In the last couple weeks, the team has been split between two major areas. The engineering team has been piling on the website to bring improvements and to prepare for the backend architecture needed for V3 and beyond. The content side of the team has been cultivating their creativity upon Titan's Steppe, developing breadth for the Prologue through visuals and animations and other effects.
Weather on the Steppe
Now that some new systems are in place to handle the environmental effects in the world, Heat has been providing some visual targets for our Environment team to hit. Last time I showed off the night sky paintovers, and this update I have a couple more to share. Keep in mind, that Chronicles of Elyria will have a weather system and seasons that will produce what you see below as you play. Of note, muddy roads and snow banks will affect travel and increase strain on people and vehicles that dare to venture outdoors...
Sometimes it rains and sometimes it pours
Snow accumulation in New Haven
Website Version 2.7.0
Work on the website continues! We've made a couple releases over the past couple weeks that have brought the following fixes and improvements:
Bounties Collected
Sometimes nefarious elements need to be brought to justice. We've tracked these ones down and their days of menacing the populace is over!
Bullets and numbered lists should be indented more
Editing a post with markdown causes error message
Deleting the last post in a thread doesn't update the topic information
Fixed avatar size issues on mobile...mostly
Contracts Completed
In an effort to improve our community, we've also built new features that are sure to delight!
Support for reporting if a post or comment needs to be moderated
Ability to change your Email Address
Ability to set avatar pictures (animated gifs supported for 10k influence and above)
A place to do Signature Preview in your Account settings
Ability to Preview prior to posting
Ability to change your user name
Shop item to purchase user name change - only visible if you have used your one-time, free name change
URLs and avatar pictures can't be set below 250 Influence in order to remove spam/troll accounts
URLs can be posted below 250 Influence if you link to our wiki or http://chroniclesofelyria.com
Temporarily disabled the Monarch package (layaway users can still complete their purchase)
Added spiffy moderator/admin backgrounds
Silver Run Mine Slowrun
After we did the speedrun of the PAX Demo, we talked about doing a slowrun so folks that weren't at the expo could enjoy and appreciate the progress we've been making on this area of the Prologue. I'm pleased to say that it's now available to watch! Hopefully it provides insight into our design philosophies and the features we've been working on for the last few months. Ultimately, all the gameplay you see could be in any area of the world. The environment you see boasts improvements to our lighting and atmospheric effects, along with what kinds of challenges you might find in a dungeon-delving expedition.
Open Topic Q&A on April 27th
We've done a lot of topical Q&As for the last six months in order to dive in a little deeper on topics that we were ready to expand on, beyond the Design Journals. There are always a lot of unrelated questions that come up that don't get answered because we want to make sure we provide depth on the topic-at-hand. This time, however, we are going to do an Open Topic Q&A so anything goes! That burning question that you've been saving for the right topic can be unleashed!
While many of the questions you have are going to be related to the gameplay, I wouldn't be surprised to also get questions about the studio, members of the team, what we think about the game industry or a specific game, how Caspian takes his rum, or other curiosities. Like I said, anything goes! 'Anything goes' doesn't mean we will have an answer for all your inquiries but, as always, we will do our best! To that end, I'll try to have more of the team in chat and on reddit to help field questions, even if not on camera.
The Q&A will take place on our Twitch.tv channel on Thursday, April 27th at 4PM PDT / 7PM EDT / 11PM GMT. We will be taking questions primarily from Reddit on this thread. Head on over and post your questions or vote up the ones you want to hear answered in the Q&A.
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.
RULES
Please limit questions to 1 question per post, so it can be easily up-voted/down-voted
Please limit yourself to 3 posts for a maximum of three questions per community member
Keep your question brief. That makes it easier to read, and quicker to answer
Make sure to upvote the posts of others you're most interested in hearing the answers to
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 you'll join us Thursday, April 27th at 4PM PDT / 7PM EDT / 11PM GMT!
Pledged to Your Continued Adventures in Life, Both Actual and Fantasy,
The weather pictures look nice but may I ask to give us some more indepth updates and status report on the main and core game? How is the development of the main game coming along?
That silver mine demo from PAX is nice but in my opinion its not what CoE mainly is planned to be about. Climbing around in a dungeon and fighting some mobs is not what distinguishes CoE from other MMOs or 3rd person adventure games. Wouldn't it be better to put an emphasis on the features that'll make CoE unique and special?
Posted By AuroraGrey at 01:19 AM - Thu Apr 20 2017
I have a question this time, yay!
Small thing, but important thing. Who do you guys consider to be your inspirations concerning and considering the music in Elyria, whether present if you've already got placeholder music for yourselves in testing, or for the eventual release?
I ask this because I'm just going through Divinity: Original Sin, and while I love the game... I gave up and just turned the music off completely. It's not for me, at all - it's heavy on a lot of weird little quirky elements and some synth (I swear to god that's synth) and that throws me off of being into the game. It's not Wurm Online levels of bad (WUUURM IS WAAAAITING. Kill me please) but I don't think it's good for music to actually throw you off.
Huge difference from playing, for instance, the Elder Scrolls, where Jeremy Soule's music is just one of those staples we've come to expect. I'm fond of the way that you can totally forget it's an element of the game, it just fits so well often that it feels like a natural, atmospheric part of the game.
Just my thoughts and curiosities on music.
Can't wait to be a part of Elyria someday sooner than we think.
I'm still curious as to what engine they've decided for their beta and official release! I looked through the Design Journals but I couldn't pinpoint any information on this. I may have missed it though?
Posted By Davepoleon at 10:03 PM - Wed Apr 19 2017
No matter how many times I rewrite the next paragraph it comes out sounding shitty. I apologize in advance. I'm genuinely curious and not trying to come off as a nay-sayer.
About 7 minutes into the video of the mine you mention that combat is based on being realistic. Hence fighting 4 or 5 enemies will likely get you killed. But it doesn't seem very realistic for 3 or 4 enemies to ignore you while you go and kill their work buddy 15 feet away in plain sight of them. This doesn't seem like an idea that will scale very well. Maybe the miners are messed up in the head but certainly not every enemy in the world would be that way. Will a players ability to take on 4 or 5 enemies be attainable or will the game mostly rely on players proxy pulling 1 or 2 at a time due to the high difficulty of dealing with more opponents? Also, combat looks rather clunky. Somewhere between QWOP and launch ESO. Are there plans to clean that up before launch?
So, that's a fair point, the miners ignoring you isn't very realistic. That, however, is not because of the design, but the AI. The AI we implemented for the Mine was our first pass, and as such, it is absolutely lacking in functionality and polish, but it is a start, and now that we've started, we can start iterating.
AI, Combat, both of these systems are in development. There is absolutely no way that the state of the systems in the demo are going to be the state of those systems even by Prologue. They are going to be heavily iterated, expanded upon, and refined. So expect to see even better stuff in the future.
PS: I love the words "Prototype" and "Iterate"? Those are two of my favorite words, right next to "Justice".
Posted By Davepoleon at 10:03 PM - Wed Apr 19 2017
No matter how many times I rewrite the next paragraph it comes out sounding shitty. I apologize in advance. I'm genuinely curious and not trying to come off as a nay-sayer.
About 7 minutes into the video of the mine you mention that combat is based on being realistic. Hence fighting 4 or 5 enemies will likely get you killed. But it doesn't seem very realistic for 3 or 4 enemies to ignore you while you go and kill their work buddy 15 feet away in plain sight of them. This doesn't seem like an idea that will scale very well. Maybe the miners are messed up in the head but certainly not every enemy in the world would be that way. Will a players ability to take on 4 or 5 enemies be attainable or will the game mostly rely on players proxy pulling 1 or 2 at a time due to the high difficulty of dealing with more opponents? Also, combat looks rather clunky. Somewhere between QWOP and launch ESO. Are there plans to clean that up before launch?
So, that's a fair point, the miners ignoring you isn't very realistic. That, however, is not because of the design, but the AI. The AI we implemented for the Mine was our first pass, and as such, it is absolutely lacking in functionality and polish, but it is a start, and now that we've started, we can start iterating.
AI, Combat, both of these systems are in development. There is absolutely no way that the state of the systems in the demo are going to be the state of those systems even by Prologue. They are going to be heavily iterated, expanded upon, and refined. So expect to see even better stuff in the future.
PS: I love the words "Prototype" and "Iterate"? Those are two of my favorite words, right next to "Justice".
That being said, how abnormal would it be for enemies to be just standing around like that waiting for something to aggro them?
It comes across to me as something that I wouldn't expect from a game like this.
Posted By Scheneighnay at 12:22 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Souzou at 1:39 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Davepoleon at 10:03 PM - Wed Apr 19 2017
No matter how many times I rewrite the next paragraph it comes out sounding shitty. I apologize in advance. I'm genuinely curious and not trying to come off as a nay-sayer.
About 7 minutes into the video of the mine you mention that combat is based on being realistic. Hence fighting 4 or 5 enemies will likely get you killed. But it doesn't seem very realistic for 3 or 4 enemies to ignore you while you go and kill their work buddy 15 feet away in plain sight of them. This doesn't seem like an idea that will scale very well. Maybe the miners are messed up in the head but certainly not every enemy in the world would be that way. Will a players ability to take on 4 or 5 enemies be attainable or will the game mostly rely on players proxy pulling 1 or 2 at a time due to the high difficulty of dealing with more opponents? Also, combat looks rather clunky. Somewhere between QWOP and launch ESO. Are there plans to clean that up before launch?
So, that's a fair point, the miners ignoring you isn't very realistic. That, however, is not because of the design, but the AI. The AI we implemented for the Mine was our first pass, and as such, it is absolutely lacking in functionality and polish, but it is a start, and now that we've started, we can start iterating.
AI, Combat, both of these systems are in development. There is absolutely no way that the state of the systems in the demo are going to be the state of those systems even by Prologue. They are going to be heavily iterated, expanded upon, and refined. So expect to see even better stuff in the future.
PS: I love the words "Prototype" and "Iterate"? Those are two of my favorite words, right next to "Justice".
That being said, how abnormal would it be for enemies to be just standing around like that waiting for something to aggro them?
It comes across to me as something that I wouldn't expect from a game like this.
So, it's important to delineate between abnormal behavior and "abnormal" AI. There is such a thing as bad AI, but it is separate from abnormal AI. Abnormal behavior is interesting. Bad AI is bad.
What are your expectations exactly? Because having expectations for an entire game filled with an entire world's worth of unique entities that are going to have distinct behaviors means having quite a lot of expectations or having a narrow set of expectations that couldn't possibly be applicable in every scenario.
Like I said before, however, the miner's AI at the time of the demo is both minimal and not an accurate representation of the expected final state.
Posted By Scheneighnay at 12:22 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Souzou at 1:39 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Davepoleon at 10:03 PM - Wed Apr 19 2017
No matter how many times I rewrite the next paragraph it comes out sounding shitty. I apologize in advance. I'm genuinely curious and not trying to come off as a nay-sayer.
About 7 minutes into the video of the mine you mention that combat is based on being realistic. Hence fighting 4 or 5 enemies will likely get you killed. But it doesn't seem very realistic for 3 or 4 enemies to ignore you while you go and kill their work buddy 15 feet away in plain sight of them. This doesn't seem like an idea that will scale very well. Maybe the miners are messed up in the head but certainly not every enemy in the world would be that way. Will a players ability to take on 4 or 5 enemies be attainable or will the game mostly rely on players proxy pulling 1 or 2 at a time due to the high difficulty of dealing with more opponents? Also, combat looks rather clunky. Somewhere between QWOP and launch ESO. Are there plans to clean that up before launch?
So, that's a fair point, the miners ignoring you isn't very realistic. That, however, is not because of the design, but the AI. The AI we implemented for the Mine was our first pass, and as such, it is absolutely lacking in functionality and polish, but it is a start, and now that we've started, we can start iterating.
AI, Combat, both of these systems are in development. There is absolutely no way that the state of the systems in the demo are going to be the state of those systems even by Prologue. They are going to be heavily iterated, expanded upon, and refined. So expect to see even better stuff in the future.
PS: I love the words "Prototype" and "Iterate"? Those are two of my favorite words, right next to "Justice".
That being said, how abnormal would it be for enemies to be just standing around like that waiting for something to aggro them?
It comes across to me as something that I wouldn't expect from a game like this.
So, it's important to delineate between abnormal behavior and "abnormal" AI. There is such a thing as bad AI, but it is separate from abnormal AI. Abnormal behavior is interesting. Bad AI is bad.
What are your expectations exactly? Because having expectations for an entire game filled with an entire world's worth of unique entities that are going to have distinct behaviors means having quite a lot of expectations or having a narrow set of expectations that couldn't possibly be applicable in every scenario.
Like I said before, however, the miner's AI at the time of the demo is both minimal and not an accurate representation of the expected final state.
The demo AI is to be expected, but what I'm saying is that, in rare cases like insane/possessed miners or whatever's going on, will they be standing around like that, or actually have some sort of passive script for when they aren't trying to tear someone's face off?
Posted By Scheneighnay at 4:08 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Souzou at 4/20/2017 9:47:03 PM
Posted By Scheneighnay at 12:22 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Souzou at 1:39 PM - Thu Apr 20 2017
Posted By Davepoleon at 10:03 PM - Wed Apr 19 2017
No matter how many times I rewrite the next paragraph it comes out sounding shitty. I apologize in advance. I'm genuinely curious and not trying to come off as a nay-sayer.
About 7 minutes into the video of the mine you mention that combat is based on being realistic. Hence fighting 4 or 5 enemies will likely get you killed. But it doesn't seem very realistic for 3 or 4 enemies to ignore you while you go and kill their work buddy 15 feet away in plain sight of them. This doesn't seem like an idea that will scale very well. Maybe the miners are messed up in the head but certainly not every enemy in the world would be that way. Will a players ability to take on 4 or 5 enemies be attainable or will the game mostly rely on players proxy pulling 1 or 2 at a time due to the high difficulty of dealing with more opponents? Also, combat looks rather clunky. Somewhere between QWOP and launch ESO. Are there plans to clean that up before launch?
So, that's a fair point, the miners ignoring you isn't very realistic. That, however, is not because of the design, but the AI. The AI we implemented for the Mine was our first pass, and as such, it is absolutely lacking in functionality and polish, but it is a start, and now that we've started, we can start iterating.
AI, Combat, both of these systems are in development. There is absolutely no way that the state of the systems in the demo are going to be the state of those systems even by Prologue. They are going to be heavily iterated, expanded upon, and refined. So expect to see even better stuff in the future.
PS: I love the words "Prototype" and "Iterate"? Those are two of my favorite words, right next to "Justice".
That being said, how abnormal would it be for enemies to be just standing around like that waiting for something to aggro them?
It comes across to me as something that I wouldn't expect from a game like this.
So, it's important to delineate between abnormal behavior and "abnormal" AI. There is such a thing as bad AI, but it is separate from abnormal AI. Abnormal behavior is interesting. Bad AI is bad.
What are your expectations exactly? Because having expectations for an entire game filled with an entire world's worth of unique entities that are going to have distinct behaviors means having quite a lot of expectations or having a narrow set of expectations that couldn't possibly be applicable in every scenario.
Like I said before, however, the miner's AI at the time of the demo is both minimal and not an accurate representation of the expected final state.
The demo AI is to be expected, but what I'm saying is that, in rare cases like insane/possessed miners or whatever's going on, will they be standing around like that, or actually have some sort of passive script for when they aren't trying to tear someone's face off?
Ah, I see what you're asking. You'll have to wait and see ;).
They might even decide to outsource some of the AI. If the offline scripting is workable enough, they may just save some hassle and butcher community scripts :D
