Update 40: Feb & March

Hi all!

We’re excited about this update! It includes an overview of our work in both February and March, and launches a new section of our website dedicated to information related to our launch timeline.

You can find that information here: Monsters & Memories: Early Access Overview

Or click the Play link in the header from any page on the site.

We realize that there’ll be questions about the timing, scope, and approach of our planned launch, so we’ve done our best to provide as much detail and background as possible in the pages we’ve added. But if that doesn’t cover your question, hit us up in Discord.

In other exciting news we’ve added new team members:

Dustin/Bullet has joined us to assist with the development of a MnM Roleplay Server and to help with other Customer Service related planning. Dustin managed a large GTA 5 RP server previously and brings a lot of domain expertise.

John/JohnNS is one of our longtime community members and testers, who was brought on formally after doing incredible work on the QA side of things. Probably should have brought him on sooner, but he was so omnipresent we didn’t realize he wasn’t on the team.

Alright, that’s enough chatter - on to the update!

Concept Art

Armor Concepts (everything posted is still a Work in Progress)
Floating Citadel Concept
Necronaut Concepts
Some Location Concepts
Player Character skin texture iteration/exploration
More Trim Sheets & Texture Work
Item Icons

Character Art

The character art team has been working on finalizing the player UV layout refactor this month.

Throughout our time creating the player models we've iterated on the UVs and punched all the holes we could in our system.

The good news is we identified and found solutions to those issues allowing us to finally lock things down so we can move forward.

We've constructed a guide to keep consistency across all the races. It indicates important areas such as the belt, knee/elbow, and chest area. When we create armor which lays over one of these regions we can be confident it will look correct on all races. The time and effort we took for this refactor will be worth it in the long run.

Going forward we are certain that any changes from this point forward will be minor.

Examples below show the new UV layout and some of the texture clean-up & polish.

Animations

Revisited Spider & Will-o-wisp anims
Rigged Orc
Orc Animations

Environment Art

Glass Flats work continued
- Greybox to Final for Fang Guard Keep & Mesa
- Experiments with a crystal shader
- Salt flat fog vfx
- Code to control vfx depending on time of day
- Textures are placeholder
Night Harbor Trimsheet Work
Converted Shaded Dunes terrain to work with new Vertex Painting
Fallen Pass Block-out/Geo Started
Wyrmsbane Prop Pass

Audio & Music

Wrapped up the Biome Jam Soundtrack
Underwater Ambience Sound Layer
Water Enter, Exit, and Swimming Sounds Added
Reworked Spellbook and other sounds to be stereo
MUD Action Sounds Added
Dust Storm Sounds Added
New Support for Dungeon-specific Sound Processing
Spider Sounds Added
Additional Combat Sounds
New Material-specific Footsteps
New Zone Music: Vale of Zintar

Design

Content

Wood Elves have been enabled
Several population mob and NPC adjustments to Tel Ekir
Fixed dual bridge ladders in Tel Ekir not having collision
Fixed some faction issues where certain factions would not assist another
Shaded Dunes camp additions/changes and population/itemization adjustments
Sungreet Strand itemization changes
Quest Reward itemization pass
Mini-crypt implemented
Initial Fallen Pass, Vale of Zintar design work
Scarwood Design kick-off
Glass Flats population updates
Added Spidery Stuff to WB
Finished Monk Quest 3
Updated NH Crypts Mobs
TE Monster City work
Outline for Expedition #1
SD Camp Adjustments
SGS Itemization updates
RP Server Documentation

Itemization

Adjusted the cost of several items that were below 5 copper
Basic Armor, Upgraded Armor, and Crafted Armor have had their AC Values adjusted

Higher Tier Armors that previously had placeholder values now have more intentional values
- This is a WIP and expect more changes to come

Arms Slot items have been deprecated due to the way our Visual Gear Slots work, and will eventually be replaced with the Shirt slot
Some clicky items now properly their effect when casted
Non-Fungible Tunic and Guise of the Damned removed from all loot tables
Adjusted the weight and size of certain items

Traits

Fixed several trait tooltips
Updated and/or unlocked Tinkerer and Tavern Regular traits
Pottery now properly grants a Tradeskill Container

General Abilities

Flameburst line has received a balance pass
Burning Embers has received a redesign and balance pass. Now Stacks up to 3. Mana costs greatly reduced, AC Debuff greatly increased with Max Stacks. Cast time made to a uniform 2 seconds to cast any spell in the line. Damage per tick reduced accordingly.
Elemental and Undead Pet Line Melee Damage Penalty increased From -15% to -20%
Placate now caps to a limit of one target. In the future, a new, but different version of Placate will be available in which you can use on multiple targets at a time
Added Insect Swarm Ability Line
Snare the Dead now properly applies it's Snare effect
Scorching Embers reduced to 55 Mana down from 60 Mana
Scorching Embers now does 7 Damage Per Tick down from 8 Damage Per Tick
Filled out Burning Embers line with Abilities: Flaming Embers, Blazing Embers, Smoldering Embers, and Raging Embers
Shrink is now only usable on groupmates
Addressed text issues with various auras
Some effects now warn you with a special message when they wear off
Provoke threat decreased from 150 (L1) to 1500 (L60) to 50 (L1) to 500 (L60).
Evade threat decreased from -400 (L1) to -4000 (L60) to -25 (L1) to -250 (L60).

Archer

Added Ability: Illuminating Shot
Added Ability: Pinning Shot

Beastmaster

Beast Pets Damage Penalty increased from -25% to -30%

Cleric

Filled out the Cleric Unique Heal line with Impart Favor and Impart Sanctity
Impart Faith healing amount reduced to 400 Healing overall down from 500

Druid

Added Ability: Grip of Nature
Added PBAE Root Ability Line: Snaring Bonds, Tangling Bonds, and Ensnaring Bonds
Filled out the Druid Unique Heal line with Touch of Harmony and Touch of Creation
Touch of Life healing amount reduced to 400 Healing overall down from 500
Exceptional Healing moved to Level 36, down from Level 40
Ensnare duration increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes

Elementalist

Ward the Elements now properly applies damage

Enchanter

Shadowkin Pet Melee Damage Penalty Increased From -25% to -30%
Added Ability: Illusion: Wood Elf
Added Ability: Illusion: Dwarf

Ranger

Pack of the Predator moved from Level 4 to Level 1
Burning Embers moved from Level 2 to Level 4

Shadow Knight

Added Ability: Aura of the Unholy

Shaman

Disease DoT line now properly applies the Damage Over Time effect
Lurching Impairment now properly applies it's Root effect
Filled out Shaman Unique Heal line with Regenerative Spores and Chloroplastic Spores
Restorative Spores healing amount reduced to 400 Healing overall down from 500
Exceptional Healing moved to Level 36, down from Level 40

Spellblade

Shadowrift sound originates from caster instead of caster's target

Tech

After the holiday lull, February and March 2024 have been a ramping up, and in light of upcoming announcements the Tech team has been focused on getting the last systems in, along with optimization and making everything "launch ready."

This is a summary of updates covering over 450 commits over the February and March period.

We’ve also just surpassed 10,000 commits overall!

Settings and Performance

Audio settings for window when not focused
Added Quality Level settings in the menu including shadow distances, cloth simulation, and others that may improve performance
Added culling to flickering flames that are not on camera
Settings for background sound toggle, target framerate, and target background framerate

UI and Settings

New UI system that will hopefully be our main UI system has had its initial merge and the login screens have been moved over to the new system. If we are happy with it over the next couple of weeks, this will allow us to FINALLY kick off our big UI refactor
Housing UI initial implementation
Improvements to nametags
Added /roleplay and its own nametag color
GM nametags now have their own color
Self found now has its own nametag color
Skills are now inspectable in the skills panel
Interact command can now interact with bank, merchants and trainers
PvP and PvP-Roleplaying nametag colors
Made nametags less shiny
Paperdoll on inventory screen

Animation, Netcode, and Controls

Swimming animation fixes
Improvements to entity position sync netcode
Improvements to animation sync over netcode
Subtle head tracking linked to entity target (which can be disabled from the settings menu)
Fix strafing animations
Small improvements to character controls
Fixes to bow animations getting stuck
Dodge, Parry, and Block animations with animation sound support
Fix animations for instant cast abilities for non human races that don't yet have their race-specific animations
Jumping out of water no longer jumps like a submarine ballistic missile

Audio

Underwater audio state and water entry/exit sounds
UI sounds are now in STEREO
Swimming sounds
Dungeons now have special audio filters
Footstep sounds changing based on what material is being stepped on -- Initial work has gone in
Footsteps are now animation led for better sync between animation and sound

Abilities and Combat

Support for abilities that do not generate threat
Support for casting without a target
Abilities that use weapon damage now respect level damage caps but can optionally ignore them
Canceling autoattack will now end your bow draw and will not fire the arrow
Sense magic implemented
Initial pvp support
NPCs now have more granularity in their casting AI
NPCs that con red will now resist more

Content Systems

Quest system was completely refactored, decoupling code that was tightly coupled and allowing us to further scale the system with ease
Zone MUD actions can now place an item on the cursor
Fix currency turn ins for quests. They no longer overcharge you
Volumes can now be rotated on the X and Z axes
Quests can now properly spawn NPCs (this was broken for a while)
Better spawning accuracy
Navigation changes and improvements
Weather system improvements that made adding new weather states possible (removed all the tightly bound hard coded stuff)
New weather states Sandstorm, Snow, Fog, and Ashfall
Hooked up VFX for the new weather states in the appropriate zones
Days, Months, Years, Days of the Week, Seasons, and Moon Phases have been added and linked up to all the relevant content systems
Groundhog days implemented. For more info, poke @aLovingRobot on his streams
Zones now know where they are on the planet, and simulate the celestial bodies semi-realistically (Ali fudged some things so they look better and have better readability for gameplay purposes. Lol!)
Improvements to NPC loot systems for better granularity
Harvest nodes now respect their spawn conditions and will despawn if they are not met (such as that mushroom that only spawns when it is raining at night)
Fishing and foraging may now also be conditional
Fix to NPC languages. They now properly respond or don't respond based on whether they understand you, and will always speak back to you in the correct language

Other

Consent is now persistent and added /deny command
Improvements to interact command (U hotkey) giving it better detection
Fixes to tradeskill containers
Improvements to cheat detection
Improvements to aggro while link dead. You can no longer cheese the system by pulling your RJ45 modem cable, running past dangerous camps, then dialing up to the internet again.
Fix the issue where we time out during login or zoning into a zone the first time after a server reboot (finally)
Enabled picking woodelf male and female (though the models are not feature complete yet)
Fix to pets not accepting items while in combat or after having recently left combat
Fix to zonewide NPC AI crash when a pet gets blinded (this was a funny on when Ali realized the errors of his ways)
Made aggro more aggressive (har har har)
Experience curve adjustments
Unity version upgrade to 2022.3.21f1

In Closing

As mentioned above - we’re excited to get the news out about our longterm plans. We hope you find the additional details we’ve provided on those pages to be helpful.

Always say: spread the word! We’re seeing more discussion of the game on various forums, Discord channels, etc and we appreciate the kind words. Keep letting folks know that we’re still in development.

And now, with the news we’ve posted from the links above, you should have even more info to share. Thanks!

See you all in the next update!