We survived Dragon Con!

Folks,

It has been a hectic couple of weeks here with Dragon Con, a recruiting frenzy, Andrew’s upcoming wedding (next week!) and lots of the usual challenges involved in making an MMORPG with more than a little BSC stuff. Sorry that our streaming schedule has been so light this week, but with Dragon Con, post Dragon Con, interviews, Max’s vacation, it just would have been too difficult. That said, let’s start with Dragon Con.

Labor Day weekend is usually a hot and steamy one anywhere in the southern states and Atlanta is no exception (though it was better than last year). OTOH, aside from that it was a great convention for us. We met a bunch of Camelot Unchained™ Backers, some of whom stopped us on the streets/convention when they saw our new logo/t-shirt. Our Dragon Con panel was full of Backers, players of Dark Age of Camelot/Warhammer, and other interested parties. Unfortunately, we had a glitch with the video, so we don’t have a record of that panel, but fortunately, MJ Guthrie from Massively and Jean from MMO Central were there to cover it, so there will be stories posted about it. As a matter of fact, hot off the presses, here is MJ’s second article on our get together at Dragon Con (http://massivelyop.com/2016/09/09/dragoncon-2016-mark-jacobs-on-camelot-unchaineds-abilities-and-rvr-realm-rewards/). For those who haven’t seen it yet, the first part of the article can be found here (http://massivelyop.com/2016/09/08/dragoncon-2016-mark-jacobs-on-trolls-subscriptions-and-camelot-unchained/).

The panel was great, lots of good questions were asked, swag was given out, etc. I was on three other panels as well as multiple ones with such fun and smart guys like Mike Capps (Epic) and Dan Baker (Oxide) and it’s safe to say a good time was had by all. After those three panels, I’m sure some ears were burning in other parts of the game industry. 🙂 We wrapped up Dragon Con and headed back to the studio on Labor Day and got back to work at the studio the next day. I’m really looking forward to next year there, as it will be even more fun when we can show off another year of evolution on Camelot Unchained. In the meantime, we’ve placed the updated Dragon Con video up on YouTube here (https://youtu.be/y_Gt2IXrRYI).

As to the aforementioned recruiting frenzy, I’ve been spending a lot of time interviewing candidates for CSE. We had an all-day interview here yesterday and Andrew and I had 2 more interviews today. As I’ve been saying forever, we are doing whatever it takes to add even more talented programmers to CSE than we have done to date. Keep your fingers, toes, and wings crossed, maybe we’ll land one or two more before the leaves really start changing here.

Speaking of leaves changing, I hope everybody who is reading this update has had the opportunity to take a sneak peek at the new Autumn Forest Biome in the game. If you haven’t, here is a screenshot (untouched, other than the watermark, as always), from the game.

Not bad eh? And just wait, they are going to get even better, sooner, rather than later.

And now, let’s get to what the vast majority of you have been waiting for, the Top Ten’ish List from the past few weeks.

Top Ten’ish:

No major bugs or server crashes reported this week. While we know there are some smaller client-based ones, the servers have remained rock-solid and our efforts on the client have paid off even as we work to add more functionality across the board. First pass of skill timing added. This still needs more work but is a big piece of re-abilitation functionality. Added more functionality to archery abilities by adding “Aim” and “Target” parts to ability network. These allow our archer classes to not only use specific class abilities but target specific body parts to apply those effects to. We’ve added in periodic effects – Damage over time, healing over time, or in the case of the stone healer, dropping a rock on the ground to do periodic effects. All fun stuff! Buildings can now be damaged with the new ability system. Armor now works on sub body parts. Tag support added to skill nodes. – “if this is tagged as fire, do X to them.” Added the ability to modify resources – Add or subtract from a resource pool such as stamina when being affected by an ability. We’ve re-added stability when using an ability. This stat will allow us to “disrupt” an ability in progress by things such as movement or being attacked. Scripts can now pull stats from weapons, allowing things such as “Apply two times the base damage of a weapon when ‘X’ occurs. Stonehealers: Lots of work has been done to support the ability functionality needed for Stonehealers. Projectiles, such as thrown stones, will leave behind a stone on the ground after colliding with something. These then are tracked for abilities such as “Blood from Stone” and “Terrestrial Transference.” Dropped stones will also be destroyed during the use of “Blood from Stone.” Work continues on conditionals and requirements for abilities. This includes things like needing a weapon equipped when using a weapon based ability. First pass testing of multi-island/multi-server integration happened just yesterday. We’re currently working to add more features, such as abilities passing between servers/islands. Think of that for a moment? Players will be able to cast abilities, use siege engines, etc. between totally different servers and zones. Not too many MMORPGs can claim that. This will allow us not only to bring about the moving islands, but also to add entirely different and unique situations for RvR. Tyler finished up an initial pass of the “Autumn fantasy biome” right before hopping into a car to drive to Dragon Con. The great part was not only was it pretty, but ran really well, 60fps on Mark’s computer during initial testing. This will get a second pass over the next week to improve and finish it off, at least for now. We revealed our new logo and title treatment. We’re all very excited to share this with you. Check it out on our Patcher!

And now for the rest of them. In this update, we can report that we had 31 old cards with 198 completes and 1 New card with 4 completes.

As a Developer, we continually need to update our software.

Improve our crash reporter so it’s easier for other devs to use without support. – Complete

Update Wwise to current version and fix any resulting issues. – Complete

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

Paint Bucket tool in C.U.B.E. uses the normal keybind rules so it can be rebound. – Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to have the tools and knowledge necessary to create terrain Biomes that change with Realm territory control.

Different LODs of terrain segments properly connect, leaving no evident seams between them. – Complete

Determine a solution to more than three overlapping materials per vertex on terrain. (Fix the white seams in the terrain.) – 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

Fix the moon so it’s larger and shows up in the night sky again. – Complete

Night sky and star rotations now synced. – Complete

Moon rotation supports phases. – Complete

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

Neutral – Create terrain mods and integrate into world for testing. – Complete

Neutral – Create secondary grassland mod to accompany forest. – Complete

Neutral – Create additional variations of trees for more color variation. – Complete

Neutral – Create fern and trinket tree variations with white foliage. – Complete

Neutral – Optimization pass on trees with accompanying thicker trunks and scale audits. – Complete

Neutral – Optimization pass on all trinket trees. – Complete

As a Backer, I’d like to play in new biomes that change according to Realm ownership. – (Mini) Biome 05

Viking – Create small to medium assets. (Bushes, rocks, etc.) – Complete

TDD – Create small to medium assets. (Bushes, rocks, etc.) – Complete

Arthurian – Create small to medium assets. (Bushes, rocks, etc.) – Complete

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

Improve server startup by asynchronously loading configs. – Complete

Metrics more configurable (to improve server performance) – Complete

Fix issues with ecosystem that were preventing password resets in certain cases. – Complete

Remove an unused logger that was slowing down server startup on debug builds – Complete

WebAPI server properly notifies patcher when a server goes offline. – Complete

Patcher can run in offline mode. – Complete

Add command to build server to shutdown after building but before a new build starts. – Complete

Multiple bug fixes to audio. – Complete

As a Backer, I want to be able to own a plot of land and build within it. – First Pass

Plot capture and combat states updated to work with changes from re-abilitation. – Complete

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

Thank you Mod Squad translated. – Complete

First pass review of updated site. – Complete

Forum FAQ translated. – Complete

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

First pass prep new website. – Complete

As a Developer, I would like more insight into the state of the server.

Improve ease of debugging UserProxy issues by adding a build number to it’s output. – Complete

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

Improve ParLL library based on team usage and crash debugging. – Complete

As a Backer I’d like a patcher to not only update my game, but also give me the most important news and updates, get support, chat with the community and look awesome while doing it!

Create new background video of new title treatment for CU. – Complete

Create SFX and music for new title treatment. – Complete

Add team reveal vid to patcher. – Complete

As a Developer, I’d like the Camelot Unchained website to convey its main features in a more concise and visually impressive manner.

Create new media pages using new gallery plugin. (Not yet updated.) – Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to see improvements in the editor to facilitate my work.

Create an editor for sound banks to reduce re-sending large sound bank files when only a portion is updated. – Complete

Terrain editor properly shuts down after use. – Complete

Terrain editor nodes assigned and display a number for ease of debugging. – Complete

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

First Pass Realm look and feel idle animation – Arthurian. – Complete

First Pass Realm look and feel idle animation – TDD. – Complete

First Pass Realm look and feel idle animation – Viking. – Complete

Race/Gender Fidgets:

Valkyrie_Male_Viking_Fidget_02 – Complete

Luchorpan_Male_Tuatha_Fidget_01 – Complete

Unique Fidgets:

Tuatha_Male_Fidget_Feet – Complete

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

Dagger – v1: First Pass planning mix and match parts system. – Complete

Dagger – v1: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v2: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v3: Modeling pass. – Complete

First pass concept Art: Spears. – Complete

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

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

Halberd – v1: Materials. – Complete

Halberd – v1: Integration. – Complete

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

One-handed mace – v1: Modeling pass. – Complete

One-handed mace – v2: Modeling pass. – Complete

One-handed mace – v3: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v1: First Pass planning mix and match parts system. – Complete

Dagger – v1: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v2: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v3: Modeling pass. – Complete

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

Two-handed staff – v1: Materials. – Complete

Two-handed staff – v1: Integration. – Complete

Two-handed greatsword – v1: Materials. – Complete

Two-handed greatsword – v1: Integration. – Complete

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

One-handed axe – v1: Materials. – Complete

One-handed axe – v1: Integration. – Complete

Dagger – v1: First Pass planning mix and match parts system. – Complete

Dagger – v1: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v2: Modeling pass. – Complete

Dagger – v3: Modeling pass. – Complete

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

Two-handed staff – v1: Materials. – Complete

Two-handed staff – v1: Integration. – Complete

Large shield – v1: Materials. – Complete

Large shield – v1: Integration. – Complete

As a Backer, I would like to be able to give to my friends and family the extra tiers that come with my pledge.

Push first wave of gifting to Backers. – Complete

Push second wave of gifting to Backers. – Complete

Push third, and final wave of gifting to Backers. – Complete

As a Backer in Beta 1, I’d like to see the pre-existing textures in Camelot Unchained make use of the new rendering and lighting systems.

Update male and female Human body materials. – Complete

Update male and female Human head material variations. – Complete

Update male and female Valk materials. – Complete

Update male and female Luchorpán. – Complete

Update Picts. – Complete

Update generic shirts. – Complete

Update generic pants. – Complete

Update generic gloves. – Complete

Update generic shoes and boots. – Complete

Update cloak. – Complete

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

Hook up wound support. – Complete

Wounds correctly sent to UI layer. – Complete

Projectiles properly collide and persist for correct amount of time. – Complete

Projectiles support AOEs. – Complete

Add more and better logging to skills which may be used for additional combat logging. – Complete

Add aim and target nodes to archery ability network. – Complete

Add periodic effects. Damage/heals over time, etc. – Complete

Make it so triggers can’t trigger themselves. – Complete

Physics actors use proper lifetimes. – Complete

Buildings can take damage from abilities. – Complete

Refactor subparts to be cleaner and allow armor per sub part to work. – Complete

Add resist mod active effect – Raise or lower resistances on whole body or subpart. – Complete

Improve encoding of timed resources – reduces bandwidth for things like stamina, health, blood. – Complete

Add tags to skill nodes – “if this is tagged as fire, do this to them.” – Complete

Target dummies wear random armor for testing. – Complete

Improvements to scripting for design. – Complete

Quality of life improvements to creating abilities. Fewer lines of code, fewer errors. – Complete

Modify resource – adds or subtracts from a resource pool – Complete

Stability for ability disruption works. – Complete

Improvements to skill timing. – Complete

Scripts can pull stats from weapons. – Complete

Simplify LAEs to reduce bugs and code overhead. – Complete

Values in abilities can be affected by active effect. – Complete

Can shoot where aiming or at a target. – Complete

Expose more things to scripting “distance between entities, if wounded, check active effects, etc” – Complete

Add the ability for skills to create immobile entities in the world. – Complete

Add stacking groups to trigger nodes. – Complete

Body part targetting is scriptable. Added the ability for skills to lookup the most wounded body part. – Complete

Add the ability for skills to create immobile entities in the world. – Complete

Add the ability for skills to set an arbitrary state on entities. – Complete

Add the ability for skills to destroy entities. – Complete

Add the ability for skills to teleport entities. – Complete

Add Drop Stone which leveraged existing tech (stone cast with a MUCH lower velocity). – Complete

Add the ability for skills to execute arbitrary subskills. – Complete

Add Alteration Of Life (heal and short duration healing buff) – Complete

Add the ability for skills to buff healing on entities. – Complete

Add the ability for skills to lookup the most damaged body part – Complete

Add Creeping Petrification (slow movement, slow ability prep, and slow ability recovery) – Complete

Resources now regenerate over time and are conveyed on the UI. – Complete

Separate stone abilities of the Stonehealer from the usual magic network, removing the ability to create dud abilities by mixing invalid parts for them. – Complete

Bots and testing:

Create a “Cure Wound” ability for testing wounds. – Complete

Several threading improvements in areas that were causing crashes for a small percentage of users. – Complete

Improve effeciency and reduce bandwidth of ability metrics. – Complete

Fixes to possible memory leak points. – Complete

Damage tracking:

Determine if we should have EH create a new component that applies effect. – Complete

Body Sub-part health:

Figure out how wounds relate to sub-parts, if at all. – Complete

Get Physics query to return subparts again. – Complete

Logic to determine what parts to apply affect to when combining physics results and user selected parts. – Complete

Server side info relayed. – Complete

Logic to determine what parts to apply affect to when combining physics results and user selected parts. – Complete

Resources regenerate and are shown on UI. – Complete

Unify EntityID and BodyPartId into SubpartId – Complete

Conditionals and Requirements:

Research scriptables – Complete

Design:

Finalize first pass skill part lists. – 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.

Procedural material creation and pipeline documentation:

Example files: Surface coloring techniques. – Complete

Explore using Substance Designer to make VFX materials – Complete

Old materials updated to procedural:

stone_cobble_004 – Complete

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

Physics Subzones:

Handle changing subzones when teleporting. – Complete

Handle ability interactions that span multiple subzones. – Complete

Handle kinematic actors in multiple subzones – Complete

Remove hacks and hard-coded numbers – Complete

Determine where the coordinate translation will happen. – Complete

Add additional asserts and warnings – Complete

Test buildings and rubble. – Complete

Patcher:

WebAPI server capable of receiving multiple addresses for the same server group (Multi-Zone) – Complete

Allow client to connect to multiple game servers automatically:

Serialize connection process in NetworkedWorld – Complete

Connect to a list of game servers specified by command arg – Complete

Connect to a list of proxy servers specified by command arg – Complete

Fix issue with client not receiving LoadZone message – Complete

Handle connection failures – Complete

Fix client disconnect bug – Complete

Spawn player in correct zone according to the database – Complete

Retrieve a list of servers from a master server specified by command argument – Complete

Clean up code and finish minor changes – Complete

Delay setting activeNetClient until a starting zone is determined – Complete

Fix code that assumes build::serverhostname is a single host name – Complete

Pass server host name to UI layer – Complete

Zone server relays webAPI host to the client – Complete

Only send Hatchery shutdown info once, even if multiple zone servers are up – 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.

Fix pre-existing sound bugs, test and iterate. – 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 Tuatha male and female light armor. – Complete

Audit Tuatha male and female heavy armor. – Complete

Audit Viking male and female light armor. – Complete

Audit Viking male and female heavy armor. – Complete

As a Developer and Backer, I’d like to see improved visual fidelity in how our existing terrain materials blend together.

Add blend maps to generic deciduous forest 001. – Complete

Add blend maps to generic deciduous forest 002. – Complete

Add blend maps to pine forest neutral 001. – Complete

Add blend maps to pine forest Realm control variations. – Complete

Add blend maps to grassland 001. – Complete

Add blend maps to grassland 001 Realm control variations. – Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to be able to copy an entire skeleton and its dependencies, quickly, to support unique animations per character types.

Fix additional issues after testing. – Complete

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

Add /Delete from Placeable Entity View (Should be reflected in SceneTree). – Complete

Clean up editor code. – Complete

Fix Duplicate Placeables in SceneTree – Complete

Remove SpawnArea collection. Work entity data into Placeable subclasses – Complete

Simple Spawn Mgr – Complete

Placeable – Terrain Relative:

Add TerrainGridDetail to Placeable (GridPos, Elevation, AlignVertical, ElevateVertical) – Complete

Make TerrainGridDetail modifiable from Editor – Complete

Modifying TerrainGridDetail should update Placeable position (similar to how adding / detaching children does) – Complete

Modifying ControlPoints should update any Terrain Relative Placeables – Complete

Modifying a TerrainModGroup should update any Terrain Relative Placeables – Complete

GizmoXY slides Terrain Relative Placeable across terrain – Complete

Placeable – Zone Portal:

Add PlaceablePortal subclass of Placeable – Complete

Add Editor Support / Linking Portals Included – Complete

As a Backer and Developer, I’d like to see increased visual fidelity and improved performance in the dense test forest.

Audit poly count of med tree and reduce. – Complete

Audit poly count of small tree and reduce. – Complete

Add height-based blend maps to terrain textures. – Complete

As a Developer, I’d like to have a clear visual design for the UI of Camelot Unchained.

Second pass UI examples. – Complete

New Cards:

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:

Rewrite Build Server Sound Build to use separate resources, one per sound bank. – Complete

Rework client to load banks as separate resources. – Complete

Provide new workflow for DB to use when import. – Complete

New Sound Import Procedure and Editor:

Create a sound import wizard in editor. – Complete

Now, there had been a three-week hiatus between User Story updates, but it’s still a pretty fat one with the highlight being the multi-island, multi-server connection. Speaking of that, here’s a screen shot of just what it could look like as one island approaches another. First up, a day time shot.

Now, how about one at night? Check out the improved night sky and clouds too!

The cool part here is the tech that is now coming online that is behind that screen shot. What we have now is the ability to have multiple islands, on multiple servers and not just have people be able to see them, but see and interact with them real-time. This is not an optical illusion nor a trick (like just splitting up an island on one server). What you are seeing is another server and what we are testing right now with our IT folks is the ability to see and move between them. You can see the other players from your server farm just as easily as you would if everybody was in the same server space. Coming up next, making your abilities move from one server to the next one seamlessly. And that is a rather special achievement, not found in any game I’ve worked on or played. Separate server farms (or worlds) will not be a barrier for interaction, including abilities, siege engines, etc. between Realms. This is a big deal, both tech-wise and for our march to Beta 1.

For today’s dose of art, we have so much to show that I don’t know where to begin. So, let’s start off with some cheerful and fun concept art, followed by a modeled version of the art.



Skulls are fun and cheerful right? Especially for the class(es) that need to use them.

Now how about some weapons? First up, some swords of the Tuatha De Dannan.

Now a pole-arm and a sword.

Axe and shield next. Wonder who they belong to?

Arthurian’s need more swords!

It’s not Excalibur but it’s not chopped liver either!

I end our art section with even more screenshots from our forests. Some of these were in the MOP articles but I thought I’d like to put them out here for everybody to see in one place.

A heavily armored Tuatha De Dannan in the woods.

Come a little bit closer!

Now turn around!

Fall is here, well, not in Virginia yet, that’s for sure.

Say hello to my little friend, a torch.

Now let’s end the screenshots with one that sums up what Camelot Unchained is all about in so many ways.

A player, an ax, a realistic (but still improving, we have a long way to go before we are satisfied) world, vast draw distances and lots and lots of targets of opportunities.

For this weekend, we are going to be running an Alpha and IT stability test. I’ll send the details about that test shortly.

Have a great weekend everybody!

-Mark

