Alicia Online (horse racing game)

[Shandra]

(I know I shared a game 4 days ago, but this is other of my favorite games along with FH)
Alicia Online is a horse racing game with anime style. In Alicia Online horse game there is a great amount of customization that is possible to make, like choosing the gender of your character, its eye color, body size and even how the character sounds like. Later you'll be able to buy some items for yourself or for your horse in the shop and give your character a more unique look. The equipment for your horse will also help to increase its stats, they're just for rent but you can choose how much time you want to have them. Although this is basically a race game, in order to get the best results from your horse, you need to take care of it and keep it healthy. After each race you'll need to feed, clean, keep them entertained and fill their stamina, otherwise you'll spend lots of money to treat them when they get injured.

This game is also a Role Playing Game (RPG), which means that while you play, you can evolve your character and your horse. With each race you earn experience that will raise your level. Then you earn points for each level that you can distribute for five stats: agility, control, speed, strength and spirit.

The main objective of this game is to evolve your character to the maximum and win the races against the other players. You can choose the type of race and they're all very different from what it's normal to see in these type of games. So, it's possible to choose Speed (that's basically a normal race), Magic (where you use spells to attack the other players), Speed Team (a normal race with two teams) and Magic Team. If you don't feel like interacting with other players, you can always choose the Solitaire Mode, where you can practice with your own timing or against bots.

As it is an anime based game, it is very colorful and with very cute graphics and many fantasy options that give it a unique look.

The actual game isn't the original and it's being recreated, so most of the functions don't work yet. You can check the progress here: https://www.facebook.com/Alicia3D

The original game was created in Korean language (and Russian I think, I'm not good with foreign languages), the actual game isn't fully translated into English, and only the basic things that also works are translated.
 
What happened with the original Alicia (a lot of text!):

It all began around 2009 that the game appeared, until February of 2014 that closed due to bad management.

Alicia was going to shut down 1.0 to make way for 2.0. But Koreans didn't want to lose their level, money, and horses, as well as the things they bought from cash shop. So the Alicia creators got discouraged and put everything up for free, as a way of making it up to their players. A year passed and they weren't making any profit out of the game. Finally, the game had to be closed.

The game was created by NTreev and published  by Gametree. It was really popular in Korea and the marketing campaign done was also huge. From a cinematic trailer to fast food restaurants, Alicia was promoted everywhere.

Alicia was a free to play game with an in-game shop that had premium items that you could get spending real life money.

From outside Korea, it was difficult to get into the game. There were restrictions, not only cause of the language, but because you needed a Korean social security number (known as KSSN) to be able to make an account. That's why most people preferred to buy an account through a website. Nothing of that is required anymore.

The 2.0 Version
2.0 was a new version of Alicia that was introduced in the last stage. It featured two new breeds (donkeys and shires), a town for everyone to meet, new ways of training, the possibility of dismounting and leading your horse and some other big changes in gameplay.
This version was completely apart from 1.0, it was a different game.

In the beginning there were problems and it had to be canceled. When it was finally launched, it was not well accepted. The interface was more difficult to manage, you had to go meet certain red haired girl in town for everything (from training to care your horse), breeding was also more complicated and it was hard to earn money.

NOTE: 2.0 won't be recreated. We will get the 1.0 version.

Regarding the actual Alicia (a lot of text, again!):

This posted below, is all said by the people that are working in the current version of Alicia Online:
Who are we?
We are not the official page of Alicia Online. We do not work in cooperation with Alicia Online team, although we would love to, of course. We got a professional programmer, designers and translators in our group, but we do not represent and we do not work together with the official team.
After the official Alicia Online server has been closed, we tried to contact Alicia Online team several times, but we always got the same official answer: "We have no plans to re-open Alicia, and unfortunately, We don't have any planning to service to overseas country".

As there seemed to be almost no chance for original Alicia Online to come back, we decided to recreate it ourselves. During this February we collected a lot of data from the original game server, while it was still working. Although most of this data is heavily encrypted and encoded, technically it contains almost everything we need to recreate the most of the original server functionality. The only problem is that this is a very hard work, which takes a lot of time.

We completely understand, that this game and all its functionality fully belongs to the Alicia developers, therefore it would be very wrong to make any profit out of it. So from the very beginning our only intention always was just to get Alicia back, we are not going to make any profit or personal gain from it. This approach makes the development much more difficult, as there are just a few people out there who got the required skills, who love the game and are able to spend most of their free time for server programming. So this process fully depends on the players support.

When Alicia comes out?
Our estimation is that for one professional programmer the whole recreation process would take not less than 6 month considering that he is working full day. If there are several programmers, the time decreases. Currently there are no people who have enough free time to do all this full-time work for free. Maybe with your help we can find some enthusiastic programmers who would help with the development.

In any case, this is not like we need to wait for all the functionality to be implemented in order to start the game. At the beginning we might have a simple version of the server, where you can just enter your ranch and ride your horse around. Later some other functions may appear, like chat and inventory, cleaning and breeding. Some time later - individual races. And if all goes really well, we will finally manage to implement the multiplayer races, as it is the most complicated part. Today we are not able to tell exactly, when the first server release will be available, or when the game will be fully implemented.

Should I pay to play?
It depends on many factors. Total expenses consist of:

- Cost of the server development (the most expensive): If we find enthusiastic programmers who would help with the development for free, then this part may also be free. If we do this completely by ourselves without any help, then it might take much longer, but it still may be free. If we hire additional programmers, then it gonna be very expensive, so this variant should not really be considered, as our server is not supposed to be commercial, so that would be the very very very last resort.

- Server maintenance (monthly payment): If we create a standard fully functional server, then we should pay for it monthly. However, it is also technically possible to create a system without any global server (similar to the torrent network). If we manage to develop such a distributed-server system, and if it works well, then this part may be almost free.

- Designers work: I guess there are many people who would do the design work for free.


How can I help?
If you are a highly skilled programmer, you have free time and you wanna help us to get Alicia back, you may join our team and help us with the server development.

Current tasks include p2p networking (c/c++), chatting system, database interface (php) and much more.

Also, if you know somebody who might be interested in such development, feel free to invite them to our group.

Some clarifications: On the post it states ''we''. The team is lead by the programmer who does the updates. Only he can do them, there the difficulty to update often if he has work to do. The rest of the team is made by helpers and translators. Is a small team.
Since we only have one programmer, we cannot pretend that all the process to rebuild Alicia happens in a blink. Programmers are very hard to find and they aren't willing to work for free. That adds more difficulty to all the recreation.

Some screenshots (they aren't mine)(from the old Alicia!):

Some gameplays from the beta version (they aren't mine):

Speed race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyDQlcmRUCI
Magic race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNFkoQplVSQ

This is the longest post I've ever made and I regret nothing XD
If you have any questions about the game ask me! I seem to be a living encyclopedia of this game 

[Reaper]

I never played this game, but it seems fun. I might check it out. ^^

[Hakumi]

Woow this was very informative, so good job c;

I remember hearing about this game around the web and I was interested in trying it out. Now I really want to try it after hearing more about it. Like anime styled games o:

[Spottedbears]

I play Alicia! While it's still under construction, racing and levelling up is very fun and gives you something to do if you're bored.

[Shandra]

I never played this game, but it seems fun. I might check it out. ^^

Woow this was very informative, so good job c;

I remember hearing about this game around the web and I was interested in trying it out. Now I really want to try it after hearing more about it. Like anime styled games o:

There's not a lot to do because multiplayer races aren't added yet, but there's a chat and I can say that sometimes it gets crazy (sometimes it remember me of FeralHeart)

And know I think that many of you have noticed where the "AO" on my username came from