Unveiled: Camelot Unchained Newsletter #60 - City State Entertainment View this email in your browser Share Tweet Team Tidings -by Max Porter Happy Halloween, folks! Hope it’s a spooky one!



If you haven’t watched Mark’s State of the Game stream, go ahead and do that now! (It's in two pieces because of internet reasons.) Then you can hop back here for your monthly newsletter!



We worked hard this past October, and I would definitely describe it as another busy month.



As the leaves have changed to their glorious autumn hues, our artists have been constructing their own lovely images. And I have some here to show you, with words from the artists themselves!



First up, this boot render! If you remember from our previous weekly updates we’ve begun modeling parts of the medium armor concepts, previously shown. This week continued with more Arthurian gear. Check out these classy clogs: Next, we have a stylish new hat: And now I’ll turn this over to Joe, one of our newest team members who originally joined us as an art intern. Joe has some impressive Substance Designer skills and had been a great assist to speed up our ability to make materials for CU!



Joe: Substance Designer’s node-based construction gives artists the ability to build intricate materials through the manipulation of 2d grayscale information. This greyscale information is given a value between 0 (black) and 1 (white), based on how dark or light a given pixel is. Giving these pixels a mathematical value allows users to blend, warp, blur, and filter their results to shape their material, and because everything is being mathematically processed through sliders, creating iterations takes mere moments.



For the first stone image below, all I did was adjust the seed on the main shape, tweak the rotation, adjust the height blend, and adjust the levels of the stone. All of which may have taken me four minutes at most. (This is after a couple hours initial setup.) Substance Designer is very fast, allowing us to get lots of iterations quickly! For the lava, I used 1 slider to adjust the intensity of the lava which in turn mathematically adjusted all other variables leading to a smooth transition. The trick is knowing how to set this up so it is so easy. This process was so quick that rendering the material spheres and exporting them in photoshop took longer than the adjustments. Tyler asked me to just go for something totally different on one of my materials without adding anything to the initial setup, just to prove how versatile one material setup can be. So I came up with this creepy, glowy, rock material that could certainly fit in a spooky area of CU! Thanks, Joe!



Our principles of openness, honesty, and staying upfront about our progress are very important to us, and we put a lot of work into getting information out to all of you. We published news posts, ran tests, and continued to put up raw, unedited, and unrehearsed streams this month! Thanks for your support and patience as we move through Beta 1 and onward in this journey. 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.



Thanks for diving into the newsletter with us! As usual, please bear with my reminder to click the “view this email in your browser” link in the top right to see the whole newsletter. Continue reading for updates, articles, thoughts, news, and more, and please enjoy this, the sixtieth issue of Unveiled. Hot Topics



We're looking for feedback! If you're a Backer, join the discussion on our Forums via our website and chime in.



Hot topics on the forums right now include our latest announcements, NPCs, release dates, and of course, the classes in testing! Come join the discussion and participate in our thriving Community! Dose of Design -by Ben Pielstick Where do ideas come from?

Over the last few weekly Q&A sessions, I’ve been asked multiple times about concept art generating ideas for the design of the game. While it is easy to answer that yes, sometimes concept art does add new ideas for game design, there is a lot more to how ideas become features in a game in general.



There’s a stereotype about gamers and game design, which is that gamers think working in game design is mostly sitting around coming up with cool ideas for video games. However, I think that recently, gamers in general have shown much better public understanding of game design, perhaps due to the rise of indie games and more open development communication, including from large studios. Even so, just knowing game designers spend most of their time on a wide variety of tasks other than just coming up with ideas doesn’t really explain the time that actually does go into the origination of ideas.



Of course every person is different, and since there is no formalized process for coming up with game ideas, I can’t speak for how anyone else precisely goes about it. To really get into the nuances of ideation, there are a multitude of books and articles focused on leveraging creativity, as the need for interesting and unique ideas extends far beyond the world of video games. What I can better describe in a general sense, is the workflow around game ideas, and how the need for ideas arises and eventually turns into a game feature.



Once a game has left pre-production and development effort is in full swing, the design of most games will still be far from finished. Pre-production will typically kick off a project with a general, high-level idea for what the game will be, but not a lot of details, which will be needed in order for the game to be finished. So from the original pre-production framework for the game, producers will generate an initial set of design tasks for things like designing the specific enemies players will face, the weapons the players will use, the levels the players will play through, and so on.



At an art-driven studio, you might have a situation where enemies are concepted before they are designed. In this case, artists would draw a suite of enemies, and someone in a lead position would head up iteration and refine the list down to what was needed for the scope of the high-level game design. The finished concept art would then be handed over to a designer, who would decide how each enemy works. At a more design-driven studio, such as CSE, designers will typically start before concept artwork has begun. This means writing up descriptions, laying out stats, and scripting intentions for a concept artist to work from before any art is done. An artist will then go through afterwards, using the description of what was designed, to draw several possible images that fit with the design.



Of course, when artists are working before design, there may be cases where what an artist had in mind is not practical for the game’s design, and some changes may have to be made. Even when artists are working on something that was already designed, they may not fully understand the design, or interpret it in a way designers didn’t expect, leading to concept art pieces that don’t match the design intent. Typically the result of this is for the designer to clarify the design so that the next pass of concept art fits more closely to the design, but occasionally the unexpected results surprise designers with something they see as an improvement over what they had originally intended, in which case the design is then adapted to fit the art.



Concept art is the clearest case for this kind of unexpected adaptation, but similar circumstances can come up in other areas, such as narrative, animation, and even programming. An important part of being a designer is knowing how to handle these situations; when it is best to insist on a correction that maintains the original design intent, and when it is best to adapt the design due to unforeseen circumstances that can lead to an even better result.



As most of you know, with Camelot Unchained there are certain things outlined in our Foundational Principles that we will not compromise on, but other than that, we tend to be very flexible when it comes to what goes into the design. This holds true when evaluating playtest feedback as well, so if you’re already a Backer, be sure and join us when we announce a test and let us know what you think. Flexibility is important to our process, so when we see something not performing up to our expectations, or working in a way differently than we expected that is still really fun, we’re typically very open to adapting to the situation in order to seek the best results. Developer Quote “The good news on Linuxification is that it’s not something that we have to improve on other than the usual bug fixes so, for the most part, once everything is done, we’re done with it. And since it will save us money, we’ll be able to keep our sub price low so it’s a win for the players as well.” -- Mark Jacobs CMsphere -by Brian Ward You just heard from MJ with the State of the Game stream here and here. Now It’s time for the All Hallows’ Eve Newsletter Spooktacular, otherwise known as: Your spoopy October community update! Ready, set... run!



Just a quick disclaimer: This piece is filled with a lot of really terrible Halloween jokes. I was required to add these in because I was sipping a Pumpkin Spiced Latte at the time of writing.



Playtesting



Work has been ongoing on the support classes. The Dark Fool made its way into the testing mix this month, and I think it’s fair to say that their songs are absolutely killer (pun). I died (pun) so many times just thinking about their melodies, and that wasn’t because I was getting killed repeatedly by gleeful Backers.



We will be running a playtest this weekend, November 2nd at 12pm EDT on Nuada server, which will include Beta 2 Backers. If you don’t show up, that’s your funeral!



For Windows 7 users: An issue related to SSL connections cropped up this month. We highly recommend that you upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible, which is perhaps scary (pun), but not fatal (Are you liking these Halloween puns yet?)! However, fear not (oh no!), friends as there is a workaround you can try in the meantime.



Community Spotlight: DonnieT, head Luchorpán







To wrap things up (like a mummy, get it?), I spent some time chatting up Backer and Moderator DonnieT. Our interview follows:



Brian: You’re a pillar of the CU community, known by all here as one of the most visible Discord mods. How did you get involved?



DonnieT: Since the days of Ultima Online, I have been attracted to MMORPGs like a moth to flame. These endless fantasy worlds waiting to be explored answered some very deep calling in me. Probably because I had grown up with the legendary films of the 80s, I wasn’t content just watching; I wanted to go to those worlds, and MMORPGs are by far the closest option we have.



As a gaming fan, I knew of Mark Jacobs and the games he had made, even playing with him several times. From the early days of the Engage Games Network and MageStorm to the MMORPGs of DAOC and Warhammer, I knew that if MJ was making it, I would be there to try it out. When the CU Kickstarter became available, I quickly signed up and waited patiently to test the game and be a part of its blossoming community.



Brian: What drives you to be a moderator? Why do you give your time back to the community?



DonnieT: In every MMORPG’s community, I like talking with others in real time about the game that has brought us all together. To me, it seems so much more personal and engaging than discussing things on a forum. Having seen the discussions in the communities of other MMORPGs and how out-of-control they can be, I really wanted the discussions in CU to be as peaceful as possible. When you like something so much, you naturally want to give back and help out with your time. However when you can’t code, can’t draw, but want to do more than just test the game, your options are rather limited!



Brian: What questions do you get asked most often? And if you could say one thing to everyone, what would it be?



DonnieT: Common questions a CU moderator gets asked include: “When is my access going to be approved!?”, “Can we play yet?”, “What pledge do I have to buy to get access to Beta testing right now?”, “What is the current testing schedule?”, and “Why did Treville’s name change?” [Brian’s note: Treville is currently in the Town State Leisure witness protection program.]



The one thing I would say to everyone is to be patient with CSE. So many times in my life I have seen games rushed out the door, released before their time. Any chance they had for greatness lost because they were not given the time they need. We do not want this to happen with CU. This is the first MMORPG I have ever seen where they are being given the time they need to make a great game. Ohhh…and remember to join the Discord first when you ask for your permissions [to be set], because I can’t give them to you until you do!



Brian: What are you looking forward to most about Camelot Unchained?



DonnieT: As head Luchorpán in charge, I am looking first and foremost to being short and jumping on top of as many ducks and tall things as possible, and getting into more trouble.





DonnieT, head Luchorpán. Note: DonnieT has been with us for a long time, as this image was from a very early test level. There’s none of the fancy lighting or overall visual improvements at this point. You can see some very early test models of the initial giants in there!



The aspect of CU’s gameplay that has me most interested by far is its real-time physics. Having seen first-hand what these are able to do, I know that this system is going to have the biggest impact on the current MMORPG formula that so many of us are familiar with. The kinds of abilities and gameplay they are now free to create will be something we have never seen in a MMORPG. In a gaming landscape where so many new games try to simply be the same thing with better graphics, this is really welcome. Along with that is a support for an incredible number of people on the screen at once, leading this game to be the first truly massively multiplayer game, IMO.



Brian: When did you start playing games?



DonnieT: Happily, I can credit my gaming addiction to my parents, who started me out early at the age of 5 with the Atari console. From the 1980s of Kaboom! all the way to today with CU, I have enjoyed gaming tremendously. I think because I had been so competitive in real life with friends and sports, I was naturally drawn to the challenge of video games. Here was an outlet that no matter how tall or strong or fast you were, the playing field was even -- coming from the life of a short red-head that sounded pretty good to me. :)



Brian: Besides games and community moderation, what are your other interests?



DonnieT: My main passions besides that which is most important (gaming!) are fishing, gardening, cooking, tennis, and fantasy/sci-fi shows like Doctor Who, Star Trek and Game of Thrones.



Trick or Treat!



Many thanks to DonnieT for being my chosen victim (pun) to take part in this month’s CMSphere. Have a great Halloween! And remember, folks: You can send all your candy to the CSE offices (especially those in Seattle) and we will eat it for you, no questions asked. ;-) State of the Build -by Max Porter Hey folks, in this section I pull some of the highlights from our Top Tenish lists in the past month. The highlights of the highlights, if you will! This should give you a summary of some of the biggest pieces of work that we have focused on in the month of September, and a sense of where we’re at!



Gameplay: (10/4/2019) WIP – Gameplay – Dark Fool: The Dark Fool has been added to the patcher and will be open for testing starting next week. Using its songs and shouts, will the Dark Fool cause you to panic and run in fear, or will you be able to face the danger head-on?

The Dark Fool has been added to the patcher and will be open for testing starting next week. Using its songs and shouts, will the Dark Fool cause you to panic and run in fear, or will you be able to face the danger head-on? (10/11/2019) WIP – Tech – Knockback: Matt is currently doing support work around the capability to predict and approximate spatial queries on the client. This may eventually enable better FX for non-projectile abilities, but for the near term it will only be used for knockback prediction.

Matt is currently doing support work around the capability to predict and approximate spatial queries on the client. This may eventually enable better FX for non-projectile abilities, but for the near term it will only be used for knockback prediction. (10/25/2019) WIP – Tech – Knockback: One of our critical (and very fun!) pieces of tech, knockback and prediction of these events continues to get a bit of love from Matt. This week, he’s updating and re-integrating his old solution but now with some new tech. Once this lands we should have knock back forces back in the game! (We’re already trying to come up with fun uses!) Improving Tech: (10/4/2019) WIP – Tech – Logging: Mark C. started work on rollover for our logging server, and cold storage specifically, for our chat logs. Rollover is the automated creation of new data indices once our current indices hit a certain parameter, such as lifetime, size, or document volume. Cold storage is a state that’s optimized for high density and storage capacity, but has slow access times. This is perfect for documents that we need forever, but don’t need to access frequently.

Mark C. started work on rollover for our logging server, and cold storage specifically, for our chat logs. Rollover is the automated creation of new data indices once our current indices hit a certain parameter, such as lifetime, size, or document volume. Cold storage is a state that’s optimized for high density and storage capacity, but has slow access times. This is perfect for documents that we need forever, but don’t need to access frequently. (10/18/2019) WIP – Tech – Navmesh: Navmesh is nearly ready! Lee spent the week testing various path plan archetypes and fixing any bugs that he found. Really, this is the final step in a very long process. All the code that’s been put in over the last couple of months is finally getting tested and exercised (and in some cases exorcised)! Bugs are getting found and worked out, from stupid-simple typos to glaring logic errors that cause complete rewrites of sections of code. While this sounds like a lot of work (it is), it’s also the final step before checking in code. Soon, my pretties, you shall have full 3D path planning with a dynamically built navmesh.

Navmesh is nearly ready! Lee spent the week testing various path plan archetypes and fixing any bugs that he found. Really, this is the final step in a very long process. All the code that’s been put in over the last couple of months is finally getting tested and exercised (and in some cases exorcised)! Bugs are getting found and worked out, from stupid-simple typos to glaring logic errors that cause complete rewrites of sections of code. While this sounds like a lot of work (it is), it’s also the final step before checking in code. Soon, my pretties, you shall have full 3D path planning with a dynamically built navmesh. (10/18/2019) Tech – Windows 7: Tim and Mark Chae tracked down an issue that was plaguing Windows 7 users. We have found a way to address the issue, and it can be found below. Also, as a reminder to those of you still using Windows 7, it is our position that all users running Windows 7 should upgrade to a newer version of Windows as soon as possible. Microsoft will be ending its official support for Windows 7 as of January 14th, 2020. Once Microsoft drops support for Windows 7, so too will CSE. We won’t do anything to intentionally break builds on Windows 7, but we will no longer be officially supporting it. If you are on Windows 7, please follow the steps in this doc to address the issues you are having.

Tim and Mark Chae tracked down an issue that was plaguing Windows 7 users. We have found a way to address the issue, and it can be found below. Also, as a reminder to those of you still using Windows 7, it is our position that all users running Windows 7 should upgrade to a newer version of Windows as soon as possible. Microsoft will be ending its official support for Windows 7 as of January 14th, 2020. Once Microsoft drops support for Windows 7, so too will CSE. We won’t do anything to intentionally break builds on Windows 7, but we will no longer be officially supporting it. If you are on Windows 7, please follow the steps in this doc to address the issues you are having. (10/25/2019) WIP – Tech – NavMesh: Lee spent the week getting the pathplanner fixed up to work with 3d coordinates. He’s gotten simple pathplans working. These include ramps, stairs, overlapping layers/multiple levels of buildings, agents with variable widths and heights, and more. All done dynamically based on raw mesh data from the world. The code is going through the review process now, which we expect to take a bit as there are over 10,000 lines of changes and multiple subsystems rewritten from scratch, so the review process won’t be trivial. Feature and Tools Work: (10/4/2019) WIP – Tech – Skald: Anthony completed work on the ability components, starter abilities, and traits for the Skald. We are currently in the process of attaching placeholder VFX and SFX. Once these are added, the Skald will also be available for testing.

Anthony completed work on the ability components, starter abilities, and traits for the Skald. We are currently in the process of attaching placeholder VFX and SFX. Once these are added, the Skald will also be available for testing. (10/4/2019) WIP – Tech – Support classes: Anthony spent some time this week working on the major Support class archetype bugs, like songs persisting after death. He also added all the item defs for the support classes’ instruments.

Anthony spent some time this week working on the major Support class archetype bugs, like songs persisting after death. He also added all the item defs for the support classes’ instruments. (10/4/2019) WIP – Tech – Tools: Rob worked on terrain editor performance this week. He improved the threading of the terrain editor so that dragging points around is more responsive. This should make it quicker to build terrain for the game.

Rob worked on terrain editor performance this week. He improved the threading of the terrain editor so that dragging points around is more responsive. This should make it quicker to build terrain for the game. (10/18/2019) WIP – Tech – World Editor Tools: Rob started work on making placeable objects terrain relative in the editor. This means that when objects are placed upon the terrain, they stick to the terrain, allowing artists to drag objects across the ground quickly, without having to continually move them up and down as they work. All Kinds of Art: (10/4/2019) Art – Animation: Scott worked on finishing up the basic needs of the Minstrel and Dark Fool animations, including re-targeting the Dark Fool’s animations over to the Luchorpán Skeleton. He’s finished setting these up for testing, and will work on the Skald next week.

Scott worked on finishing up the basic needs of the Minstrel and Dark Fool animations, including re-targeting the Dark Fool’s animations over to the Luchorpán Skeleton. He’s finished setting these up for testing, and will work on the Skald next week. (10/11/2019) WIP – VFX – Dark Fool: Mike worked on the VFX for the Dark Fool. The placeholder VFX for the Dark Fool’s starting abilities have been replaced with VFX that are more appropriate for the class. We are aware that some of the support class VFX are playing on the wrong targets, and hope to get to this next week.

Mike worked on the VFX for the Dark Fool. The placeholder VFX for the Dark Fool’s starting abilities have been replaced with VFX that are more appropriate for the class. We are aware that some of the support class VFX are playing on the wrong targets, and hope to get to this next week. (10/18/2019) Art – Terrain Textures: We’ve previously talked about using Substance Designer for new materials. This week, we worked on new snow and rock textures for new areas of the world.

We’ve previously talked about using Substance Designer for new materials. This week, we worked on new snow and rock textures for new areas of the world. (10/25/2019) Art/Tech – Bones on Weapons: Wylie previously completed work that would allow artists to attach VFX to bones. He’s come back around to verify the work and hand it off to art to begin using. This not only reduces the time spent on VFX for abilities, but also allow us to easily attach VFX on the weapons in specific places.

Wylie previously completed work that would allow artists to attach VFX to bones. He’s come back around to verify the work and hand it off to art to begin using. This not only reduces the time spent on VFX for abilities, but also allow us to easily attach VFX on the weapons in specific places. (10/25/2019) Art – VFX – Lighting: Mike worked on the lightning VFX we’d previously mentioned. You’d think a bright, very big, 75m lighting strike would read well in a scene. Apparently it doesn’t! Time for tweaks! Once we get it all working and looking good we’ll continue to work on the asset(s) so it looks cool in the client.

Mike worked on the lightning VFX we’d previously mentioned. You’d think a bright, very big, 75m lighting strike would read well in a scene. Apparently it doesn’t! Time for tweaks! Once we get it all working and looking good we’ll continue to work on the asset(s) so it looks cool in the client. (10/25/2019) Art - Animation: Sandra created a test animation for a trap being triggered with previously completed tech. Verifying this works opens up a world of possible interactive objects in the game.

Sandra created a test animation for a trap being triggered with previously completed tech. Verifying this works opens up a world of possible interactive objects in the game. (10/25/2019) Art - Armor: We created several new pieces of medium armor armor this week based off previously shown concept art. This includes a new set of pauldrons, knee pads, boots, and gauntlets. Final Note -by Max Porter Thanks for reading Unveiled number sixty! That’s a lot of newsletters, and here’s to sixty more! It’s always fun to put this together for you folks to read, and I’m glad you’re still reading ‘em. Looking forward to next month’s news, progress, and articles! Stay awesome, and seriously… thanks for your patience, folks. It’s been a long road, and we thank you for your support. CU later! -- Max