Moon over my island

Folks,

Happy Friday all! It’s been another great two-week effort and we have lots of good stuff to talk about. Since it’s getting late, let’s start with the summation of our Top Tenish list.

Work continues adding more functionality to the ability system. Testing went well last week, and the team has culled out many ability bugs and continues investigating some bugs we’ll be looking for this weekend. We’ve made continued in-roads in other areas such as more than two islands, which we hope to get into testing next week. We’ve also completed a first pass at groups which we are currently testing in-studio. George dropped in an update to terrain generation which should result in a decent, 10-20%, speed increase. In a fun, highly personal note, Andrew’s wedding went off without a hitch, and he’s happily enjoying his honeymoon.

The art team continues to hone its weapon pipeline, having cut out several steps while improving visual quality. Once we get realm based weapons hooked up these will appear in player inventory. As to the list itself:

Top-Tenish:

Lots of minor bug fixes related to abilities, including newly added work. Abilities can now be set up to be class and weapon specific. Added logging/debugging, features so that we can capture and inspect a player’s entire state at runtime as well as other logging such as combat. HOT’s, DOT’s, Black Knight shouts and Mjolnir magic added. Groups! – First pass of groups currently in testing. This work is also the core tech for our guild system. Server side cooldowns for abilities added. No more spamming powerful abilities. Awww, I know certain players who will be so sad. 🙂 Exhaust added when a player runs out of stamina. Buffable mitigation – (subtracts a flat amount from damage rather than a percent) – Gives us the shielding stone for Stone healers. Added the functionality to target an entire group. This still needs to be hooked up to abilities, but now that we have groups….. Terrain generation threading improvements. Expected 10-20% speed increase when loading and moving about the world. WIP: We’re currently working on issues associated with having more than two islands connected via our server tech. Stay tuned for the next iteration! We’ve improved not only our time to complete weapons and armor, but found ways to improve the visuals as well. Look for new weapons to be added to player inventory in the coming weeks. The updated French site is nearing completion. Thank you to those Backers helping us with the translation efforts. We’re making a number of changes to our current Beta 1 checklist including checking off some old ones, some new ones, and adding a few additional items. If you haven’t been to our Beta 1 checklist recently, it’s worth a visit. FYI, we aren’t removing any items, that would be cheating. 🙂

Now, as to our User Stories themselves, this week 21 old cards with 125 completes. Here’s the master list:

As a Backer, I’d like to see general improvements in C.U.B.E.’s interface and functionality.

Paint Bucket tool key bind fixed. Holding ‘P’ when clicking on a set of blocks will paint those blocks with the selected mat.-Complete

As a Backer, I’d like to see the sun, moons, and stars in the sky, with sky color changes based on time of day and position of those celestial bodies. – Second Pass

Update moon materials and increase resolution.-Complete

As a Backer, I’d like to play in new biomes that change according to Realm ownership. – Biome 04

Neutral – Additional sapling variations.-Complete

Neutral – Audit and improve terrain blending and mod settings for “clover area.”-Complete

As a Backer, I’d like to know about smaller changes that don’t have their own user story.

Determine cause of patch server slowdown, fix and improve speed.-Complete

Set up local patch server for internal use.-Complete

Create “fast-path” entry for Jenkins that can do the release-build process for any branch and push to any set of channels.-Complete

Push build number and time to the server, so that we can track down issues related to continuous integration.-Complete

As a French Backer, I’d like to visit the French version of the updated Camelot Unchained website.

Class Reveal Audits:

Arthurian:

Blackguard-Complete

Dread Caller-Complete

Enchanted Knight-Complete

Flame Warden-Complete

Minstrel-Complete

Specter-Complete

Vikings:

Arisen-Complete

Child of Loki-Complete

HelBound-Complete

Skald-Complete

Slaughterwolf-Complete

Wave Weaver-Complete

Winter’s Shadow-Complete

TDD:

Black Rider-Complete

Dark Fool-Complete

Druid-Complete

Forest Stalker-Complete

Morrigan-Complete

Wisp-Complete

As a Developer and Backer, I’d like to see improvements in memory usage and threading.

Improve speed of terrain generation.-Complete

Improve ParLL library for developer usage, based on terrain generation work.-Complete

As a Backer, I’d like the selection of races in Beta 1 to have shared and unique idle and fidget animations.

Race/Gender Fidgets:

Human_Male_Viking_Fidget_02-Complete

Human_Female_Tuatha_Fidget_02-Complete

Unique Fidgets:

Arthurian_Male_Fidget_Feet-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to have a selection of weapons that visually represent each Realm’s identity. – Arthurians

One-handed sword – v1: Integration.-Complete

Two-handed swords: First Pass planning mix and match parts system.-Complete

Two-handed swords – v1: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed swords – v2: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spears: First Pass planning mix and match parts system.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v1: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v2: Modeling pass.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Improvements on materials.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Integration.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to have a selection of weapons that visually represent each Realm’s identity. – TDD

One-handed sword – v1: Integration.-Complete

Two-handed spears: First Pass planning mix and match parts system.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v1: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v2: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v3: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v4: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed staff – v1: Improvements on materials.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Modeling pass.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Materials.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Integration.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to have a selection of weapons that visually represent each Realm’s identity. – Viking

One-handed sword – v1: Integration.-Complete

Two-handed spears: First Pass planning mix and match parts system.-Complete

Two-handed spear – V1: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v2: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed spear – v3: Modeling pass.-Complete

Two-handed staff – v1: Improvements on materials.-Complete

One-handed “epic” ice sword v1: Materials-Complete

One-handed “epic” ice sword v1: Integration-Complete

Stonehealer rocks: Materials.-Complete

Stonehealer rocks: Integration.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Modeling pass.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Materials.-Complete

One-handed sword – V1 – High Quality “epic”: Integration.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like a better instrument library to build interactive music.

Audit and improve drum samples.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like the Camelot Unchained ability system to fully support the design scope of the game for B1.

Add cooldowns to server-side skills.-Complete

Skills can be restricted by particular archetypes.-Complete

Fix server lag when attempting to spam multiple abilities.-Complete

Buffable mitigation: subtracts a flat amount from damage rather than a percent.-Complete

Improvements to subject group.-Complete

Hook up Stonehealer art assets for healer stones.-Complete

Missing/killed/deleted entities don’t break skills (bug fixing)-Complete

Temporary solution to exhausted state for testing.-Complete

Add shielding stone for Stonehealer to mitigate a flat amount of damage.-Complete

Bots and testing:

Add logging and debugging features to capture and inspect a player’s entire state at runtime.-Complete

Conditionals and Requirements:

Research Payloads.-Complete

Create framework for conditionals.-Complete

Weapon-based abilities will now require the correct weapon type. -Complete

Client Spec:

Automatically create code allowing the game server and the proxy to communicate.-Complete

Other types of server can automatically get data from the game server.-Complete

General bandwidth improvements all around.-Complete

Client can now represent skill tracks, allowing players to execute multiple skills at the same time.-Complete

Network layer supports new entity component model.-Complete

Players can use skills they have not crafted, such as with siege engines.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to improve the visual fidelity and speed of creation of our art assets through the investigation, and possible use of, the Allegorithmic software suite.

Audit union between programs for material ID assignments to speed up development time.-Complete

Material Creation improvements for characters, armor, and weapons.

Procedural solution to push highs and lows in a material to better convey folds, plates, etc.-Complete

Solve issues with really dark metals.-Complete

As a Developer and Backer, I’d like to see improvements in the movement animations of the player.

Run Locomotion:

Run 0°-Complete

Run 45°-Complete

Run 90°-Complete

Run 270°-Complete

Run 315°-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like an automated system that can find data related bugs before they become a problem.

Roboduck tests for broken sound packages.-Complete

Add Roboduck test to detect duplicate files being uploaded to the file system under different object IDs.-Complete

As a Backer, I want to seamlessly move between islands and zones without being aware that I’m moving between different game servers.

MasterServer sends down a list of addresses for each server, rather than a single one.-Complete

Update network HUD to show stats from all connected servers.-Complete

Server controller no longer requires separate server messages to change access levels.-Complete

Balance bandwidth across proxies:

Add client->proxy network message to scale bandwidth usage.-Complete

Add priority value to the end of Entity update messages.-Complete

Make client adjust bandwidth scale based on priorities.-Complete

Avoid adjusting bandwidth too quickly, causing it to fluctuate.-Complete

Add bandwidth scaling info to network stats UI.-Complete

Use Presence server to spawn players:

Send zone info to Presence server from game server.-Complete

Send player [dis]connect messages to Presence server from game server.-Complete

Teleportation stone for testing – Art:

Create model.-Complete

Materials.-Complete

VFX-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to use a packaged sound resource which the client can unpack and dynamically use based on the correct event.

Remove references to hard-coded sound events in client.-Complete

Remove wwiseids.h.-Complete

Add support for DB for debugging individual banks.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to improve the visuals of our current characters and armor, and note lessons learned to move forward into our next iterations.

Audit Arthurian male and female heavy armor.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to improve, and add to, the SFX for re-abilitation.

Additional ice arrow launch sounds.-Complete

Generic freezing sound for ability effects.-Complete

Ice arrow impacts.-Complete

Ice AoE explosion.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like be able to place and modify Spawn Areas, Zone Portals, Building Plots, etc. from the World Editor.

Final pass before review (merging fixes/changes from placeable spawn branch).-Complete

Placeable – Zone Portal:

Load portals server side.-Complete

Audit and fix bugs.-Complete

Placeable Building Plot:

Add PlaceableBuildingPlot subclass of Placeable.-Complete

Editor support.-Complete

Server support.-Complete

Builder support.-Complete

Physics support.-Complete

As a Developer, I’d like more control over sound bank files to reduce patch size when working with audio files.

Break up Sound Collection Resource:

Deploy and test.-Complete

New Sound Import Procedure and Editor:

Deploy and test.-Complete

Let’s just say it was another two very good weeks here and we’re hoping the next two weeks is even better. And if you have doubt, just head over to our User Stories page (http://camelotunchained.com/v3/user-stories/) and check out the current status of our Beta 1 Feature List and our Beta 1 Extended List. The best news here is that not only have we checked off a bunch of items from our Feature List, and almost all of our Beta 1 Extended List are done, but the vast majority of the items on both lists are works-in-progress, with some of them nearing completion (such as the group system)! It’s been a longer road to Beta 1 than we had hoped but we are getting there. And for those who have been worried about our animations (especially a particular group of fellows down at Dragon Con, you know who you were! 🙂 ), we added a new running animation and a new walking animation will be added next week.

In terms of art, let’s start off with some concept art. So let me axe you something, how about some cool Viking weapons?

After that, let’s go to some Viking polearms.

Like all polearms, you can do multiple types of damage with these formidable weapons. Now, here are some spears.

Let’s go from concept art to some actual spears.

I’ll resist the urge to make a very bad joke here. I’m sure you get the point. 🙂

Now, let’s move even further down the development pipeline to in-weapons with materials. Here’s something a bit cold, an ice-sword.

Here’s another Viking sword.

Not to be outdone, here’s an epic sword from the Tuatha De Dannan.

And since men/women can’t live by weapons alone, here are some more C.U.B.E. shots of the one and only, Necromaniak.

And now, let’s turn to something fun from our resident cartoonist, concept artist, animator and Mother of Bearded Dragons, Sandra.

Sadly, that comic speaks to truth, at least before I started cutting back on the caffeine. OTOH, I do have a large Starbucks cup on my desk along with two other ones from different sources. 🙂

I’ll leave you tonight with another in-game screenshot, this time from the multi-server tech area and it is, of course, the source of the title of this update (along with a famous old song).

This weekend’s test will be a combined ability + stability test for our Alpha and IT Backers. We had hoped to test the group system, but it is still not quite finished. So, if you are an Alpha and/or IT backer, Wyrmling Prep is now open this weekend. The major changes in this version are a lot of bug fixes and lots of new abilities. Next week we’ll have our first mass test of our grouping system and even more abilities for you folks to test/break! Remember, this system is still the older system (sorry for continuing to mention this) without new VFX, ability animations, etc. You can let us know how things went here -( ).

I wish all of our Backers a great weekend and hopefully I’ll see you in the game this weekend.

-Mark