Update 18: Short Month, Big Progress
Hello!
Before we get started, we’d like to thank all of you that might be reading this from our mailing list. We’ve passed the 1,100 subscriber mark, and the community is growing daily thanks to you sharing the word and staying engaged with us.
February is the shortest month of the year, but the team decided to make this month’s newsletter bigger than ever!
There’s a ton to get through in this one, so we’ll keep the intro short and dive right in.
Enjoy!
Player Characters
This month we’ve worked on getting Player Characters into the game, initial animations work, and the system that drives our visible items & item customization online.
This will be an ongoing, iterative process (as with most things we do), but we got the following into the game and working:
A first pass of the Human, Ogre, and Gnome models
Placeholder “base” or skin layers for each race
Visible item slots working, along with held items
Armor and items scale appropriate to each race
Initial Robed Human Model implemented
A basic data driven item tinting/customization system (which we have plans to refine further)
Initial optimizations to the systems and a lot of testing & learnings
The image above shows the Ogre with varied visible armor pieces, including the ability to show bracers independent of one another (or not at all), and our current armor tinting.
We’ll provide more detailed images of the various player character models, armor, etc… in future updates.
Monsters & Critters
This month we created and animated our first Skeleton. Our new system provides designers the ability to tint things like its glowing eyes on the fly via data. It also displays and uses any weapons it possesses in its loot table.
Our next steps will be to customize them with various armor pieces to help with variety, and eventually include the skeletons of each of our player races.
We’ve also created a Crocodile, started modeling the Desert Jackals you’ll encounter around Night Harbor, and begun concepting the Ashira (a race of Jackalweres that you’ll be learning more about soon).
Environment Work
We’ve spent the month focusing on defining & laying out the remaining zones required to demonstrate our full Proof of Concept. This includes several zones you’ve yet to see on stream, as well as redesigns of the Shaded Dunes & Night Harbor zones to accommodate more gameplay.
Keep in mind that we believe our cities need to be more than just Starting Cities for each player race, but rather living spaces that maintain their utility, social, and gameplay value for the life of the game. Expect to return there often, and even adventure in them.
If this sort of process interests you, please take a look at this video, in which the team works on the design and layout of Night Harbor live. You can get a better understanding of how we work day to day as a fully distributed team, and how we approach collaboration in design and art.
As we block out Night Harbor, Alex (our concept artist) is able to then create quick paint-overs of this work, to help us better visualize and discuss specific details.
We’re using a similar process for our first “Deep Realm” zone, which is found below Shaded Dunes and connects several of our placeholder zones. We’ve given this zone the placeholder name of Deep Dunes.
It’s currently in a playable form (including a population of beautiful glowing Deep Beetles), and allows us to get a feel for how we want to handle the space, underground lighting, and similar challenges. If you want to see more of the zone, please check out the video linked in the Playtest section below.
And last, but not least - When Harrison isn’t modeling the environments you’ve seen above, he’s been cranking away on new props. You can watch him do all of this on his streams — which you should check out here: https://www.twitch.tv/padastheranger
Music
We’re happy to announce that Robert Engstrand has joined the team, and is covering all things audio. You can learn more about him, and the rest of the team, on our Team Page.
Robert has started cranking out some amazing sounds and music, which we’ve already been adding to the game with Nick & Ali’s support.
And he’s started a playlist for our soundtrack, which you can find here.
Continued Class Design Work & Playtesting
Nick is steadily iterating on class and combat design, and plans to starting streaming more regularly now that we have hit these new milestones. We encourage you to follow along during our livestreams and on our YouTube channel.
Here are a few screenshots, and a link to a recent playtest which includes us taking the new Ogre models for a test drive.
If you want to watch the full reveal stream, click here.
Installer/Launcher Work
We’ve also started working on integrating a service we’re evaluating for registration, installation, launching, and patching the game.
We’ve still got a ways before we’ll be bringing folks in to play with us, but we want to get a head start on this (along with other player facing services), so that we’re more than ready once the time comes.
And as we’ve been saying, we’re aiming very seriously for sooner, rather than later.
Conclusion
We hope it’s apparent that the team is working hard and taking that work very seriously. We’re a small team, but we’re moving fast. And with your support, we’re having a fantastic time doing it.
Thanks again for all of the support in sharing the word and hanging out with us on the streams and our Discord!
We look forward to seeing you there, as we push into what should be an equally productive and exciting March.
Talk to you soon!