Love reaches open alpha, client download now available
by Seraphina Brennan 
Sep 28th 2009 at 11:00AM
Filed under: At a glance, Betas, New titles, News items, Virtual worlds, Love
The above picture is not a lie -- it's the login screen to Eskil Steenburg's one man MMO, Love. Mr. Steenburg has just recently pushed the client into open alpha, letting users download and run the game on their PCs, but not log into the game. Not yet, at least.
However, running the client is quite important, as it will send Eskil a few important statistics. The client will collect the name of your video card, if it supports the three OpenGL extensions he uses, and it will count how many people are interested so he can go invest in some servers without going overboard. So if you're interested in eventually playing the game, you can jump on over to his website, Quel Solaar, and grab yourself the open alpha of Love to "register your interest" by running the client on your machine. Plus, you get treated to an awesome look at Love's beautiful dynamic graphics.
However, running the client is quite important, as it will send Eskil a few important statistics. The client will collect the name of your video card, if it supports the three OpenGL extensions he uses, and it will count how many people are interested so he can go invest in some servers without going overboard. So if you're interested in eventually playing the game, you can jump on over to his website, Quel Solaar, and grab yourself the open alpha of Love to "register your interest" by running the client on your machine. Plus, you get treated to an awesome look at Love's beautiful dynamic graphics.
Just as importantly, the open alpha gives us a sneak peek into some of the ways Love will work and how the payment structure will be implemented. Love's "create an account" menu shows that the game will have a subscription cost, which will be in the form of vouchers. Purchasing vouchers will let you add time to your account, allowing you to play longer.
However, you can also get game time by referring your friends, which currently nets 5 days for you, the referrer, and 24 hours for the person adding your name down as the referrer.
Love is also supporting "buddy accounts", an account that will only work when the main account is online. During your account creation, you can make a second account for your friend. Give him the account name and password, and he can play for free when you're online and playing. Certainly not a bad deal at all, if you ask us!
So, if you're interested, hop on over and download the client. It's only 65 megs! Much, much smaller than today's 2 gig monster games.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian! said on 11:25AM 9-28-2009
Shame he uses GameGuard though (I kid)
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enterhavoc said on 11:28AM 9-28-2009
65 megs? my download (i got it almost immediately after he posted, random chance rss update) was 4.5MB
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Brian! said on 11:31AM 9-28-2009
Very cool looking client. There is some noise that is part of the look, which I think flickers too much. I would prefer if somehow that was softened a bit. But I dig the organic look to be sure.
Looking forward to what comes next!
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Paul said on 12:13PM 9-28-2009
More than anything, I am interested in the "buddy account" system. I would like more info on how that works, does your buddy get a full on client and game experience as long as you are logged in? That would be very spouse friendly, nothing better than a freebie to show the wife what she is missing. This guy needs to patent that fast, I could snag a bunch of people on free side to many different games if that kind of system was implemented on some games.
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Brian! said on 12:53PM 9-28-2009
My god. If he can patent a buddy system like that, I think I might just have to burn down the patent office at night.
If I ever heard of a case to revamp the patent system! That is a great idea for a buddy/spouse system. Why can't the world just let ideas like that be part of the culture. Reminds me of the one-click shopping patent, or patenting gestures on a phone. *sigh*
Now, his engine - that he should patent and deserves it. Very cool work and far more than just a simple idea.
royale said on 2:19PM 9-28-2009
If I'm understanding the buddy account correctly, you want to allow a second account free access to the game as long as the first one is logged in? Sounds helpful to get a friend or spouse into the game, but most people would just use it to dual box.
UltimateQ said on 1:14PM 9-28-2009
Neat. I may have to check this out. Love has continually piqued my interest.
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Aetrix said on 3:50PM 9-28-2009
2 gigs is a monster game? Maybe in 2001...
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Kamokazi said on 4:51PM 9-29-2009
Age of Conan is only 2 gigs. Or about 20000000000 bytes. Wait a second..how many zeros again...Oh shi-
M said on 3:31PM 9-28-2009
The Buddy account idea is so brilliant (no wonder the big companies haven't thought of it, they're too busy "following the leader" in lock-step i.e WoW). You could make a serious positive effect in these games with this idea, these being social games, with strong grouping, it's so smart.
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Dblade said on 4:42PM 9-28-2009
I'm wondering why everyone thinks a buddy system is a great idea. I don't think anything could be more RMT friendly than letting people have a second client for free as long as the first one is on. Might as well say "Dualbox me!" on the splash screen while you are at it.
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Kamokazi said on 4:56PM 9-29-2009
This why your 8oz glass with 4oz of water is half empty, and my 8oz glass with 4oz of water is half full.
The RMT folk won't care either way. The cost for a second account is negligible to them. The labor to pay someone to play is much more expensive than the subscription. It can also get twice as many of their accounts closed and assets lost much more easily.
There are far more people who would benefit from this than those who would abuse it.
Dblade said on 8:56PM 9-29-2009
Its not that the cost is neglible, its that you just gave them double capacity for the cost they do play. You made a problem worse, and its not just RMT. A buddy system is discouraging paid subscriptions to your game.
Unless you limit the buddy system to a trial period or put more restrictions than just playing when your buddy is on, you will not see most of those accounts converted to paying customers. If anything its bad just because all the Main account has to do is not log off, and the buddy account can play as long as he likes for free, with no way to counter it. Even with automatic signouts due to inactivity you can gimmick up running around in a circle or something.
It's not a good idea for many reasons, the RMT one was just the first I thought of.
Kamokazi said on 5:05PM 9-30-2009
Pessimism again....
There will always be people who exploit systems.
But this will be a benefit to a lot of people too.
Business is about risk.
So you throw all that together, and you take the risk that more people will subscribe because of the buddy system than those who will exploit it or would otherwise pay for an account.
You might be right. I really doubt anyone has a good prediction of what will happen. But we need MMOs to try new things, even if they sound dumb, because you can never know what will happen for sure until you try.
myr said on 10:11PM 9-28-2009
Wow. Most innovative graphics I've seen in a game in recent years. I like it. The only problem I see is, as someone above posted, the noise during daytime movement is a little much. I could see myself getting a headache if I was watching that for hours on end.
Note my download was 4.5mb as well, and yeah 2 gigs is a tiny game by today's standards :p
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jpo said on 1:59AM 9-30-2009
Don't do this people.
About 5 minutes ago I ran it and it seems to have done something nasty to my laptop. The video went all crazy, crashed my PC....and now all I get is a black screen when I reboot.
Stay away....it's not worth taking the chance.
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Nollind Whachell said on 4:25PM 10-02-2009
I love this game. No pun intended. It can be extremely disorientating at first, especially if no one is around to help you. However, if you have some settlement members nearby to help you, they can quickly help you make sense of what's going on.
In the little time, I've played it, I've explored the world, encountered the enemy AI who shot at me, and found various tokens which give your settlement new abilities. For example, I found a dive gear token and set it up at our base. One assigned to one of my four slots, I could then jump into the water (which normally kills you, as you drown) and started swimming around the world and exploring newer areas (even finding another different token in a shallow water area).
I also love the visuals. Totally reminds me of playing the original Quake game for the first time a long time ago. The feeling of exploring a whole new world is pretty cool.
BTW have no issues with framerates (ATI 4850 card).
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