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In the last weekend of july the beta of A Tale in the Desert started and Teppy was kind enough to let me be a part of that beta. The first beta lasted for 24 hours and was followed last friday with a short playing session in which eGenesis, the developers of A Tale in the Desert, showed the game of to some visitors. Here is my first beta report for you to read. As there are a lot of things to cover in the game I'll only cover a small part now, which deals with construction.

A Tale in the Desert Beta Report, part 1

First some introduction
For those of you not knowing what A Tale in the Desert is about, you might want to read up on one of the previous installments of this diary which featured the game. For those of you who just want a short intro I can tell you that A Tale in the Desert has no combat at all. The game takes place in the time that the Egyptians ruled. These ancient Egyptians once wrote about the Seven Disciplines of Man: Leadership, Thought, The Human Body, Architecture, Worship, Conflict and Art&Magic. You can take on challenges in one or more of these disciplines and evolve yourself as a character.
However it's virtually impossible to accomplish all challenges just by yourself. You have to negotiate and work together with others to accomplish even a single challenge.
Furthermore there are projects you can participate in (or start yourself) and you can change the game yourself by petitioning a change, or vote for somebody elses petition.

A strange but interesting game from the looks of it... or not?

And there I am
After downloading the beta client I started it up and found myself in ancient Egypt as a simple female peasant named Myrthos. You can change your appearance in the game by choosing if you want to play as a woman or a man and select your skin an clothing colours. None of your selections have any effect on the gameplay so you can choose whatever you want. As a side note I might add that A Tale in the Desert use their own OpenGL engine which default plays in 800x600, with 32 bit colors. But also larger sizes are available (although unsupported)

You start the game as a woman		But you can change your appearance, skin and clothing colors

You start near the school of architecture. In this school you can learn several skills, that come in handy when constructing several items. Ranging from something simple as a brick rack (used to create 6 bricks) up to something more complex such as a pottery.
Learning something will cost you something as well. In this school they are simple things, such as wood, which can be pulled from trees. once you learned something you can create a project to construct what you just learned.

My first project
As an example let's take the construction of a brick rack. to construct it you'll need 4 boards. You get a board when you plane one from wood. To do that you need a wood plane. A wood plane is made from bricks and a stone blade. Bricks can be made by adding mud, straw and sand together. Mud can be found near the river, sand can be found on multiple locations and straw can be made by plucking grass and then dropping the grass on the ground. When you wait a while the grass turns into straw.
Now that you have mud, straw and sand you can construct bricks in a brick rack..... Oops, so you are constructing a brick rack, but first you need a wood plane, for which you need bricks, which are made in a brick rack, which you don't have as you are constructing it.
That looks like a problem that can not be solved... or can it?

Well actually it can be solved very easily, there are enough players that have already constructed a brick rack and let you use theirs, to make the bricks. Or you can use the ones from Pharaoh, who is actually Teppy, the Lead Designer of A Tale in the Desert. He constructed several wood planes and brick racks throughout Egypt to give you a head start.

When you want to learn something you go to school		And here I am standing before my first Kiln

Ok, now that you can use someone else's brick rack you can create some bricks (6 at a time). Bricks need to dry as mud is wet, so it will take a small amount of time, after which the bricks turn gray indicating that they are finished. Once you have enough bricks, it's time to forge a stone blade.

Stone blades are made from slates. By carefully using two slates on each other it is possible to forge a blade. However it's difficult so not every try is successful. Slates can be found near the water, you'll need at least two, but chances are that the first time it will not work, so you'll have to find more probably. As you make stone blades, try to make some more and you'll find out that your skill in forging these stone blades becomes better and better, just like what would happen in real life when you practice something enough.

So now you can create your wood plane. position it somewhere and start to make boards. You only need wood now to do that, which can be pulled from trees. You need four boards to make a brick rack. But similar to when you were forging your stone blade, you are not so skilled in the beginning, so you might break your blade rendering the wood plane useless, until you replace the stone blade. After a while and enough broken stone blades, you'll find out that you can make several boards without braking the stone blade to often. Your skills are improving.
Once you have four boards you can create a brick rack. Awesome isn't it?

Larger projects
There are several projects you can start. I also managed to make a Kiln, which is made from stoned and is used to dry wet firestones (never mind what they are made of) and with these firestones you can make a True Kiln and with a True Kiln you can.... uh... do something else :).

There are so many projects you can go into that it's not feasible to do them all. It might be better to specialize in one or a few directions. The idea is that you should work together with others to accomplish larger projects.

DontHaveACow gave me my very needed last jug of water, so I could build a mine		A snapshot of the first mine I've build

One of these larger projects is constructing a mine. You can learn how to construct one by going to the university of architecture and make a donation there. In order to be able to make a mine, you need a lot of wood and bricks (something like 2500 pieces each if memory serves me correctly). it's almost impossible to create that, but everybody who is interested in constructing a mine will donate whatever they can. Actually, when I got to the university the mining skill was already completed and I could learn it immediately. To construct a mine you need some simple things such as bricks and boards but also 10 water. Now this is more complicated then it sounds. You get only one jug from the school of architecture, so how do I get the other 9 jugs or pots. One way would be to create a pottery, so that you can create the pots. But I choose to run around and ask other players if I could have theirs.... well... maybe I was running around an begging :).

You can zoom out very far, to get a nise oversight		And this is Mystery from Massive Multiplayer.org, hanging on to his jugs

Actually I found several players willing to give me their water, jugs, pots or whatever. I even ran into Mystery from Massive Multiplayer.org, but he wouldn't let me have his jug.

Well you need the jug to get water and create clay with it, and when it's an essential item and you only get the one jug than depending on what you are trying to build you really need it, so I decided not to jump on him and steal it (which is impossible by the way) and ask others for theirs. After begging around a lot I finally had my 10 water and got myself a mine.

I planted the thing were there was not a lot of great stuff in the ground apparently (but it's not possible to know that yet before) so it only delivers dirt, stones, emeralds, ruby and quarts. I found not a lot of use for them yet, except donating some of them to be able to learn the skill required to be able to sense what the best place is to plant a mine. Maybe there are other things to spend it on, but I didn't find it yet.

Wrapping up
To some this might sound like a lot of toruble to get into. But let me assure you this is GREAT fun! And this is only the beginning the game offers so much and I've only touched a small part yet.
If you haven't played the beta yet then sign up now on the forum of A Tale in the Desert and get a feeling for the game yourself.