Unveiled: Camelot Unchained Newsletter #35 - City State Entertainment View this email in your browser Share Tweet +1 Team Tidings -by Max Porter Hey folks,



I hope you’re having a great end of June and looking forward to the beginning of July! It’s definitely summer in beautiful downtown Fairfax, Va, and things are really moving along in the sunlit studio here at City State Entertainment®. This game we’ve been working on is becoming real before our very eyes, and although we often say progress on Camelot Unchained® is coming along nicely, it really is. The updated animations, VFX, and SFX are starting to make Camelot Unchained feel more and more like a game again. A welcome sight after the Long Year of Re-Abilitation!



The new folks we’ve added to the programming team have been a huge help, as we mentioned last month when we introduced AJ to you all. This month, allow me to introduce Caleb, an awesome dude who is into Legos, board game nights, craft beer, and most importantly for us, gameplay programming! His contributions have already been felt in recent builds of the game, as he fixed a ton of gameplay bugs to learn our systems, and he will be helping to make gameplay rock solid going into Beta 1 and beyond. Caleb is part of the Seattle crew, coding like mad on the West Coast! Here’s his bio as it will appear on our website:



Caleb is a gameplay programmer who craves a strong vision that echoes through every detail. He is arguably the 9th funniest person we've ever hired. Caleb holds a BS in Game Programming from DigiPen and a BS in Marketing from NIU. He has gained about 30 pounds since he started his gaming career and shows no signs of stopping. Thanks, Caleb! And here’s Caleb’s avatar as drawn by Sandra, soon to join our team page: Here at the East Coast office of City State Entertainment®, we have continued our weekly schedule of streams this month, showing you everything from impressive creative work by artists and programmers to the latest updates and news. We have fun with it, but the streams are also very important to us, as we always want to be as informative as possible for our Backers and fans. 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, and our User Stories to check on our progress.



And now, for a broader look at the month and some truly epic in-depth pieces, read on in this very newsletter. You want information? We got information. Loads of it! Details abound in these articles, as we have a truly impressive Dose of Design article from Ben taking a thoughtful look at the speed of play in CU, an intensive Artitup breakdown with photos from Scott that really drills down into the Art Team’s work, a Tech Central article from dB that will teach you all about our flexible music tech, a high-level look at progress over the month in the State of the Build by Brittany, and of course a new Lore update from yours truly.



It is an absolute blast to edit this newsletter each month, and to collate these articles from the team for you folks. There are some truly detailed and epic articles in this massive issue, so once again allow me to remind you to click the “view this email in your browser” link in the top right so you can see the whole thing. Read on for articles, art, updates, news, information, and lore, and please enjoy this, the thirty-fifth issue of Unveiled. Hot Topics

The latest topics of discussion on the forums right now include Backers’ favorite classes, spell effects, wounds and traumas, and various group sizes.



Join the discussion on the forums on our website to bring your thoughts and ideas to the table! The latest topics of discussion on the forums right now include Backers’ favorite classes, spell effects, wounds and traumas, and various group sizes. Thank You Some freakin’ awesome Backers and fans occasionally send us gifts. We got some cool stuff this month!



Thank you to Poxer for this frothing cup, the final piece of paraphernalia for the fantastic espresso machine! We love it all so much! Big thanks to Failboat, who once again sends us delicious baked goods! These cakes, cake pops, and cupcakes absolutely made our day, and there was much happiness (and maybe a touch of silliness) over the sweets! We owe a big, massive, enormous, one might even say HUGE thank you to Mehuge, a Backer and member of the Mod Squad whose help has been absolutely awesome. Mehuge created a stand-in UI for our Vox in the game build, saving us from having to rely solely on slash commands for testing! It has made tests of the current crafting system smoother and much more enjoyable, and Mehuge, we just can't thank you enough! Thank you, thank you! Dose of Design -by Ben Pielstick The Speed of Play

As new folks—our awesome future players—continue to back Camelot Unchained, one of the recurring topics that comes up is how “fast” the game will be. We talked a little about this topic way back in the BSC Days combat presentation, but the speed of the game is a very complex topic I would like to explain in a little more depth. When players ask about whether the game is fast or slow, it is very hard to provide an answer without more specific context.



Usually, this question is asked with regard to the pacing of combat. To provide a comprehensive explanation of combat speed, we need to talk about health, movement, and ability use.



Health, relative to damage, determines how long fights will tend to last. A game that has low health compared to damage output will tend to have fights end very quickly. A game with high health compared to damage output will have fights that take longer, as characters are able to sustain more damage before being killed. There are of course additional factors to consider, such as armor, healing, buffs and debuffs, and the difficulty of successfully landing attacks against a target in the first place. With careful design, however, it is possible to maintain an expected range of variance for the time it will take one character to kill another. The shorthand term you will often see for this time is TTK, or Time To Kill. When designing a combat system, TTK is an important value to keep in mind, as it greatly influences the way players will feel about the speed of combat in the game.



Since TTK is a range of expected times, what tends to be most important for taking TTK into consideration is the minimum, or the fastest one character can kill another. Regardless of the amount of variance, the fastest time in which a character can be killed tends to be a breaking point. It sets the lowest amount of time players will have to respond before they are killed. In some games, this time can be instantaneous, which is where the term “one-shot kill” comes from.



For Camelot Unchained, we have decided to try and minimize the potential for one-shot kills. To accomplish this, our target minimum TTK needs to be set to some number of seconds above zero. During early testing, we have set this minimum value to around 10-15 seconds, which will continue to be adjusted as testing continues. This means that a high-damage-output character with well-crafted gear shouldn’t be able to kill a freshly-created character with starter gear anywhere near instantly. This number might seem high at first, just for that purpose, but for the sake of large battles we want to provide a little extra buffer for when multiple characters are attacking the same target.



Months or even years after the game launches, we want new players to be able to go out onto the battlefield full of highly progressed characters and contribute to the war without being instantly killed. Every rule has its exceptions, so there will no doubt still be cases where characters immediately die, such as getting focused on by many enemies at once, or being crushed under the rubble of a collapsing building. The vast majority of the time, though, there should be an allowance of at least a few seconds when your character is attacked to respond with an ability or two before being killed.



Movement, likewise, has a lot to do with how fast or slow a game feels. The speed at which characters move about the battlefield determines how long it takes characters to close distances and engage in melee combat, how large and how fast projectiles must be to reliably hit moving characters, how difficult abilities with long activation times are to use effectively, and much more. Faster movement speeds in video games generally tend to feel better the higher they go. This is largely due to technical reasons. For example, the viewport looking at a 3D world through a 2D screen, often from a distant camera perspective high above the ground, makes movement feel unnaturally slow. There is of course an upper bound, where movement gets too fast and simply becomes uncontrollable, but games typically cap movement speed well below that threshold to support their gameplay needs.



Thus far in early development of combat in Camelot Unchained, we’ve tested a baseline combat movement speed between 5 and 8 meters per second. This value, like TTK, is far from finalized, and will be adjusted over the course of further testing. The goal is to find a movement speed that generally feels good and not overly sluggish, while also ensuring that the rate of positional change as players run around the battlefield doesn’t make combat too chaotic and frustrating to play. As we implement more classes and abilities, and run larger-scale tests under a variety of conditions, we will be able to determine if movement seems too fast or too slow, and adjust it accordingly.



Beyond the base speed for character movement, there are a lot of other questions that need to be answered. Do characters move backward or strafe at the same speed as they move forward? What is the acceleration rate to get up to maximum speed or slow down to stop? Is turn rate limited? What external factors like stats, buffs, and debuffs affect movement speed, and to what degree? And many more.



In the current version of CU, strafing and reversing is slightly slower than running forward. Running up and down hills modifies movement speed based on slope, up to a maximum incline that can’t be traversed. There is a small degree of acceleration to smooth the transition between stopping and moving and to assist slightly with network prediction. Turning the camera is as fast as your mouse rate, but characters have a limited rotation speed. When a player holds right click and turns the mouse faster than their character can turn, the view changes as expected, while their character turns at a maximum rate to catch up. This mechanic is much more obvious with slow-turning siege engines than humanoid characters.



Overall movement speed is also modified by stats, so characters with high Agility run slightly faster, but characters are slowed down by the Encumbrance stats on the equipment they are wearing, and any additional encumbrance generated by carrying too much. On top of all that, there are abilities such as Sprint, which allows slightly faster movement in combat at the cost of stamina and a small amount of blood over time, or Travel, which disables combat abilities but allows significantly faster standard movement speed to get around the large open world, and of course many buffs and debuffs to movement speed from class-specific abilities.



Obviously, the subject of movement is pretty complicated on its own. This is just a short overview, and there is much more that could be said on this subject. When it comes to how fast the game is, all of these elements of movement play a part. Over the course of Beta testing for CU, there will be multiple rounds of adjustment to the base movement speed, the additional stats surrounding movement speed, and all the ways these values can be modified. Where exactly all these things will end up is difficult to predict. Movement is very much about feel, and requires iteration to get right. Of the parts of the game that might feel slow, however, I expect movement to be the least concerning.



The ability system is by far the largest feature that can make a game feel slow. Almost nothing is more potentially aggravating than this: You want something to happen as early and as frequently as possible, and then you have to wait. Ability speed in the combat system for CU can be broken down into three main phases: Preparation, Recovery, and Cooldown. Preparation is the time between pressing a button to activate an ability, and the effects of that ability taking place, like the cast time of a spell. Recovery is the time between the effects of an ability taking place and the character being ready to activate their next ability, similar to the “global cooldown” in other games. Cooldown is the time between the end of an ability’s Recovery phase, and that same ability being available to be activated again.



Of these three phases, Preparation has the most going on. On the technical side, the game client has to receive and process the input when the player activates an ability, show the appropriate response in the UI, start playing the appropriate animations, sounds, and visual effects, and send a message to the game server. When a player activates an ability, the client immediately starts the Preparation animation and sends a message to the game server. The game server (which is actually a collection of servers, but that is more complicated than necessary for this example) gets the message, verifies that the player is allowed to do what the message says (in case they are out of sync or trying to cheat), then starts the character’s ability’s Preparation phase on its internal simulation of the game world.



Doing things this way has a number of advantages. First, it makes the ability UI feel responsive and smooth at all times. Second, even if the player has a hacked client, the server verification ensures that the ability won’t work and updates aren’t sent to other players. OTOH, if the ability is verified, the server then sends messages out to all other clients with characters nearby, so that they can start seeing the animations and visual effects, and hear the sounds that go along with the ability as well.



This back-and-forth communication and server-side verification of abilities takes time. At a very foundational level, ability activation cannot be ‘instant’. For gameplay purposes, it is very important that there be enough time to sync the timing of abilities across the internet. At first, the initiating player will see their ability activation start before the message for that ability has gone to the server. By the time that ability’s preparation time has finished, however, that message will have been sent and processed by the server, and all nearby clients will have all been messaged, so that everyone will see the ability’s end result take place at the exact same time.



Fortunately, even if the Preparation phase can’t technically be truly ‘instant’, it can still be pretty fast. The times we’re talking about here are very small, in the range of tens to hundreds of milliseconds. If you’ve played many online games, you will know that a ping time of 200ms would be extremely high, to a point of being unplayable in many games, yet in ability Preparation terms, this would still only be 0.2 seconds. So, while we can’t make abilities truly instant, we can still make Preparation times very short if we so desire.



For some gameplay reasons, it is sometimes better for Preparation to take time rather than being as close to instant as possible. During the Preparation phase, abilities can be cancelled or interrupted, and buffs and debuffs applied to the character will affect the ability in progress. Seeing an opponent starting Preparation of an ability allows for interesting reactive counterplay. Preemptive counters are possible against abilities that are effectively instant, but this depends on prediction and weighting probabilities rather than recognition and response. For some types of abilities, preemptive counters are fine; but there are cases where both predicting what an opponent will do and recognizing what an opponent is actually doing are desirable opportunities for counterplay.



No matter what the Preparation time is for an ability, you will always see the UI respond right away. You will also immediately see your character start to animate and play sounds and particles. This helps the game feel responsive, even when the resultant effects of an ability aren’t immediate. Working out just how long the maximum times can reasonably be while still feeling good will take a considerable amount of iteration. This applies to all the different types of abilities CU will have, from melee swings with small and large weapons, to archery and throwing weapon attacks, to all sorts of magic spell casting.



A lot of our ability timings are set up with the primary goal of testing our systems. As our new animation system gets closer to being ready, we will start to get a better idea of how fast is too fast and how slow is too slow for each type of ability we’re trying to support. The Preparation phase timing will be one of the hardest things to get right for the overall feel of the speed of the game, so you can expect to see a lot of changes, even far into our later stages of Beta testing, before we really settle in on what these times will be for the launch of the game.



In comparison to Preparation, the Recovery phase might seem somewhat uneventful, as it takes place after the ability’s effect has already taken place. Even so, it is extremely important to the working of the combat model, as it helps us to meet one of the difficult design requirements laid out by Mark way back in the Kickstarter campaign: No ‘Global Cooldown’.



The Global Cooldown, or GCD, is how many MMORPGs get around the ‘instant’ nature of many of their abilities. It is basically a mandatory standard ‘global’ timer around 0.8-1.5 seconds long, that is triggered any time a player uses an ability. The GCD prevents activation of any other ability during its duration (with some exceptions for ‘off GCD’ abilities). It does this for three reasons: (1) to ensure each ability has, at a minimum, enough time equal to its duration to play animations without overlapping with the next ability the player wants to use, (2) to hide the messaging time for abilities in the GCD, allowing a small degree of desync between what each player sees, but letting the ability still seem instant to the player using it, and (3) to prevent players from spamming ‘instant’ abilities as fast as they can press their buttons.



As Mark states in the video linked above, Camelot Unchained will not have a GCD. We address this same set of issues by implementing the Recovery phase in our ability activation sequence. This isn’t just a GCD with another name. The Recovery time is not standardized, so every ability can have its own recovery time. This gives abilities in CU a lot of flexibility, as we can balance out the time abilities take between the Preparation and Recovery phases. Some abilities will have their effects applied almost immediately, by having a very short Preparation phase (remembering that preparation can’t be truly instant, due to communication times), while compensating with a longer Recovery phase. Other abilities will have a longer Preparation time before their effects take place, but can maintain the same overall activation time by having a shorter Recovery phase.



There will of course be an absolute minimum to the total time of ability activation, including both the Preparation and Recovery phases, both to facilitate network communication and to allow time to play fitting animations. In practice, there will be a lot of variety in ability timings for both the Preparation and Recovery phases. This will make the overall feel of combat very different from a game in which you’re expected to consistently press ability buttons at a fixed GCD interval.



Cooldowns are a somewhat controversial topic when it comes to MMO design, as many players feel they slow the game down and unnecessarily take away choice by limiting opportunities to use highly desirable skills. Cooldowns do have their place, as many abilities simply could not be implemented in a balanced way without some limitation on the frequency of their use.



In CU, our ability system allows players to construct their abilities from a set of components. Cooldowns can’t be applied directly to abilities, since each ability is nothing more than a collection of modular parts. Instead, each component can have a cooldown applied to it independently. Any component of an ability used by a player will trigger that cooldown (if the component has one) when that ability is activated. The cooldown timer for that ability’s components actually begins once the ability activation time is successfully completed (or cancelled, or interrupted). That ability, and any other ability using any of the same components with a cooldown time, will not be available until their cooldown timers have expired. As an example: If we were to make a Fire Ball ability using a Rune component for Fire, and a Shape component for Ball, if Fire had a 5 second cooldown, and Ball a 10 second cooldown, activating the Fire Ball ability would prevent any other Fire ability from being used for 5 seconds, and any other Ball ability from being used for 10 seconds.



In reality, most basic components are not likely to have cooldowns at all, and only a few types of special abilities, such as Death Curses, will have cooldown times that last a very long time. Keep in mind that even with some cooldown timers, CU doesn’t limit the number of skills players have access to at once, so you should practically never run into that situation where your character has nothing useful they can do solely because you’re stuck waiting on cooldowns.



Overall, the ability system in Camelot Unchained may feel a little bit slow to players who have grown used to the more action-oriented style of combat popularized by many recent MMORPGs, but not slow in comparison to the “old school” games to which Camelot Unchained is closer in spirit. Ability use must never feel unresponsive, however. The client will always process input immediately, and will begin playing animations, particles, and sound effects to go along with skills as soon as buttons are pressed. The User Interface also will give immediate feedback, providing acknowledgement to any interactions, and displaying appropriate information without delay.



Bringing all the pieces together, from art, to tech, to game design, is what game development is all about. Since the final result hasn’t come together yet, it is difficult to say with a high degree of certainty what that final result will look like. The goals for that final result are to deliver combat that is fun and engaging, that works from a scale as small as 1v1 up to hundreds or even thousands of players. Responsiveness and fluidity are of extremely high importance, as is finding a pace at which things seem not too frantic and not too slow. Everyone’s taste tends to be a little different in this regard, but we look forward to letting you try the game out for yourselves and listening to your feedback as testing ramps up over the coming months.



As always, if you’re already a Backer and you have any specific questions, feel free to visit our forums, and even if you’re not a Backer yet, you’re always welcome to drop by our weekly Friday updates on Twitch, which are typically followed by a Q&A session. Just remember: Until we’ve got all the pieces in place, we’re not going to make many specific promises where exact numbers are concerned, as the way the game feels can only be improved through testing and iteration. And please keep in mind that over the course of the game’s development CSE will continue to listen to our Backers’ feedback and suggestions on how to make this game one that we will all play for a very long time. Developer Quote “As always, keep in mind that one of the things that we do differently than a lot of developers is that we share things that are really work-in-progress. And man, sometimes we end up cutting them, but that’s just how we do things, for better (usually) or worse (sometimes).” - Mark Jacobs Artitup -by Scott Trolan Another strong finish to a productive month from the Art team here at CSE. With our concentrated efforts, we worked on new environment assets with performance improvements, new helmets, UI design, new and better VFX, and new and better animations. Now that we have figured out how to better utilize our new animation system, we have begun to push ourselves and add, where available, what we call "flourish" to our attack animations. We’ve been busy!



As summer weather arrived this month, a few of us ventured out of the dark, cavernous office with low-hanging ceiling fans and took to the great outdoors and the 100+ degree parking lot asphalt to choreograph new attack animations. With the aid of Ben, our Combat Weapon Specialist, rubber weapon props, and our video camera, we gathered reference footage as we planned out our new attacks.







Over the past months, we’ve focused our time on developing functional combat animations for Camelot Unchained. There are a lot of different issues that remain to be balanced. Work to finalize the basics for Beta 1 proved to be difficult, especially with our ability system and new animation system. With some of that worked out, we’re refining the overall visual space that our attacks occupy in order to fit one of our goals: You should be able to understand what your opponent is doing. Is she running around swinging at legs with slowing status effects, or is she going for massive hits to the body and head, and therefore attacking in a slower manner? This informs the player how to choose a target, and how to be best prepared to fight.



After only a couple of tests with the greataxe and polearm swings, we began to realize it wasn’t very easy to tell a high attack from a mid swing. We’d also intentionally left more visual real estate available for moves with more “flourish.” The important decision here was: Combat animations should be grounded in realism, with some showmanship added to better convey what is going on from a distance.



Now, please don’t think we’re going full flashy MMO combat. That’s not the intent. Adding some more movement in the arc of a swing, or different start and end positions of a swing, made it much easier to see the different types of attacks being made, and honestly just looked a bit cooler.



It also helped that Ben would willingly pantomime some basic swings, and then do some with a bit more flourish for us. When several people say, “Ooh that was neat! Do it again!” you’ve probably found a good direction.



To better explore this direction, Sandra and I were challenged to incorporate some more “flourish,” such as a flip or spin, into new Poleaxe and Greataxe Mid Slash Attacks. Here’s the cool part: instead of stretching our animation frames at the mercy of our dynamic ability system, we were able to add some of these flourishes into the Preparation and Recovery phases (as referenced in Ben’s Dose of Design above) of an attack to meet the time requirement of the ability. This allows the action segments (pre-hit and post-hit) to play at normal speed as intended.



We hope that after we complete more examples, we will have enough work to help unify the consensus on how our game should feel and look when it comes to animations…..at least for now. We’re definitely looking for more feedback in this area as we get into combat testing. This is actually a great segue…



Audio and VFX can now be added to animations! This system goes well beyond the capability we had last year with the old animation system, and has a much easier method to use. Work by dB, Mike C., and myself has begun on managing data entry to pair all of our respective assets together within the Unchained Editor. Check out the firecracker feet test in our recent video! This showed how we can time audio and VFX to individual and multiple animation frames within a single animation clip. It's great to see how VFX and audio can subconsciously intensify the weight and impact in our animations!



Mike has also been working diligently with Ben to use the new tagging system to get through a whole host of VFX assets for abilities. This system is way better than the last version we had, and still has plenty of room to grow. After several big updates to the VFX editor and system, Mike is rebuilding a new, better-looking source library to work from, while also adding in new assets. We’re starting off by adding generic VFX to ability components first, to facilitate combat testing. Once we have the basics in, we’ll begin adding in permutations and refinements.







The system will work in an additive manner right now. A good example of the process can be seen with arrows: We first make one arrow trail and one generic fire arrow VFX that will be added to all arrows with fire. Then we come back and make all the arrow permutations so that you can tell a Blackguard’s barbed arrow from a Forest Stalker’s crescent arrow. Fun stuff!



Over the month, Sandra finished a first test pass of the needed animations to facilitate the use of a left-handed torch. We used the mixing feature of Andrew’s animation system to copy all left-handed torch clips to every Realm idle, fidget, and locomotion sets, including jumping. With all of this work being done on torches, Jon suggested we really should make Realm-unique torches. Watch him knock these out on his live streams here; we will be adding these new torches to the game very soon.







After the successful left arm torch test, we began to use that idea to add a one-handed sword in the right hand. After a bit of back and forth on what animation segments we needed, and exactly how best to pose the character for different weapons, we got a successful test in the game build, frankensteining the two arms to the torso. Now we’re working on improving those animations before moving to other combos like dagger and spear, axe and sword, etc. Tyler heaved a big Producer-sigh-of-relief, feeling that we’d figured out how to make this work and save time in the process.



Jon has also been concentrating his efforts on concepting and modeling Realm-styled safe island portals. These portal concepts are really interesting and recognizable for each Realm. He has been live streaming his progress on these as well, and you can see that here.







Earlier this month, Dionne started work on a wonderful set of wood dock assets from which different permutations can be created. In response to the feedback of “Great, make it bigger! More!” from Mark, the dock has grown, and is now propped out with all sorts of things like barrels, nets, drying fish racks, statues, torches, etc. Bigger is looking great! With dB’s help, we added some general dock ambience to the area, with specific spots of creaking wood. It really helped add to the overall feel.







Michelle has been developing concepts for both resource nodes and overall UI design. The former will be part of Beta 1, while the latter is more of a current goal during the first part of Beta 1. The goal right now for UI is to get something simple and functional into the build, and can be improved upon and skinned later, when there’s more time. Plus, we want more feedback on all the UI elements in Beta 1, before we dive too deep and waste art time.







Speaking of UI, James has basically been neck-deep in icons most of the month for the player inventory UI, which you can see being built in AJ’s stream. Making icons to convey potentially complex ideas in a teeny tiny box is quite hard. We’ve even passed around a couple of tests where team members had to line up the icon to the word they felt it represented. It was honestly a great way to figure out what was working and what was not!





That wraps up Art here for the month. Till next month, Peace! Tech Central -by Daniel "dB" Beck Interactive Music Music plays an interesting role for video games. In film, certain themes may repeat, but you never hear the same exact piece of music over and over again. In games, the opposite is often true, partly because of the simple amount of time spent with the medium. If you want to create enough music to last for the lifetime of a player’s relationship with your game, you will end up creating hours upon hours of music. Most games do not accomplish this lofty goal. Some repetition is okay, and even enjoyable, but if you go too far down that path, music can become an annoyance.



Additionally, music written for film is composed with very precise events on screen in mind. Games like ours don’t have this luxury (though other games might have in-game cutscenes), and so music is written as an approximation, and cannot react dynamically to what is occurring in the game.



In order to keep the music in Camelot Unchained from becoming repetitive, we are utilizing the MIDI capabilities of Wwise. MIDI is a format that contains data about the music being played, but does not contain any actual audio. You can think of it as the sheet music. The music you hear in Camelot Unchained is not a typical audio file that you can load up into iTunes and play. Instead, the audio engine plays each individual note at runtime. This gives us much more flexibility in how we can make the music evolve and adapt to what is going on in the game.



By going down this route, we can change many of the parameters to give more variation from just one piece of music. Here’s a list of some available options we have! We can choose what to play on a per-instrument basis.

We can also change what instrument is actually playing each part.

We can transpose the key of the music, and we can also change the tempo or speed of the music.

We can even control how hard or soft the drums are playing based on the intensity of the combat going on in the game.

We are also switching the instruments being played based on the number of players fighting in the area.

We can even do Realm-specific instrumentation. For example, whenever a warhorn plays in one song, it is specific to what Realm controls that piece of land. By using all of these options, we get lots of variation out of just one piece of music, and also adapt and change the music in a way that better serves what is going on in the game.



Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. This track is my most recent addition to the ambient music playlist. It's a bit long, so I cut it off halfway through each time, but there are three playthroughs here. Each playthrough is in a different key. You’ll also notice that it plays with a different plucky, string instrument each time, playing a variation on the melody each time. Keep in mind that this is all referencing the same “sheet music!”



Here's what it looks like in Wwise. You can see I have four different "06 Woods High" parts to choose from, with a 1 out of 5 chance it won't play any part at all. So that is the "what to play" randomization that is happening. Then there is the "what is doing the playing" randomization that is happening, as well. Here you can see there are three different options for the "06 Woods High." So, that's a brief peek into our music system. I never want the music to feel old and tired, even if it's the hundredth time you've heard a track! Furthermore, I want the music to feel like it was composed specifically for the experience you are having right then as a player.



By using the strategies available to us with MIDI, we can morph and augment the music in a natural way that better suits the action in the game. The example shown is from our ambient music system, but the combat music system will receive even more input about the state of the game. The intention is for you to feel the music grow in intensity and grandeur as more and more players enter into a battle. More on that one later! Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed reading about some techniques I am utilizing in order to keep the music fresh and interesting each time you hear it. State Of The Build -by Brittany Aubert This month has been a combo of bug fixing and feature progress. While feature work is often considered sexier than bug fixing, I love it when engineers get some time to squash bugs. It may not be the most glamorous part of the job, but there are so many benefits. It’s good when we get some time to fix the little, often annoying, things that get in the way of the player experience. Sometimes bug fixes make things look better or perform faster. The progress made through bug fixes happens in much smaller increments than feature work, and is harder to see day-to-day, but each of these fixes leads to a lot of the progress you “feel” when playing the game.



Let’s get into this month’s State of the Build, and dive more into specific bugs fixed, as well as how bugs fit into the broader scheduling picture. As always, this article is a high-level monthly overview. Our weekly updates contain more detail and cover the full spectrum of work we’re doing.



Rendering bugs: George, Dave, and Bull spent a considerable amount of time making improvements to our rendering pipeline (you can read about this through recent weekly updates). With George being the first to wrap up his portion of the work, he was able to dive into his backlog of bugs.



A backlog is a collection of future work, comprised of both tasks and bugs. When a new work item is written up but isn’t going to be addressed immediately, it goes into someone’s backlog. My job with scheduling the engineering team often centers around the process of organizing this backlog and reprioritizing tasks.



My personal preference is to spend some time cleaning out the backlog when an engineer comes free from a very long or in-depth task. Some of these open tasks are closed easily, either because they are no longer relevant (often the case with old bugs) or have been fixed through work done in other tasks. This was very much the case with the recent particle revamp, when several bugs logged about visual oddities had been fixed in the process. Once we were done scrubbing the backlog, we identified a collection of bugs that could easily be knocked out by George. Unlit objects, ambient lighting, and shadows all got some TLC.



Gameplay bugs: Hooray! We have another new programmer! The programmer trees we planted have been plentiful these past few months. :)



Caleb is our newest addition to the engineering team, and we set up his initial task list similarly to how we did AJ’s (you can read about engineering onboarding in my piece from last month). Caleb has been making quick work of a number of bugs that have been hanging around for a bit, like dummies not respawning, and players not respawning when they bleed to death (fun fact: these ended up being the same bug). He also took over the work in progress for encumbrance and brought it to a testable state.



Often when bugs come along, they get assigned to a particular area of expertise. Caleb has a background in both client and server programming. Because of this, he’s uniquely positioned to become one of our “glue” programmers, someone who can take a lot of different systems and make them work together. This became apparent when Caleb tackled a few UI bugs with stamina regeneration.



I’m excited to work with Caleb, as well as throw some...exciting challenges his way (cue evil laughter).



Siege engines: In game production, there’s a common idea of the “33% Rule,” which states that you should add a 33% buffer to whatever estimate or timeline you’re given. Engineers often joke that this is because they are bad at estimating things. Nevertheless, most of the time this isn’t their fault! Let me explain…



Software development can be unpredictable, for a wide range of factors. Features come in behind schedule because of random reasons, like a bug showing up, someone getting sick, or the power going out. Some of these things are out of your control, which makes it difficult to provide an accurate estimate (which I'm aware is an oxymoron). Matt is an excellent programmer, but getting first-pass working siege engines took longer than his original estimate. A lot of this was because he ran into unforeseen hurdles along the way.



A siege engine is a craftable item that when dropped into the world becomes an entity which can be controlled using skills. It touches a lot of other systems at the same time as needing to cross-cut the many layers of the architecture. Some features do one or the other, and some do both, so adding scorpions was not a “one-off,” but rather an entity which can easily be used for a catapult or similar types of siege weapons.



Because of this, there were a number of touch points that needed small updates to support siege. One example was the ammo system, which needed to be updated to support siege-specific ammunition. While making the updates, we decided to tackle a pretty nasty bug: firing your last arrow insta-killed its target. This bug proved more difficult to fix than we originally expected. Leaving the bug had the chance of negatively impacting playtesting, but hacking in a fix to stick to our estimate would have made future work more difficult. We opted to take the time to make the right fix.



Now siege engines are usable, in an early form, and we’ve addressed a major bug in our ammo system along the way.



Building metrics: Sometimes we start a task that is impossible to estimate required time for, like “Profile buildings” or “Optimize building code.” We knew buildings needed some optimization TLC, but it’s hard to know where to start. That’s why Rob spent some time this month hooking metrics into our building code. These metrics allow us to display sweet graphs through a tool, called Grafana, showing us where our pain points are as the game is running. This makes the follow-up task - making optimizations to buildings - much easier to scope, because we have data to back up our approach.



Crafting UI and support: This one is a slight tangent from the bug theme. When we rolled out the first version of the crafting feature, it heavily utilized slash commands, and was intentionally bare-bones. We knew the first point of feedback from our Backers would be that a UI would be extremely helpful (and we were right - thank you to our players who provided feedback in the forums!). Before we even reached this point, we were talking to a member of our Mod Squad, Mehuge, about putting together a temporary UI for us. Thank you, Mehuge!



Some work needed to be done by JB and Christina to give Mehuge the functionality he needed to fully test his work. Addressing feedback and fixing bugs often fall into the same category, and make us ask the question, "Do we stop making forward progress, and instead detour to make a particular thing better?" In the case of the crafting UI, it made sense for JB and Christina to help Mehuge out! JB set it up so that we can use GraphQL to read data from the API server to display on the UI, and Christina extended the data we provide with each slash command. This teamwork led to Mehuge creating a UI with buttons and dropdowns, something that decreased the barrier to entry for a lot of our players, increasing the rate of testing and the potential to find bugs. Once again, we can’t thank you enough, Mehuge!



That’s all for now. Let’s go make a video game! Brittany out! Lore Corner -by Max Porter Hey folks, welcome to another story in the Lore Corner! This month, allow me to present to you a rewritten, revamped, and refreshed version of part 3 of the epic story of the Silverhands! This sprawling chronicle was originally written by Mark Jacobs in seven parts, which were then collected into one massive Becoming™ story. Please read on for the developed version, as we call it, of this Becoming tale, which not only tells us a great adventure of the first Silverhand, but also presents some of Mark’s thoughts on The Depths™ and the beings therein. Here's part one and part two. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy! The Becoming: The Silverhands Part 3

The tale of Nuada Part 3

Nuada led the Delvers swiftly away from the Chamber of Lost Souls. The stone pathway led down through a tunnel and toward a large intersection.



As the group walked on, the path began to change, the worn stones giving way to an uneven surface. John glanced down and choked, disgusted. The rest of the mercenaries had a similar reaction, eyes widening in the magelight.



They could now see that body parts were embedded in the path: hands, legs and heads of every imaginary race, size, and description. This frozen flesh had merged with the stone path itself, making it uneven. Wearing queasy looks on their faces, most avoided another look downward.



Nuada drew his sword, and the rest followed suit. Their steps slowed to a cautious pace as they crossed a high stone bridge. Nimue frowned at the black chasm that dropped away out of all sight. Beyond, the mercenaries came to the intersection of three tunnels. The stone walls were aglow with reflected colors, emanating from a strange flame held by an even stranger statue.



Reaching the center of the open space, the remaining adventurers stood before an enormous statue that radiated a silent, palpable malice. Above it, there hung a great brazier, from which a burning conflagration of ever-shifting colors erupted. The fire was strange and supernatural; gems seemed to dance among the flames.



Unbeknownst to the travelers, the mysterious statue altered its appearance depending on who looked at it. To John, it appeared as a voluptuous female of his race but with a skull for a head, blood-drenched claws for hands, and feet that looked more like the writhing tentacles of some sea-creature. To Nimue, the statue was a woman with spears penetrating her body from every angle, as she appeared to writhe in great pain. For Nuada, it was himself with stumps for arms, swallowing a sword whose tip emerged from his rear. The rest saw other horrors, each believing they saw the true monstrous form. As the group stood transfixed by the statue’s menace, it shifted before their eyes. Every alteration showed the victim suffering greater agony.



Frightened to the point of losing all caution, one of the young mages who had worked to light the cavern of statues began to call forth his most powerful fire magic. Nuada tore his gaze away from the image of his own tortures to see the madness in the young man’s eyes, the crazed desire to destroy the personalized abomination that loomed overhead.



Instead of wasting his breath as he had with the Luchorpán, Nuada shouted to the others, “Scatter! Get away from the statue!”



When the spell struck the tall carven thing, it became very clear that a magical attack was not a good idea. The statue began to change shape once more, and finally everyone saw the same thing. Instead of a twisted, tortured creature, the statue now took the form of a powerfully built, terrifying colossus, wreathed in flame. Freed of its imprisonment, the elemental turned to its liberator and bowed in mock gratitude. Then it stepped on him, burning his crushed body to a cinder.



As the mage’s bones snapped and crunched, his screams cut off by crackling flames, most of the mercenaries broke and ran. Only Nimue and John held fast, looking to Nuada. A blue glow spread over Nimue’s hands as she prepared a spell, which Nuada guessed was water or ice-based magic. The Dvergr John stepped in front of her. He raised his heavy stone-studded arms, then slammed them to the ground like two hammers. The stone floor shook and trembled, as if ready to erupt at his command.



The bravery of these two deserved better companions than these other mercenaries. Nuada drew his sword with his one hand and rushed to their side.

The elemental approached the steady trio with thunderous footsteps. Raising one enormous hand, it hurled a great fireball. Spitting and roaring, the orb of flame swept through the air, coming to erase them into ash.



But Nimue had foreseen this attack. Her counter was to summon a massive wall of ice. Cloudy and frosted, the great blue-white wall blocked the fiery attack and completely obscured the monster’s vision. From the other side of the ice, they could hear it blazing with rage, smashing stone and fire against the wall, sending cracks across its cloudy surface.



Nimue did her best to maintain the barrier, reforming the ice as chunks of it shattered and melted away, but her magical reserves were already straining. Watching the mage grit her teeth, Nuada and John glanced at one another. “We must do something quickly,” Nuada shouted over the crash of hot stone on ice.



John responded, “I will charge the monster. My stones are sturdy, and I will be protected. You stay back, find an opening, and strike hard!”



Nuada shook his head. “I have a better idea. Use your stony arms to weaken the bridge!”

John grinned and nodded. Rising from his crouch, he ran to the bridge and began hammering at the stone base.



The colossus broke a larger crack through the ice wall, which spewed fire and steam.



“Nimue, leave the wall. I need you to hold up the bridge with frost.” The woman turned and obliged, throwing a thin sheet of over the weakened bridge. Nuada tapped her elbow and added, “Let’s go!” The three of them ran over the crumbling bridge as the wall of ice was blasted apart.



Through the broken chunks of tumbling ice, the tremendous creature came. With mighty stone hands clenched into fists, the fiery elemental lumbered toward them, orange flames streaming behind its massive stone limbs. All three waited on the other side of the chasm, eyes darting between the bridge and the enemy.



The mighty creature came right up to the edge of the bridge and raised a flame-wrapped foot. The elemental glanced down at the sheet of ice, paused, and set its foot back on sturdy ground without touching the bridge. It began to laugh, a horrible, choking sound that echoed down the chasm and sickened the listeners.



Nuada stared at it, flickering flames dancing before his eyes. This creature was not some unthinking brute. The elemental gestured to the trio, and then pounded one fist into the other, spraying out sparks between its fingers. The massive, fiery being took a few steps backward and bent its knees, preparing to jump over the damaged section.



John grunted. He looked at Nuada and smiled. Then he crouched with fists clenched, summoning power from the earth. Nuada stepped back as John sprang into the air. At the same moment, the elemental’s stone knees screeched as it leapt from the other side of the bridge.



Nuada and Nimue could do nothing but watch as the solid little Dvergr and the massive elemental met in midair, amid an explosion of fire and cracking stone. The terrible noise echoed within the caverns, booming back through the chasms and tunnels.



John bounced off of the thing’s head as it was still rising, but tumbled down and grasped the elemental’s fiery legs, shouting unintelligibly. Its momentum interrupted, the creature crashed down upon the bridge, which shattered beneath them.



As the pair fell, streaming fire into the chasm, the elemental roar of anger was all but drowned out by booming laughter from the brave Dvergr. “I needed a bit of a warmup, anyway!”



The noise faded to a distant rumble and the glow of flickering flame disappeared, leaving Nimue and Nuada alone.



Nuada walked quietly to the dark edge of the chasm. There was nothing to be seen but the long dark, plunging downward. “He sacrificed himself for us...those he barely knew. I don’t know what to make of it.”



After a few moments, Nuada and Nimue left the broken bridge. Nimue spoke up at last: “With our band’s numbers reduced to just two...perhaps turning back would be wise.”



“Agreed,” Nuada grunted. They began to retrace their path back toward the gate, footsteps echoing through the empty stone halls. The dim light of their one remaining torch flickered across the walls and to the smaller tunnel mouth where they had emerged from the Cavern of Lost Souls.



However, peering through the opening in the smoke of his torch, Nuada did not see the dark cavern. Instead of the ranks of stone statues there was a tunnel full of green, growing things, like misshapen tree limbs. Though the changed room made him nervous, Nuada felt more comfortable among trees, no matter how twisted.



As he stepped into the tunnel, a sickly green glow spread from his foot, emanating from the diseased moss and lichen. In the phosphorescent glimmer, Nuada could see how the growths covered every inch of the tunnel’s inner surface, slowly pulsating like the breathing of a gigantic creature.



“Just a moment.” Nimue looked ill at ease as she stepped in behind Nuada and light rippled from her feet. She summoned a seeing eye to scout ahead, her fingers weaving a pattern and calling the spell out of nothing. The small orb went whizzing off as she came up beside Nuada.



The eye made it no more than a stone’s throw down the tunnel before a green tendril reached out from the ceiling. Moving like a snapped tendon, it grabbed the floating eye and crushed it in a burst of magic blood. Nimue and Nuada watched with open mouths as the eye’s mush fell to the ground. The thick moss that covered everything sucked in the remains with a greedy, slurping sound.



Nuada shook himself and hesitated to speak, lest he alarm this strange, living place any further. They had no choice but to keep going, so he gently pressed Nimue’s shoulder before moving in front. Together, they walked slowly forward, sinking to their ankles in the soft moss with each step. With the strange bulbous shapes made by the moss on the walls, it felt like anything could be hiding, ready to leap out. Nuada kept his left hand on his sword’s hilt, tensed to draw at any moment.



As they neared the midpoint of the passage, Nimue whispered, “I do not wish to discover if that thing can kill me.” Calling up her ice magic once more, she froze the hidden tendril in place so that it could not strike.



Nuada smiled grimly at her success, but as they continued down the tunnel, he spotted something move within the thick layers of green moss. The Tuatha stopped in place, and Nimue peered around him in the phosphorescent glow to see little pods swelling, growing from both sides of the tunnel. As the pods stretched to their limit, they began to burst, releasing deformed creatures that skittered over the walls, still attached to their pods by a long green vine. They had plantlike limbs and nightmarish faces, with fungus hanging from them in flaps around their huge eyes. As they crawled with thick arms or ran towards Nuada and Nimue with feet of twisting roots, they left a glistening trail with each step, like snails with legs.



Nimue began casting spells furiously. Runes flared and faded, and frost crept up her arms as she fired off small bursts of ice magic.



Nuada drew his sword and charged. He hacked and spun, slicing the things to pieces. However, for every abomination he tore apart, two new pods would swell up from the spot where it fell. Sweating, he looked back at Nimue.



She was having better success. Her spells froze the creatures, so that no new ones would spawn. However, she was sweating too, droplets that froze in her dark hair as her ice magic flowed through her body. Powerful though she was, he could see at a glance that she was tiring after using a great deal of energy on the wall, the bridge, and now this fight. She was so young. Nuada knew she could have neither the practice nor the magical reserves that older, more experienced mages develop over the course of generations. But there was little he could do, other than hold off the horrible plant creatures.



They pushed through the tunnel, leaping over pods even as they destroyed the disgusting monsters that emerged from within. Finally past the mossy area, the pair took off running over bare stone. Behind them, a host of monstrosities followed in hot pursuit, squelching along on twisted limbs. They let forth wet gurgling cries of hunger, and an awful smell blew over the adventurers, threatening to overwhelm them.



Running as fast he could, Nuada felt helpless. Nimue was tiring fast, lagging behind. The reaching root-fingers were nearly grasping her feet. He knew he could not fight them all, especially if they spawned more every time he cut them. Desperate, he thought back to his long years of training, wonder if there was anything he had ever learned that could stem this tide.





Finally, an idea struck him. Nuada remembered a particular half-sword style, the murder strike, learned when he had two hands. Could he perform the technique with one?



Spinning around to face the oncoming tide of green horrors, Nuada grasped the blade of his sword. Instead of cleaving the things, he beat them with the hilt as though it were a mace. As he tightened his grip, the blade cut into his glove and bloodied his hand, but he slammed the horrors back, crushing them and breaking their bonelike roots. As the broken things still lived, no new monsters spawned.



Unable to run any longer, Nimue turned and threw more ice. However, she was casting more and more slowly as her efforts drained her of power.



As they backed away from the onrushing horde, Nuada could see her aura weakening. She had little time before she would simply run out of energy. He looked over his shoulder and spotted an opening. “There is a way out of this tunnel of green doom!”



Nimue gasped for breath, as she hurled more deadly magic, blasting a crowd of the creatures back. Then she fell to one knee in weariness. “I will not be able to reach it before we are overrun!”



The Tuatha ground his teeth, panting in the few moments of respite. “All right, I will simply carry you.” He made to sheathe his sword, but Nimue held up her hand.



“No, Nuada. That would be futile. One of us must sacrifice to save the other, or we will both die here. And don’t argue with me; even if your death bought me some time, I would soon be as helpless as newborn babe in a Veilstorm.”



As he crushed another swift-moving monstrosity with the pommel of his weapon, Nuada felt an unfamiliar touch of sadness, as though he didn’t deserve her loyalty. But he was Nuada, Sword Brother, true king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and his story could not end here.



He wanted to say something else, something poignant and heroic, but before he could, she added, “Run.”



So he sprinted off along the stone floor, turning back only when he reached the end of the tunnel. He saw a white and blue island in a sea of green. Nimue had used the last of her magical energy to cover the tunnel near her in ice. As the creatures froze, slipped, or slid around her, she spat curses at them. “I forswear renewal!” she cried. “I will destroy you all!”



Nuada was shocked. His magic senses were blinded as she transformed herself into a being of pure, cold energy. As her life force was expended, her aura, which had already been strong, grew to a blinding flash. Nuada had never felt this much power, and for only the second time in his long life, he felt true fear seize him.



He had no reason to fear her, however; Nimue’s power was directed at the monstrosities that still surrounded her glowing body, looking for an opening. Finally, one dared to reach out and grab her arm.



The instant it touched her, the plant-like monstrosity froze. Stiff-limbed, it collapsed at her feet, and shattered into shards of ice. The chunks of ice exploded, covering everything in more frost. A chain reaction began, each splinter of ice causing more freezing explosions.



The tunnel became a winter tableau of icicles and frozen creatures, with Nimue standing tall in the center of the chaotic scene. As the last of the monsters died in the icy blast, Nimue turned toward where Nuada stood in the darkness, further down the tunnel. She smiled at him as a small blue tear fell from her eye. When it touched the ground, Nimue froze, joining the eerily silent scene.



Nuada felt something unfamiliar as he slipped out the tunnel’s exit, something he found difficult to name. Perhaps it was regret, or simple loneliness.



As a stone door slid quietly shut behind him, Nuada found himself standing in a cold meadow, with a strange sky whose color he found difficult to name. Blinking, the Tuatha tried to get his bearings. There was no way he was truly outside. This was another trick of The Depths, a sudden change of scene meant to confuse and distract. His last companion gone, there was no one else to turn to, no one else to notice what he might overlook. Yet there was definitely something wrong here, something off about this rolling meadow…



Already chilled, his heart froze within him, and Nuada reeled as he realized that there were no blades of green grass in the field. These were tiny severed fingers, twitching in a non-existent wind. The ground beneath seemed to be made up of piles of other body parts, corpses heaped up endlessly to form hills and valleys, stretching as far as he could see. It was a vision out of a nightmare, surreal in its oppressive horror.



As sheer revulsion of this place assaulted his senses, Nuada felt a strange presence in the air around him. He was sure it was a living being, though he saw nothing as he spun around. Even the stone door that had led out of the Tunnel of Green Doom was gone. Peals of maniacal laughter rang out from thin air. Was the sound coming from his own lips, or The Depths itself?



It was all just like a bad dream. Nothing made sense. He felt the tendrils of thoughts creeping into his brain, trying to take control of his mind. In the distance, he saw what looked like an enormous open mouth. Unsure if the decision was truly his own, he began to run toward it.



As he ran, the cadaver grass came alive. Hands burst up from the ground to grab at his feet, and the steady stream of foreign thoughts in his head began to tell him to lay down and rest. Everything would be alright.



Nuada pushed against the thoughts, even as he drew his sword to cut his way through the living nightmares that tried to hold him in place. Splattered in bits of gore, he ran up the the hill that lay between him and that beckoning mouth. As he slipped down the opposite slope, he realized that the “hill” was a woman’s massive breast.



He was sliding down fast, and bumps along the slope of the hill hit him with a sickening crunch of snapped fingers. When he reached the vast mouth that opened below, he finally looked at the face that rose above the cadaver grass behind it. The twisted visage was Nimue’s. His sanity cracking, Nuada slowed to a stop on the hill and then just sat there, laughing uncontrollably as the corpse grass began to pull him down into the ground.



Rest, he thought, that would be good. Just a short nap. As he began to lie down, one of his own thoughts pushed through his mental haze. It was a recent memory: Nimue’s voice commanding him to “Run!”



Trying desperately to shake off both the ennui and the cadaver grass, Nuada tore himself from the ground in a hail of breaking fingers and leapt through the huge, open mouth.



As the giant white teeth snapped shut behind him, Nuada fell and rolled on something soft. Shuddering, he closed his eyes in the dim shafts of light that followed him between the teeth. The experienced hero told himself it wasn’t a tongue he had fallen upon, it was the soft loam on the forest floor of his beloved homeland. For a few moments, all he could do was lie there, panting, as the dreamlike revulsion of the corpse grass fields slowly left him.



When he forced himself to stand up and open his eyes, he saw a fire nearby. Everything else was darkness, impenetrable even to his magical sight. The flickering light of the fire illuminated a stand of trees circling a great forge, walls and roof of sturdy stone. The orange flame burned within, waiting. As he approached the fiery forge, he felt uneasy. It might be no more than another nightmare apparition in this ever-changing sea of horrors.



Drawing close, he saw that what he had thought were trees were actually gigantic fingers. Nuada paused. Hesitantly, he employed his Veilsight. An aura shimmered in his vision; the stone forge itself was alive and hungry, waiting to devour anyone that came near. “I am sick of this,” Nuada’s voice cracked. “Come on, Depths! Do your worst to me!” In one swift motion, he drew his sword and charged forward.



As he closed the distance, the thing flared with power. The whole structure rose up on quivering legs, and tendrils of rotting flesh burst out, striking at Nuada like snakes.



Nuada twisted and slashed, dancing back and forth and between the blows. The thing’s limbs fell away as he cut them, writhing and disappearing. He grinned in concentration. This was a fight he could win.



Joy surged through him, eliminating fatigue. He was in his element now, finally able to harm his opponent. Whatever this thing was, he would destroy it utterly.





Their battle seemed to rage for hours. Nuada felt himself growing stronger, not weaker, with each sword thrust. He felt the power of the The Depths, laughing as it surrounded him, but instead of shaking it off, he embraced it, dancing his battle in the near-darkness. He drew on that power, using it to attack the strange, mystic forge with greater force.



Eventually, Nuada noticed that the tall, treelike fingers were much closer than they had been. They were slowly, subtly beginning to close around him. This only brought a fresh smile to his face. “Come on!” he laughed at the creature, “You can do better!”



Nuada whirled gracefully from finger to finger, slicing each one off at the base with little effort. As each giant digit fell, he noticed once again that these creatures were not made solely of flesh but also some other substance, something softer. Nuada didn’t much care to look any closer.



His senses grew more alert as he dodged and struck, cutting the thing apart piece by piece. Nuada began to feel another presence, something watching, perhaps judging him, in this foul place. The palpable malevolence was becoming familiar here. “Well,” Nuada muttered, “I should give you something to watch!”



Nuada called upon one of his many gifts. He summoned strength to him, and began to move with greater agility. Caught in this dance of death with his opponent, he performed wondrous feats so swiftly that he seemed to hang in midair as he spun and slashed, the living embodiment of a warrior.



The forge-creature seemed to sense this change and tried to retreat, scuttling backward on its ungainly legs, but there was nowhere to go. In seconds, the battle was over. Nuada slipped between two tentacles, bypassing the remaining defenses of the creature, and entered the structure. The anvil in the center of the forge had the brightest aura to his Veilsight, so he struck it with his blade. His sword sliced deep through the anvil’s top and stuck there. Brains and ichor spewed from within the iron anvil, making Nuada stumble back in disgust.



“What is this place? What strange world have I entered?” Nuada spoke aloud, but there was no one to answer, only the crash of the monstrous, living forge falling the ground. The pure joy of battle faded, and Nuada let his hand drop. He could feel rumbling, shifting, as the fallen creature settled and lay still beneath him. Somewhere out in the darkness, he heard a sound like clapping.



Unsure of what else to do, Nuada wrested his sword from the anvil with another spurt of ichor, then sat on the steps of the forge. He pulled out a rag and began to clean the weapon.



Holding it between his legs, Nuada ran the cloth up and down the blade with well-practiced, easy motions. The familiarity of the task calmed him, until his senses flared back to life and he felt a familiar presence nearby. His keen ears picked up footsteps just on the edge of hearing.



A few moments later, peering into the dark, he could barely make out a humanoid figure moving around out there. It was coming closer with a strange gait, almost gliding over the stone floor.

Nuada grasped the pommel of his sword and stood up, bring the weapon back to a defensive position.



The shadows parted to reveal a familiar face. It was the merchant who had bargained with Nuada for the entrance to The Depths.



Stunned, Nuada held his sword a little higher. “Stand where you are, apparition.” His mouth felt dry at the thought of how easily The Depths could fool his eyes with illusions. “Look at how I dealt with the last creature that tried to trick me.”



The merchant gave him an unctuous smile. “Trick you, my friend? Not hardly. You have proven to be a most powerful warrior, and one who is rapidly improving. You are even better than I expected when I hired you!”



“What do you want from me?” asked Nuada hotly.



“Actually, I want nothing from you,” replied the merchant with another smile. He gestured toward Nuada with a gentle hand. “I only want you to get what your heart desires, my friend. A new arm; a repaired sword; and other treasures that can help you reclaim your rightful place among your people.”



“No man gives away such things without expecting something in return,” said Nuada bitterly. “What more do you want from me?”



“You have already given me much, oh former king,” said the merchant, “First, you have truly entertained me, and that happens...very seldom. Second, you have opened the way to this place, and dealt with some of its worst horrors. Finally, you have given me the chance to use something that I have wanted for a long time: one of the forges here.”



“I see no real forge here!” Nuada shot him a confused look. “That creature was false.”



“Yes...but look carefully now at what remains of the beast,” said the merchant.



Nuada turned part way around, so as to keep one eye on the grinning merchant. The weird limbs of the iron forge-thing were quietly melting away like hot glass, leaving a golden forge behind. With his Veilsight, he confirmed for himself that this was indeed a real forge, with a true anvil and hot coals. It was no longer a creature in disguise. Nuada turned back to the merchant and nodded, trying not to show his surprise. With a blank face, he answered, “I see what you say is true, then. I have done my part, and slain the horrors of The Depths.”



The merchant spread his arms and bowed. “Now it is my turn. If you would please help me clear away this garbage, I can begin my work.”



Once again nodding his assent, Nuada helped the merchant clear the forge and the surrounding area of the large chunks of giant fingers and tentacles that remained.



Pulling out a finely-made wand, the merchant waved it to spew forth a stream of fire, burning away the last of the dead flesh. He talked casually over the bubbling and crackling. “With that all done, I shall set about my work. Take some time to rest, Nuada. Then feel free to explore this place. You never know what you may find here,” added the merchant, as he unpacked some bags that Nuada hadn’t noticed before. “So walk carefully, and don’t stray too far. I will make you a great gift! But it will take some time. Days, perhaps.”



Nuada didn’t need to be told that there was more power to be found...and if the entity calling itself the Merchant was correct, Nuada had slain the worst of the horrors, and only a short rest was necessary. He took it sitting on a stone by the anvil, staring off into the dark.





Thus ends the third part of the Silverhands Becoming story. Bonus Images! As usual, we can’t let you go without showing you some of the cool builds that our amazing Backers are making in C.U.B.E. This burgeoning little town contains multiple builds by Swazi, one of our master builders, a really creative Cuber! Here we are at the very end of this big ol’ newsletter, and I just want to thank those of you who have read this far, and to let you know that I always appreciate you folks.



And from all of us at City State Entertainment to all of our Backers from the United States, we wish you a Happy 4th of July in advance. Our studio will be closed on July 3rd and 4th in celebration of the birth of the United States of America!



Until next time, Max out!