Unveiled: Camelot Unchained Newsletter #43 - City State Entertainment View this email in your browser Share Tweet +1 Team Tidings -by Max Porter Light your fireworks, and keep the fuses burning! This month, we announced the date for Beta 1, and it’s July 4th!



How’s that for an opening, folks? Check out the announcement video with Mark and Andrew HERE to hear them answer a bunch of questions from the Community about the process and the progress, and forgive us if we get a bit giddy about this. It’s been one heck of a journey to get to this point, but we couldn’t be more excited about getting here.



Even more than excitement, though, I’d say the overwhelming feeling we have is one of thanks. We’re so incredibly thankful for all of you who began this journey with us or have joined along the way. Your patience, support, and enthusiasm for the Beta of Camelot Unchained has kept us going, even through the darkest times of re-abilitation and other challenges. Next, it will be our turn to make good on our promises and justify your faith in the game. We hope you hop into Beta 1 with us for an early taste of the RvR madness to come!



We’ve been saying for a while that we’ve been able to see the build coalescing in to an actual game. On July 4th, 2018 (yes, this year, don’t say we left ourselves that loophole), we’ll have a chance to truly prove that.



The Jameses (James Koo and James Brown) put up a countdown timer on our website. And here the 100% accurate representation of our engineers working hard on the build for Beta 1: Of course, even with all this excitement, we have marched on with our weekly schedule of streams, showing you everything from impressive creative work by our artists and programmers to our latest updates and news. The streams are fun for us, but they are also very important, as we always want to be as informative as possible for our Backers and fans, especially as we head into Beta. If you want to catch up on any missed streams, they can always be found on our Twitch and YouTube channels. For a good read of our news, as well as our weekly Top Tenish updates, check out the News section of our website, and our User Stories to check on our progress.



Let’s get deeper into the newsletter. Don’t forget to click on the “view this email in your browser” link on the top right to see the whole thing! Please read on and enjoy this, the forty-third issue of Unveiled. Hot Topics

The latest topics of discussion on the forums right now include the Beta 1 start date announcement of course, theorycrafting on the body part system, as well as our many tests lately!



Backers, come and join the discussion in the Forums on our website to bring your thoughts and ideas to the table! The latest topics of discussion on the forums right now include the Beta 1 start date announcement of course, theorycrafting on the body part system, as well as our many tests lately!Backers, come and join the discussion Thank You There were so many goodies gifted to us this month! Thank you all for keeping smiles on our faces as we devoured the delicious treats!



Many thanks to Patrick, who arranged to have these fruits sent to the East Coast office: Thanks to Arrobee and Mydnitte, who brought all these candies to the office in their own hands! Many thanks to Ludovic, who had these egg-cellent cadbury eggs sent to us! Thanks to our old friend Failboat, who sent us so much popcorn that we will probably still be picking it from our teeth next year! Big, amazing, and delicious! Many thanks to Poxer for these awesome hats and pillows with the classic Town State Leisure logo on them! They have taken up permanent residence on desks and our streaming couch, where we can proudly celebrate that hilarious scraper site’s version of our announcement. (For an explanation of that joke, check out the MassivelyOP article.) And last but not least by any means, we’d like to thank our “Rich Creepy Uncle,” as this Backer would like to be known, for the amazing pizza lunch sent to us on a recent Friday! Fuel for the fires of development, I assure you, rich creepy uncle! Here’s some love from Tyler: Look What You Did Our Community Manager, Brian, ran a month-long weapon design contest! Thank you all for your amazing submissions. As this Unveiled goes out, there’s still a little time left to submit before the contest ends, so get your entry in via the Backer Forums (check the Fan Art section)! Dose of Design -by Ben Pielstick Quality Combat

For a long time now at CSE, we’ve been investing heavily in getting combat right for CU. It’s a significant challenge! As most of you know, going through a major revision to the way our ability system was implemented (which we’ve termed ‘re-abilitation’) has been one of the main reasons it has taken Camelot Unchained longer than expected to start Beta testing. Since we’ve now announced that Beta will be starting in just a few short months, we’ve had to come a long way with our combat gameplay. I thought this would be a good time to provide a bit of an update on how things are going, and what our goals are for combat from a behind-the-scenes perspective as we move into the start of Beta testing.



After re-abilitation, the ability system took quite a while to regain all of its previous functionality and to start gaining new features. During this period, a lot of work also went into the syntax of ability definitions. As the syntax improved, ability components that were implemented early on were structured quite differently from those that were implemented later. While expedient for internal testing, this inconsistency in syntax was difficult to work with, and had a tendency to introduce bugs when making changes, so recently we’ve gone through all the ability components for all the classes and updated them to the latest syntax. We’ve also taken a lot of the common concepts utilized by multiple ability components and moved them into shared path references. This means there is less duplicated data within skills, leaving far fewer places errors can occur, and ensuring that the ones that do have errors should be far easier to track down.



While a lot of time has gone into the technical side of the ability system, we’ve also been working on the aesthetic side. To focus in on quality, we’ve started off first by taking a close look at the premade starting abilities each class begins with. By temporarily limiting each class to a specific specific set of weapons, we’re making sure each ability has fitting animations for the character, both while stationary and in motion. We’re also working on improvements to particle effects and sounds, giving each class the attention it needs to make sure all of our ability effects are both clearly communicated and aesthetically pleasing. Once we’ve achieved the level of fidelity we’re looking for within these limitations, we’ll be adding back in more ability components and weapon combinations to bring everything up to the same level of quality we’ve established as our target.



Another important part of communicating what is going on in combat is making sure events are displayed to players in the UI. To assist in testing and verifying ability functionality, we’ve added combat fly text for damage, healing, and buff/debuff application and expiration. Even without sounds and particle effects, this makes it easy to tell what is going on with abilities without having to closely watch the combat log window. Damage and healing numbers also show up on the unit frames containing the health and resource bars for your character and your friendly and hostile targets, and eventually your warband. In addition, we’ve also implemented buff and debuff icons to the unit frames, with icons and mouseover tooltips which describe each effect.



Although we do have a lot of important features either ready or in progress now for combat, we also still have more yet to do before everything is ready to start Beta testing. For one thing, we haven’t dedicated much time to balancing, thus far. As you may notice if you’ve been part of any of our ‘break the build’ tests, the actual numbers behind damage and healing can be pretty inconsistent from one ability to the next. This is an area where we will constantly need to be making improvements, assisted by metrics that can help show where the problems are without relying purely on anecdotal evidence. Since this is more of a polish than initial implementation task, it’s one of the last things that we will focus on. Getting the basic functionality working, and ensuring the look and feel is where we want it to be, is far more difficult than tweaking a set of numbers.



We’re very much looking forward to giving all of you a closer look at combat in CU as the road to Beta continues. A special thanks goes out to all of you who have been showing up to help with our ‘break the build’ tests, and thanks as well to those of you patiently waiting for your chance to participate. The first stage of Beta testing won’t at all be what we’ll consider final, but combat should be a fun experience, clearly understandable, and should set the stage for further iteration and improvement, along with the addition of even more new abilities and entire new classes. Developer Quote “I’m no more interested in people telling me that the game is great in order to ingratiate themselves them I am in people telling me that it sucks just to be jerks. Honest opinions, presented respectfully from all sides, is what I/we need to make Camelot Unchained a success.”

- Mark Jacobs State Of The Build -by Max Porter In this section, I grab a few of the biggest build-related items from our Top Tenish highlights, which we publish each week. This is intended to provide a view of where we are at with the build in a somewhat larger, monthly sense. The cream of the crop, in terms of Top Tenish items!.



Build Testing: (2/2/2018) WIP – Tech – Testing: We’re thrilled to welcome our Alphas back into a stability-focused test. This test helped us track down new issues, as it was intended to, but also allowed us to show off small (by own standards) scale battles, with NPCs and players in the scenario system! The battle was 100v100v100; a glimpse at where we are going with the large-scale battles which only Camelot Unchained can deliver!

We’re thrilled to welcome our Alphas back into a stability-focused test. This test helped us track down new issues, as it was intended to, but also allowed us to show off small (by own standards) scale battles, with NPCs and players in the scenario system! The battle was 100v100v100; a glimpse at where we are going with the large-scale battles which only Camelot Unchained can deliver! (2/9/2018) A Whole Lot of Break The Build Playtesting: Our IT, Alpha, and Beta 1 Backers, who have been very patient since our last round of tests, got major opportunities this week! From Monday morning through Friday evening (during our business hours), we ran “Break the Build” tests throughout the week, as we tried to identify any bugs that might be client and server stability related. This week, you folks helped us fix several issues, including “random” disconnects, a client performance stutter, scenario director improvements which fixed server issues, “zombie” logins that prevented players from logging back in, a VFX-related client crash, and several more. More tests and fixes coming soon. Go team!

Our IT, Alpha, and Beta 1 Backers, who have been very patient since our last round of tests, got major opportunities this week! From Monday morning through Friday evening (during our business hours), we ran “Break the Build” tests throughout the week, as we tried to identify any bugs that might be client and server stability related. This week, you folks helped us fix several issues, including “random” disconnects, a client performance stutter, scenario director improvements which fixed server issues, “zombie” logins that prevented players from logging back in, a VFX-related client crash, and several more. More tests and fixes coming soon. Go team! (2/16/2018) Testing: Every day this week, we had playtests with our Alpha and IT backers to challenge our scenario system, proxy servers, and UI. Once this build is more stable, we’ll push it to Beta 1 testers.

Every day this week, we had playtests with our Alpha and IT backers to challenge our scenario system, proxy servers, and UI. Once this build is more stable, we’ll push it to Beta 1 testers. (2/23/2018) Testing: We’ve had another very solid week of testing. Most of the tests have been on our 100x100x100 scenario, but some have been on C.U.B.E. within Hatchery, with lots of positive Backer feedback! We can once again confidently say that things will only get better from here. We’re continuing testing today to find and fix some existing issues, and this is a candidate build for a possible test next weekend! UI Progress: (2/2/2018) WIP – Tech – Active Queue UI for Skills: AJ has begun work on a new addition to the UI. This will show what skills are queued/preparing/held for other skill tracks in a separate widget from the skill bar. Examples of skill tracks might be PrimaryWeapon, SecondaryWeapon, Voice, Mind, etc.

AJ has begun work on a new addition to the UI. This will show what skills are queued/preparing/held for other skill tracks in a separate widget from the skill bar. Examples of skill tracks might be PrimaryWeapon, SecondaryWeapon, Voice, Mind, etc. (2/9/2018) Art – Scenario UI and New Status Effect Icons: This week, James finished off the scoreboard assets and the Victory and Defeat animations for AJ to integrate. He’s now moved over to creating the icons for the new status effects Ben created.

This week, James finished off the scoreboard assets and the Victory and Defeat animations for AJ to integrate. He’s now moved over to creating the icons for the new status effects Ben created. (2/23/2018) WIP – UI Design and Inventory Containers: We just began work on this near the end of the week. JB provided the wireframe, and AJ has begun work to make this a generic functionality for things such as chests, guild vaults, and bags. JB has also completed new wireframes for trade and chat updates, which will next get an art pass from James. Bug Crushing: (2/2/2018) Tech – Stability: Our next milestone focuses on stability and performance, but we’ve already gotten started on that. Several people assisted this week by finding and fixing several network and client crashes, allowing us to push a more stable build out for testing, as mentioned above.

Our next milestone focuses on stability and performance, but we’ve already gotten started on that. Several people assisted this week by finding and fixing several network and client crashes, allowing us to push a more stable build out for testing, as mentioned above. (2/9/2018) Tech – Ability Network Performance Improvement: Christina fixed several issues/bugs that caused large amounts of identical data to be sent to the IDcoder. Fixing this cut down the number of unique client skill parts that were created on the order of thousands over the course of a single scenario. This change will be super important in future tests, particularly when supporting massive battles.

Christina fixed several issues/bugs that caused large amounts of identical data to be sent to the IDcoder. Fixing this cut down the number of unique client skill parts that were created on the order of thousands over the course of a single scenario. This change will be super important in future tests, particularly when supporting massive battles. (2/23/2018) WIP – Tech – Bugs Bugs Bugs: Matt appropriately titled his work this week, as he’s helping out on several systems: In order to support better combat readability, he’s fixing multiple bugs relating to sounds and projectile trails with client-predicted projectiles and how they get rationalized with the server’s version, especially under high latency/packet loss. Several WIP bug fixes to improve building mode and get builders back on Hatchery. Several committed and WIP bugs on the world editor, to improve the workflow for Ben and the artists.

Matt appropriately titled his work this week, as he’s helping out on several systems: Miscellaneous: (2/9/2018) WIP – Tech – Server Messaging System for Game Events: Colin, Caleb, and Andrew have worked out improvements to our current messaging system that will allow the engineers to write gameplay more generically, no matter if it comes from the same server or a remote server. This can simplify gameplay logic, and allow for logic to cross boundaries between different zones–each of which could be running on seperate server hardware–opening up the possibility of cross-server scenarios. Additionally, this can support messages about members of your Warband who are on different physical servers.

Colin, Caleb, and Andrew have worked out improvements to our current messaging system that will allow the engineers to write gameplay more generically, no matter if it comes from the same server or a remote server. This can simplify gameplay logic, and allow for logic to cross boundaries between different zones–each of which could be running on seperate server hardware–opening up the possibility of cross-server scenarios. Additionally, this can support messages about members of your Warband who are on different physical servers. (2/16/2018) WIP – Building Mode and General Input: After the input refactor from George, we needed to update building mode. This week, Matt has re-enabled building mode, allowing the placing of blocks, as well as iterating on bug fixes. Additionally, he’s hit several other input bugs with camera movement near plots and chat window clicking.

After the input refactor from George, we needed to update building mode. This week, Matt has re-enabled building mode, allowing the placing of blocks, as well as iterating on bug fixes. Additionally, he’s hit several other input bugs with camera movement near plots and chat window clicking. (2/23/2018) WIP – Tech – Item Functionality: Christina has been very busy working in several different areas, providing new functionality to items: Added support for certain items to be renamed. This will allow players to rename things such as containers, for better organization in their inventories. Added scripting support for items, increasing the events and places that scripting can be hooked to, including overriding click interactions and running scripts on players’ deaths. This work will be used in the next scenario type, particularly around capture-the-flag mechanics. New item-based plot permissions allow the plot owner the ability to decide who can modify items on a plot. This can keep certain players from taking items or littering a plot with items, while still allowing a plot, once taken, to be looted.

Christina has been very busy working in several different areas, providing new functionality to items: Bonus Images! -by Max Porter It’s always amazing to take a look through the Forums where our Backers post their creations, and this month was no exception. There were a lot of inspiring C.U.B.E. creations to see. This marvelous Arthurian Castle was built by Bosk. Check out this truly impressive structure, built for coastal defense! Thank you so much as always for reading through our newsletter. It’s a true pleasure to put this together for you all, and I hope you have a fantastic March! Thanks for your support, and I’ll see you in the build for some testing as we ramp up toward Beta 1!



-Max

