Many Mortars Mean Much More Mayhem! – Friday, May 10th, 2019

Folks,

Hey all, MJ here. As I talked about during our livestream (here’s the link if you’d like to watch!), this was one of those workman-like weeks. Nothing spectacularly great or bad to talk about. OTOH, we’re set up for a very interesting few weeks to come, including a presentation from Ben and JB about the mages! With our new Ability Builder in and the mage abilities being tested for bugs of the magically delicious kind–or just plain ol’ bugs, it’s a great time for us to talk about the class. So bring your questions to what should be an enlightening chat with Ben and JB!

But that’s just one of the highlights of the upcoming weeks. Among the other things we hope to be talking about are the next major weekday/weekend test, more siege weapons, doors, things that sparkle, and a lot more. That said, let’s go to the Top Tenish highlights from the past week.

Top Tenish List for May 10th, 2019

WIP – Tech – Doors: This week, a good amount of work was done to bring doors into the game. Christina added a persistent state system for items, so we can remember when our doors are opened/closed, build simple-state machines, etc. This is all data-driven, so we’ll be able to use it for much more than just doors. She also added damage resistances for all our damage types to deployable items. This way you can have a door (or any deployable item) that is extra strong against ice attacks, for example, but maybe isn’t as strong against fire. She also worked on the gameserver side of animating doors, so they can open and close while Mike D is working on the client side ensuring the doors look good while animating. WIP – Tech – Prediction Optimization: Rob has started work on prediction optimization. Once landed, the game will generally run smoother. Based on our initial testing, the results are promising! WIP – UI – Character Creation: This week, James spent time working on the new art for a reskin of the character creation UI. He has added the mage classes so they no longer appear as archers, and has updated the starting character art for all of the classes. WIP – SFX – Chaos Magic: DB worked on creating sound effects for the Druid’s chaos magic. Quoting DB: “Chaos magic is hard! I don’t have any recordings of chaos in my libraries.” What does chaos sound like? WIP – Art – Magic Mortars: Jon completed work on the TDD and Arthurian reskin of the magic mortar. These mortars, when complete, will allow players to launch volumetric smoke onto the battlefield. Players can then use this smoke as cover when attempting an attack or to obscure a retreat. WIP – Tech – NavMesh: This week, Lee worked on the algorithm to analyze meshes for constraining (i.e. blocking) edges that are impassable. These edges will be used to create the navmesh so that it knows where obstacles are. While he had the algorithm itself working pretty quickly, he also spent some time hooking up a debugging tool so that he could see the results and visually confirm that the constrained edges make sense and are correct. Using the results of the tool, he can start to create the actual navmesh. WIP – Tech – Shader Optimizations: This week, Wylie tweaked some shader options so we build less shader variants. This reduces iteration time when making changes to the model shader. WIP – Design – World Map: This week, Ben finished setting up all the island zones for the world map. Once he receives a set of basic terrain mods to use, he will be able to do the blockout for each zone, marking where each biome goes for mountains, forests, etc. WIP – UI – Ability Book: AJ is completing work on the ability book, and he submitted it for an art review. WIP – Art – Light Armor: Dionne completed the LODs for the TDD and Arthurian light armor sets. WIP – Art – Animations: Scott and Sandra continue to work on animations needed to support one-handed weapon combinations. Scott created new unique idles and fidgets for a sword and dagger or for using two swords. Sandra is working on mace, hammer, and ax animations for when these weapons are used with a shield.

In terms of art, as the title of this update might indicate, we’re working on adding new mortars to the game so that we can add new and interesting mechanics! Let’s start with a look at the new Arthurian armament!

Next up, how about the new TDD mortars?

​Last, but not least, other than alphabetically, the Viking Mortars!

Here’s all the re-skinned mortars together for the first, and probably last time.

Last up, a re-skinned trebuchet. If you look carefully at the name at the top of the image, you’ll see what they will be used for in our game.

Now, the real question is, what exactly will they be chucking…?

🙂

Have a great weekend, all! Please expect a lot of testing next week that will hopefully result in a weekend test.

-Mark

P.S. I wonder what Andrew and I were doing today that was making us giggle while working together with a shared Xbox controller attached to Camelot Unchained? And no, it’s not a console version of CU, nor was it from making this game something you can really play only with a controller, but it was fun anyway. Ask me next week!