Letter From Devs

In this letter we want to explain briefly what TESS-GEN is, and what we are doing to allow the game to come to existence.

The first part explains how the game works, in a nutshell. The second part is what we are planning for it, and what we need to do to make the game grow. You can read both parts independently. We are focusing in the second one, that is the most important now.

1 - What is TESS-GEN?

TESS-GEN is not a classic RP game in the format they are commonly played in Second Life. You don't need to interact with other players if you don't want. TESS-GEN is based in classic RPG PC games like Skyrim and World of Warcraft, but strongly focused in the crafting side. In fact, we can call TESS-GEN an advanced farming game.

Created to work in layers, TESS-GEN is more an RPG system than a game itself. You choose what you want to do. You can just do farming, fishing, crafting, be a medic, an engineer. The top level of the game is the DES - DNA Engineering Subject, where you, as human, slowly turns yourself into an alien form. If you don't want to play in a sci-fi setup, not problem, the two lowest TESS-GEN levels can fit any setup: medieval, gorean, modern, 50's. TESS-GEN objects have various styles to choose from. Only the DES is pure scifi-ish (unless the space elves find a way to turn you into an abomination with magic - and, believe me, they can find a way).

But, more important, is how the game works, and which player statistics it has. The HUD controls stats like hunger, thirst, energy, and health. You can see this part like The Sims game (but without the hygiene and social part). You need to have food and drinks to maintain these stats high, also energetics and beds to sleep and recover energy.

Another stat is based in the Skyrim Survival Mods: lands can be cold and hot, and you can suffer the consequences of it if you don't have adequate clothing or some food, drink, and medicine that can help. But don't worry, this is in the normal mode of the game. You can play the Easy mode if you want, that don't has the Survival.

The game also has a skill lines tree. Instead of just leveling up (or not leveling at all like some games), in TESS-GEN you earn experience points by doing various activities (our recipes have different levels of xp!). Once you level up, you earn a Skill Point. Then you decide which skill you want to level up with this point. You choose what you want to master. Experience here is not earned in each skill, it is a global stats.

Plus, you need to choose a class. Each class have their own set of skills. Looks complicate, no? But in the end you will see that this system is natural and logical (and this is why it is adopted in a lot of RPG and strategy games).

Want to be one of the most skilled farmers in the game? Join the game as civilian with class operational and spend your skill points in the Farming skill.

A fisherman famous for its catches? Level up your Fishing skill!

Want to make power drugs and medicine to help fellow players treat injuries and diseases (yes, we have it too)? You can be a medic and level up your skills of Medicine and Bio-Chemistry.

And much, much more. TESS-GEN is a game that will be always evolving.

If you played another farming or RPG game, you will see that TESS-GEN is familiar, yet different.

Now you ask: how I can play? Where I get the HUD?

2 - The Past, the Present, the Future

Let's go back a little to understand at which level of development TESS-GEN is.

In October 2019 an exploit in an event inside the LSL scripts allowed a person to attack two of our games. At that time we already bought the sim that will be the HQ of the game (The Elven Starship), and we were working in the development of the RPG. With this attack, we stopped it to fix the damage caused to the other two games. It wasn't a work of one day, or one week. It took months to find the problems, fix them, contact Linden Lab about it. Well, TESS-GEN was stopped for 5 months.

The money we had for the maintenance of the RPG and its sim was spent fixing the other games. Since we didn't had much income during this period, the money was used to pay the sim, the server, and everything else we need to develop the games.

And, yes, we can lost the sim, that is also used as HQ of Alienum, UFOBot and TedMer. And maybe we need to throw the TESS-GEN idea in the garbage can. But we don't want it. We survived the "hacker" attack (it wasn't a real hacker, just someone with the right tools).

Now, to save TESS-GEN, we have a propose to make to those interested in the game: early access.

In game development those days, early access is becoming more and more common. Game development needs money, and one of the way developers found to fund it is releasing a paid alpha (or beta, depends of the stage the game is). This way they have money and feedback.

But what this means to players? A lot. Some games get canceled during the early access, or the devs just lost the interest (we hope we don't do it. We didn't gave up with Alienum). Others can end being a success. Most of devs gives some gifts to those that join the early access when the game is officially released.

So, we are coming here with a request.

If you already know the work made by Neeva (TESS owner and director), have a trust that she will be able to make TESS-GEN a reality the way it need to be, and want the RPG to come to be real, join the early access. This is a beta, starting with the lowest layer of the game, the farming and crafting layer. The rest will be built upon it. You will get some things free to start, but most of items will be paid. With this we hope we can have funds to continue the development of the game and, more important, maintain the sim.

Even if you don't want to join the early access, any donation to sim is mostly welcome.

If you are really interested, join the TESS-GEN Official Group