Hail Elyrians!

It is time to shine! And let me tell you, after missing out on last week’s shiny, I’m ready to SHINE! It has been a jam-packed week at the studio this week! As Caspian mentioned in the discord chat earlier today, we’ve been interviewing potential new teammates and the process has been going terribly! Terribly well, that is!

Of course, the development teams, both the game team and our online experiences group, have been hard at work, too! On the game team side, we’ve been working on two important elements. The first, as you’ve seen from a few of the past shiny, is that we’re working on enhancements and tuning of our traversal mechanics (the methods a character uses to move through the world). This week we were looking at how characters interact with ropes, and refining some of the basic rope climbing, swinging, zip-lining, and balancing mechanics. This week our focus has specifically been on controls, and so a lot of that time was spent doing internal tests, watching how folks were using the controls both on keyboard + mouse and the gamepad interfaces, with an eye towards smoothing out the interactions that aren’t as intuitive or smooth as we want them yet. As a tangible example, we spent some amount of the week looking at the task of redirecting a rope while it’s swinging. There’s a very simply and logical control scheme for that sort of interaction, but the truth is, logical and “feels right” aren’t on the same page in a lot of cases, and this turned out to be the case here. A similar friction point – where the logic of the control scheme didn’t necessarily match the visceral feel of working the controls – exists when a character’s balance is unsteady, and so we took some time to look at that too. As we move into a new week, we’ll be implementing some of the changes that resulted from watching that testing play out.

But, enough about my week! Let’s talk about the shiny! In Earth’s calendar, we’re moving into the holiday season, and in the period of Elyria’s course in the sky we are at the start of the three-year eclipse known as Longest Night, that strikes every 52 years in Elyria. It is the custom of many Elyrians to exchange gifts, reconnect with friends and family, or help their neighbors prepare for the coming cold. In that spirit I have a few shiny gifts!

First is a collection of blade profiles that Heat, our primary concept artist, knocked out… sheesh, awhile ago at this point. In fact, I honestly don’t remember if we’ve shared this image or not yet; it’s definitely old enough that we could have. Still, it’s a cool image and not the only thing I’m showing today, so bear with me if you’ve seen it before, and please revel in it, if it’s new to you! :)

At the time Heat made this, we were looking at what sorts of changes can be made to a weapon in the course of crafting and considering strategies for making sure that those changes were visible to a keen-eyed player. This specific set of sketches was looking at how different blade shapes themselves might indicate different techniques or styles that could indicate performance differences. E.g. “This sword is a chopper,” or “this one is for stabbing,” or “this is like an arming sword” – the sorts of things that might inform what martial arts or combat techniques an opponent is likely to use.

Next is an image that seeks to answer a question that has been asked here on Earth a few times over the millennia: What exactly does a soul look like? When it comes to souls in Elyria, we have a few requirements, which means this isn’t a pure art task. In Elyria, a soul should help convey to you all what sort of affinities it has, be that the light/dark affinity spectrum or some more abstract affinity like “this soul has had experience and expertise in soldiering” or, even, both types of affinities at once. So, as we get closer to implementing the permadeath mechanics as part of our current push to complete adventuring, we look to things like these treatments that Heat put together to explore how that sort of information might be conveyed. I’ll let you try to guess for yourself what each treatment is meant to convey. :)

And finally, my last piece for today’s shiny comes, not from me per se, but rather in the form of a traditional well-wishing sentiment among the Brudvir:

Here’s to hoping your shiny day was safe, fun, and full of family and/or friends to make it great!

Until next week,

Stay shiny my friends!