Hail and well met, Elyrians!
The last couple weeks have been productive! The team is in good spirits preparing for GDC and PAX East, and we've been putting in some extra hours. We don't tolerate a crunch-culture - which plagues many-a-studio - but the team is committed to delivering something that we are proud of and that players will enjoy. Occasionally this might mean putting in a few late nights - and that's okay as long as is it's voluntary and occasional. Even though you are all as anxious for the game to be finished as we are, it means a lot that you all are understanding that we are just people, with families and lives. That said, we're doing our utmost and might work some overtime to impress you. Keep us in check so we don't burn out, okay? :)
We are still assembling all the things for the PAX East demo. In service to this endeavor are many little things that add up to a lot. There will be combat and we're adding in a bunch of combat improvements...
A bunch of animations for various drawing and sheathing
When you get hurt, you'll know it!
Punching! She's totally about to clock this guy...
There will be some jumping and climbing, so we've been adding more animations and locomotion states...
Falling looks like falling, and the ponytail even reacts correctly
Climbing to the top of a cliff should feel heroic, shouldn't it?
Not to mention the environment that the demo will take place in: the Silver Run Mines...
The Silver Run mines started as natural caves carved out by the river
Looks like the bridge is out...
Look at how pretty the underwater shader is!
The female will be playable in the demo, so we've been making sure all the equipment works with her...
Rilehya is pretty sure it's late enough in the day start drinking
Lem takes a break to have a snack and admire the view.
Full disclosure: I was crouching in front of a rock to take a cool screenshot - actual rock-sitting not confirmed!
Current fashion trend in New Haven: skirt and pants
And, of course, there are our favorite screenshots from our latest playthrough...
Andry really cares for his citizens and goes above and beyond giving back scratches in the market (note: this is actually a bug, but it looks funny)
Rilehya skips out on her tavern bill and makes a run for it!
Rilehya checks to make sure she's in the clear
Sephryana takes her hammers for a walk in Silver Run
We've got a new soul bound to our cause! Dennis has 19 years of experience in creating digital art for print, web, multimedia, videos games, commercials, television, and film. Formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, Microsoft, and Digital Domain, his work can be seen in cinematics for World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Starcraft 2 and Starcraft Ghost as well as visual effects for various commercials and the films such as Supernova, and Rules of Engagement. Dennis was art leadership for the development of the video games Forza Motorsport 3, and Murdered: Soul Suspect. Dennis will occasionally sharpen his leather crafting skills if he’s not furiously playing some shooter FPS in his spare time. You can find him lurking around the forums with the handle “wiz”.
It's no secret that Improbable and Soulbound Studios are, like, bestest friends. Caspian and I will be headed to GDC next week to talk about what we are doing with their SpatialOS technology. Caspian and Improbable CEO, Herman Narula, will be sharing the stage during Building Worlds with SpatialOS to tell other developers about our mutual goal to bring Elyria alive in SpatialOS! We also got our project page up on Improbable's website recently. I can feel the love - can you?
We have been busy getting ready for PAX East both digitally (as mentioned above) and physically. Boxes upon boxes of things needed for the booth have arrived and are stacked up, ready to be shipped out.
We've also got several PCs to build for the show floor. Last year's computers got turned into development machines, so we had to order some new ones. Check out these scrumptious PC components!
There's also the matter of getting all this stuff to Boston. Last year we naively took things on the plane with us or ordered things off Amazon and had them shipped directly to the show. This got everything there but, unfortunately, our boxes got recycled and packing everything up to ship back was an ordeal. But never again! Now we have a crate! Four-hundred pounds of shipping mastery - too big to lose, too permanent to recycle. You may take our lives, but you will never take our crate!
The next public Q&A is tomorrow and the topic is Alpha Experiences, which includes the offline Prologue, ElyriaMUD, and Kingdoms of Elyria. It will be held on Thursday, February 23rd at 3PM PST / 6PM EST / 11PM GMT. Questions will be taken primarily from this reddit thread so upvote for your favorite questions. Then bring your eyes and ears to our Twitch.tv channel tomorrow to feast upon delicious knowledge about these experiences!
For those who miss it, the recording will be watchable on Twitch.tv for a limited time afterward and on our YouTube channel forever. So even if you can’t make the live session, your question from reddit may still be answered.
Please follow these rules when posting questions for the Q&A.
Don't forget, many of the most common questions about CoE can be answered by reading over our design journals. If you're new to CoE, there is a wealth of information to begin with there.
We hope to see you Thursday, February 23rd at 3PM PST / 6PM EST / 11PM GMT!
Pledged to Your Continued Adventures in Life, Both Actual and Fantasy,
Vye
