Good update. Love the advancements on the weather.
Hail and well met, Elyrians!
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.
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
Work on the website continues! We've made a couple releases over the past couple weeks that have brought the following fixes and improvements:
Sometimes nefarious elements need to be brought to justice. We've tracked these ones down and their days of menacing the populace is over!
In an effort to improve our community, we've also built new features that are sure to delight!
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.
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.
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,
Vye
Good update. Love the advancements on the weather.
"...muddy roads and snow banks will affect travel and increase strain on people and vehicles that dare to venture outdoors."
Vehicles can get bogged? Wheel ruts stay and harden causing rougher roads for a bit after things dry out?
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its extension cord...(Friend Code: 9D26A7)
Thanks for the update. Hoping the next coming weekly posts will get back to having indepth status report on the main and core game. Once again thanks for the update.
Weather looks great! Looking forward to trudging through muddy streets and snow drifts. Gald to see an open Q&A to discuss important topics. Very interested to learn more about combat.
Amazing !! keep up the good work!!
a adventurer who slowly climbs up the social ladder in the land of Terenia.
I love the atmosphere going on. In spite of being an MMO, it looks like it might end up feeling much more like a nice co-op RPG too if you grab a friend and go exploring.
I have to say, everything looks amazing! You guys are doing a fantastic job. However, I do feel I have to say a couple things. I do understand that the demo is early work and things will be polished and re-worked and the end will be far better than the beginning. But the combat was definitely slow and clunky. I do hope you speed things up and that players will have at least several attacks and abilities. I mean RL combat would have move upon moves for various fighting styles. All we seem to see from the demo is two different slashes, a shield block and a shield bash. Hopefully we learn more moves along the way.
One more thing is that I agree that the AI seems lame at this time. Even if they're driven mad, would they not have some sort of path to walk? Seems to me I would expect mobs walking back and forth. Maybe even pairing up from time to time. But just standing still does seem lame, messed up in the head or not.
And honestly, why wouldn't we be able to take on several miners at one time. I understand that a warrior might have a problem taking on 3 or 4 other trained warriors. But miners? Miners usually aren't going to be trained killers. So why would we not be able to take on 3 or 4 miners? Also as our skills increase, shouldn't the ability to take on harder things also get easier? It's safe to assume if we are just starting and lack any real skill that we may not be able to fight very well. But after six months of play time and the skill points that have been built up in that time, shouldn't we be able to do more, take on more.
Maybe thinking in terms of skill vs amount of mobs. Miners or farmers, etc. should be easier to fight or kill than warriors or trained guards. Maybe if the mobs are mere miners, it would be more accurate if 3 or 4 of them did mob you and you could fight them off. This would make more sense than 3 of them just standing there 10 feet away. But at the same time if you came across a courtyard with half a dozen trained guards you know you would be killed if you just went running right in
LET ME IN ALREADY!!
Through the travail of ages, midst the pomp and toil of war have I fought and strove and perished countless times before So as through a glass, darkly, the age old strife I see - for I've fought in many guises, many names, but always me.
Will we be able to run illegal businesses through legal businesses like have a tailor also run an assassin organisation. Imagine running a completely legal business like the tailors but if someone uses a code word you put them in a certain dressing room that may or may not lead to a secret room to ask about the not so legal business and will npcs like in a family run business be able to understand these code words and then take them to the "special" dressing room?
When is the deadline for submitting our Package bonus perks? To name a few: Naming of gravestones, constellations and historical areas.
please tell me we arent going to see chicken smearings on all parkourable surfaces. that is really emersion breaking. like i walk into a room, and i'm like hmmmm i wooonder where i need to go neeeext? as i stare at a wall of chicken crap.....
I did like the demo, however, It is really cheesy that you can fight 1 miner with another one standing just a few feet away acting like he has no clue that their is a fight. I hope when the game comes out it wont be like that. It seems to take away the realism that you guys are going for.
