Slow and Steady Progress!

Not a huge update today, as it is an in-between update; nothing earth-shattering to talk about, but a good update anyway. We’ve made a lot of progress toward our Beta 1 launch. While this isn’t a User Story update, here are some of the highlights from the last few days:

All the components for our Beta 1 classes are currently in the game. They are not all working yet, but they are in the game. Right now, that’s one of the biggest, and most expected, “degrees of difficulty” in terms of moving into Beta 1. More on this next week. We are working on what we are calling deployables. This is for things like the Stone Healer’s mechanics. You know, throwing healing rocks onto the ground and yelling “Rock! Heal those people!” 🙂 Siege engines are getting lots of love with craftable, placeable and useable ammo being done. Crafting continues to be added/adjusted in the game and we are working on the first deployable Vox model. Groups will soon be making their appearance in our game. Along with groups, our Picts are being built and imported into the game. The world is being built with new grassland, trees, etc. made for each Realm. The world is also getting noisier, as we are hooking up sound events for specific parts of using abilities.

On a personal note, while I’ve been happily working on our crafting system, I took a slight detour over the last few days to work on our siege system. For those of you who listened to my update on our Beta 1 progress this week, I gave a quick overview on my vision for the siege system, and took a lot of questions about it. As of right now, the key things for you to know are:

The vision for the system is, of course, based on historical siege weapons up until just before the invention of bombards in the West. Thus, expect to see weapons that will be quite familiar to those who have played certain MMORPGs and/or seen movies set in certain time periods. Even though we will have familiar siege weapons, do expect more than a few twists. After all, we are happy to have some BSC stuff all over the game, so it would be silly not to try to add some BSC things to this part of the game, as well. Expect us to follow our “no mirrored class” principle for this part of the game. Not all siege engines are created equal. As we talked about during the Kickstarter, expect a very varied set of defensive systems in the game, starting with different types of shields. Also expect the siege game to be centered around the principle of play/counterplay that we have talked about in terms of combatants. We don’t have to have the siege part of our game be as boring as the “hit button 1 2 3” rotation can be in certain MMORPGs. So, don’t expect to just set up your weapons at a distance from your target until you beat it into submission.

As I mentioned, I talked quite a bit about our siege system during the stream a couple days ago, so for more information, you can watch that here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Mwo8rltiY).

There was a lot more that we talked about (and there’s more yet to be revealed), but it’s a good start. The best part of the livestream was that the Backers asked a lot of questions that centered around what they wanted to see in the game. And since almost all of them were already planned, it made me smile. It made me feel good to know that my instincts have been pretty good so far.

In terms of art for today’s update, here you go:

First up, some rad tattoos on our female Pict model, coming along nicely:

Next, check out these new C.U.B.E. materials, or “mats” that our artists are experimenting with. Shown here at three different times of day, to see how the various mats look with our PBR lighting system (note the glowy bits that show brighter as it gets darker!):

And now, a look at a Viking-influenced pine forest:

And finally, here’s another shot of a biome. This is a Viking-influenced grassy plain with updated materials, using our new lighting system:

Very nice place for a battle, don’t you think?

We had another fun week of streaming, with more wonderful art from Michelle and Jon, another Story Challenge with me, Tyler’s awesome World Building session, the usual contests and fun stuff with Jen, and reading from Max. And of course, all appreciate the patience of our team as we stream, stream, and stream some more.

So, that wraps it up for today. Our IT folks are happily beating on things like broken abilities, crafting via ‘/’ and a placeholder Vox, and many more things. We are also happily moving ahead on other fronts, as per above.

Enjoy your weekend, folks!

-Mark