual character (called presets), typically created using software such as Photoshop or GIMP, to KovuLKD, which would then be submitted to the game server. Once the user started the game via a launcher, the preset skin would be seen by almost every player in game.
Players could hunt for prey such as gazelles, hawks, hares, fish, and other varieties of wildlife, as well as mythological creatures like dragons. Hunting allowed players to obtain objects to equip on characters such as items (Claws, Reindeer antlers, et cetera), and certain abilities. After a later update, pets were added, which would follow the character, aid in hunting, and even enable them to tame other prey.
Development
When Impressive Title was first released, it was a simple single-level adventure game for one of KovuLKD's friends, but soon, Impressive Title became a MMO game for all to join. Impressive Title became popular after it was announced on The Lion King Fan-Art Archive for the first time in 2008. After its release, the game faced slow but consistent growth, the forum itself culminating at one point in 11,755 registered users.
Criticism
There was significant criticism for the game being based on Disney's The Lion King. KovuLKD denied any association between the game and The Lion King, and prevented any public maps/worlds based on the universe of The Lion King. However, everyone was allowed to roleplay as a Lion King character.
Also, there was much drama with items as players argued and scammed each other for items. As a result, Feral Heart had no item drops. Items are only accessories that are equipped in the character creation screen.
Security issues
Before the release of version 0.4, players could access the games coding. This caused major issues in the game such as:
- Account hacking
- Preset stealing
- "Huge" and "Tiny" characters.
After the incidents, from version 0.5 and up, a new server was made specifically to store player information, meaning that data was no longer stored client-side to make the game more secure. In the multiple servers that now exist, there are little security issues.
In June 2009, a hacker attempted to infiltrate the game's servers, prompting a temporary shut-down of Impressive Title. When the game went back online, Razmirz closed off access to his servers from any members except for KovuLKD and himself.
Editing files
Players could still access non-encrypted files in the game after the update, such as text files that had the spawn rate of animals. These values were not server-sided, and one person editing their own values in their own file would affect that map for everyone on the channel. Adding in a creature that isn't supposed to spawn in that map originally would lead to the creatures appearing as crystals to others who hadn't put that creature in the map file.
A popular use for editing spawn rates for creatures was to go in the cave next to the default map and spawn tons of creatures that dropped rare items like the bird that dropped the Helmet. The cave was small and the birds would get stuck in one area and couldn't fly high, making it easy to kill many at once to try and get an item drop. Spawning tons of creatures like this caused server lag. The birds would appear as hundreds of flying crystals all around the cave.
Players could also use a similar method to edit another file to create water on their maps. This didn't affect other players however. One could fill their default map with water, and swim up it, but the water wouldn't exist for the other players on that map. It would appear as though the editor was flying, even though they had no wings. They could also create invisible floating platforms, which also didn't affect other players, the editor could stand in mid air where others couldn't.
Shutdown
As of early 2010, Impressive Title has been shut down. It was stated initially that Impressive Title would return, albeit on weaker servers. However, KovuLKD has officially stated that Impressive Title will not return, leaving FeralHeart as its successor. Impressive Title's maps, items, and some markings were not put in Feral Heart because of copyright issues. KovuLKD would need permission from the respective makers to put them in Feral Heart, because it is a different game than Impressive Title, so the previous permissions didn't apply.
By mid-2011, KovuLKD made available a download:
This is the source code for Impressive Title, last versioned 0.7, I think.You're free to use it to host your own server of the game, or for any purposes.[1]
Private and public impressive title servers were opened.
References
- ↑ IT 0.76, final release by Kovu posted July 29, 2011 by Slycan to kitopen forum. Retrieved March 31, 2013.