Hail and well met, Elyrians!
It's already been a busy month with all sorts of info about the Tribes coming out, but we're not done yet! Read on, fair traveler, and hear this story that you've become a part of.
In case you missed the last Q&A, hereby known as Tribes Q&A: Part I, you can still watch it in its entirety on our Twitch.tv channel (with the chat that was happening at the time) for another couple weeks. As always, you can see it on our YouTube channel forever after, though sadly without the witty banter from chat.
Now say you don't have a couple hours to spare, or you'd like to send it to a friend who's less savvy to Elyrian ways than you, we've got our Tribes: Part I In Brief version as well. No matter which way you like your information, we've got you covered!
Originally announced in this post, we realized that a single Q&A about the Tribes just wasn't going to cut it. We're now going to do 4 Q&As in total over the next few weeks in hopes that we can inundate your brain with so much information! The next Q&A, Tribes: Part II, will occur next Monday, June 19th, at 1PM PDT / 4PM EDT / 8PM GMT / 8PM UTC. We're currently getting the Kypiq, Janoa, and Dras dossiers written up, but questions about the Neran, Hrothi, and Brudvir are still welcome.
The remaining Tribe Q&As will take place on July 10th and 24th at the same time of day. Each Q&A will get its own question thread where you can up and down vote the questions you'd like to have answered by Caspian and friends. We hope to see you there!
And now for the continuing adventures of this intrepid team!
Members: Tripnull, Sekmu, Wiz
The Build Hellions have concluded their duties for the time being and returned to their other duties. Ever vigilant, they will take up the robes and artifacts of their mysterious order when the next Unreal beast reawakens to propagate the world with its gifts. The new ritual they developed will ward against chaos when the creature returns.
Members: Mudokon, Racronos, Irreverent, Vanimus Prime, Souzou, Wiz, Raevantiel
While the Anthropology Department awaits the Tribe Foundry's results, there has been a moment of reprieve for this group to address several tasks that will help in future efforts in working on all the permutations of tribe and gender. Firstly, Irreverent was able to establish guidelines for the tribes' varied equipment and is reconstructing several items that fit with the new skeletal data that Strider developed. This involved Vanimus Prime working closely with Strider to get the skin weighting, UVs, textures, and control rig linked between all male and female assets. There was also an erroneous hypothesis (read: bug) about the Neran tribe becoming unpigmented when not in direct sunlight that was, thankfully, disproven.
The Zoology Department is hard at work on an upcoming exhibit of Elyrian fauna that will feature in a future blog post. There were a couple of hiccups finishing off the comprehensive study of Dryas Elk and horse gaits during the last couple weeks, but Racronos got things back on track so he and Mudokon could continue to work unfettered. Meanwhile, the Trison and Ursaphant are nearing the culmination of their explorations, and the Canis Rabbit has been adjusted and is ready for its own movement study. The adorable Otter Bear is still being modeled, with the base geometry nearing completion before tackling its texture and hair.
The Dryas Elk in action in the forest around New Haven
After seeing the efforts the Anthropology Department and Tribe Foundry put forth, the Zoology Department developed its own height line-up for creature sizes.
As far as the explorations of Titan's Steppe ecology, a couple of steps forward are happening. Wiz created an atlas function that will optimize draw calls and reduce visual noise, particularly on tiled textures at various levels of details. Some of you may be familiar with the term mipmapping, and this is related to that. With that done, Wiz is working on his opus: to standardize each material in Elyria. He will be enlisting Irreverent and Vanimus Prime later on, but is currently focused on each layer in the landscape, which is Raevantiel's domain. And in case you were wondering, the landscape is made up of layers that include ground, soil, ground cover (think pine needles or moss), grass, riverbeds, foliage, and trees. Their current efforts are with the soil.
The Blue Penstemon and Astrantia Snow Star are beginning to bloom on the Steppe - and check out that updated grass!
Members: Caspian, Heat, Souzou
This party's quest is nearly at an end. I hope, by now, you have seen the posts detailing out the first few tribes: the Neran, Hrothi, and Brudvir. If not, go take a gander and join the conversation about the tribes! The remaining tribes are being revealed over the next few weeks so check here to easily see when new dossiers are released. We also announce these sorts of things on our Twitter account, so consider following us, if you haven't already.
Members: Cynax, Tripnull, Glaive, Michael
As you may recall, this party has been hard at work to marry the server data with a front-end that is interactive. Previously, they were focused on making certain that the underlying data was being handled and displayed, but that part of their quest did not demand much in the way of interactivity. Loading levels and player state and location and the like are in. Now, with a good foundation established, efforts are turning toward the playable parts. This includes entity controllers that will manage creatures and NPCs moving around in a persistent world, ElyriaMUD's brand of basic combat, and the ability to pick up and equip items found in the persistent world. Once that's in, this party wants to do a demonstration video to take you through a first taste of ElyriaMUD.
Members: ZRO, Death, Cynax, Scarlet, Serpentius
This party continues to march forward on the V3 design of the website. Scarlet is now creating graphics based on Death's wireframes and ZRO will begin on the front-end starting next week. In the last couple weeks, there have also been a handful of bug fixes, improvements for Serpentius and his team of moderators to better manage the community, and a better organization for the server-specific forums. The information in the Tribe posts are also being worked into Game Guide pages to help newcomers discover the wonderful world of Elyria!
Members: Irreverent, Wiz, Sekmu, Heat
In order to spend more time with the Order of the Online Play and the League of Extraordinary Locomotion, Tripnull ended his current contract with the Proto-Tailors, feeling confident that he had transferred all his knowledge to Sekmu on the matter. The party was waylaid on its path to character generation by the skin weighting, UVs, and control rig updates that the Society of Elyrian Ecology made so Irreverent and Sekmu have cleverly been working orthogonally on the related tasks of updating existing equipment models to work with the updated morph targets and getting the equipment to propagate on the client over the server. Additionally, Heat entered the mix to provide concepts of Neran-style equipment that will serve to guide the party in fleshing out the specifications for crafting.
Neran peasant clothing
Members: Strider, Tripnull, Sekmu
You already saw the Dryas Elk gif earlier in the post, demonstrating this party's work in getting the locomotion system adapted to one of the quadruped rigs. Strider has also finished up the last of the crouch-related locomotion animations including a slide for those times you need to stop in a hurry. There is one major outstanding task before this party can consider their quest at an end, however: tuning the jump height and length. Kaizen is putting together a video demonstration of the League's accomplishments that we will be putting up on our YouTube channel.
Members: Scarlet, Heat, Death
This party has lovingly crafted a first draft of the visual style that represents Chronicles of Elyria. As mentioned in the last update, the style will be used on the V3 version of the website as well as the UI in the final game. Scarlet and Heat went back and forth several times before arriving at something that had the right mix of ornate, organic, and structured elements. This party will, no doubt, reunite in the future on further adventures but, for now, their current quest has ended. Here's a sneak peek at this first pass!
Coming soon to a website near you
Kaizen is the name of the Japanese philosophy for continuous improvement. It's a philosophy that Soulbound Studios can certainly appreciate and now it's also a person that you can appreciate! Give a warm welcome to the newest member of the team, Senior Community Producer, Adam "Kaizen" Wong.
Here he is, in his own words:
Greetings, Elyrians!
Some know me as Adam, but the more learned circles call me Kaizen (also it’s helpful because there’s already an Adam at the studio). It’s been just over a week since I joined the ranks of Soulbound Studios as a Senior Community Producer.
What’s a Community Producer, you ask?
Chronicles of Elyria is going to tell a compelling story. The lore, the gameplay design, the art – all the facets of the game are interesting in their own way. Layer the growing community on top of a deep and engaging game, and now we’re cooking with fire. The way I see it, my job is to help tell that story – from entertaining GIFs (it’s pronounced Jif like the peanut butter btw) to developer diaries to gameplay sneak-peeks to dank memes to Twitch broadcasts to amplifying betrayal found in the Dance of Dynasties, I’m here to foster, facilitate and encourage conversation about CoE.
I’m a pretty social person, you’ll find me hanging around the Twitch chat and Discord. If you want to chat about anything and everything, drop me a line on Twitter. Or! I’ll be on Discord, so stop by and let’s get to know each other.
What was I doing before working on Chronicles of Elyria? I spent some time with 343 Industries, working on Halo (I never got my 50 when H2 was hot). I worked at Bungie and helped ship Rise of Iron (Titan hammers for days). I also worked at Amazon Game Studios, helping them build a community from the ground up (FeelsBauMan).
What am I doing outside of making dank memes for work? Here’s a quick list:
We’re all on this journey together, and I’m excited to see where the road leads.
Until next time,
Kaizen
I think he will fit right in, don't you? Look for more community coverage by Serpentius and Kaizen (hereby known as the Adams Family) in the coming weeks.
That's it for this update but there are tribe dossiers and more coming your way soon so check back often!
Pledged to Your Continued Adventures in Life, Both Actual and Fantasy,
Vye
