Folks,

   The days leading up to Thanksgiving were quite exciting in the CSE office. After our previous 500-bot test, which some IT and Alpha Backers helped us vet, we’ve continued to make gains both in networking and client performance when dealing with upwards of 1500 bots/players in a small space. These improvements not only have helped us push our tech, but also find and fix problems as we continue to scale up. As of this weekend, we continue to find and fix bugs, as well as look at additional points of performance gains. Let’s move on to our Top Tenish list for the week:

1. Optimizations made after bot testing:

   • Reducing the number of bits per update by 20% in positional updates was an exciting improvement.

   • Improved rendering performance by removing unnecessary shadows on distant players.

   • Andrew made general math updates, so we’re doing fewer calculations each frame. Every little bit adds up to the best player experience possible.

   • Greatly reduced the player geometry at a distance, for improved framerate.

2. WIP – Animation systems: Andrew’s work to hook our animation system up to the new ability system continues, and as a side benefit, he found some ways to improve performance, as well!

3. WIP – patcher updates: We’re improving how we download files from the patch server to address a few issues some Backers saw when launching their game client. Thanks for the feedback!

4. WIP – Sounds and abilities: Gabe and dB have been working together to get sounds incorporated into the ability system. Most recently, they’ve been working on hooking up impact sounds. This work lays the foundation for VFX on abilities.

5. WIP – Buildings: Brad is currently refactoring our building code so that we can, in the future, support curved surfaces in buildings. This refactor further provides insight into pre-existing code as we begin to utilize it with the new ability system.

6. WIP – Moving physics server to its own process: By separating out the physics server, we’ll be able to update physics independently of gameplay, providing performance gains.

7. WIP – Guild slash commands: JB continues to cruise along on building our first pass of guilds. He’s been working on slash commands to provide basic guild functionality.

8. Art – Armor: TDD Fall Court heavy armor has been completed.

9. Art – Armor: New, basic, Realm shirts, pants, and belts, with improved materials.

10. Art – VFX: We’ve completed several environment and weapon VFX additions to light up the world, which will show up in a future build.

11. Art – Concept: The Place of Power is back on our radar, and is getting some attention to ready it for beta. Check out the concept art below!

  Lots of great progress! You may note that we have several big ticket “WIP” items in our Top Tenish list this week. As I’ve mentioned in previous updates, we are carefully merging these systems into something resembling a game.

  Because of this, we want to get some more eyes on our current build before we start whacking away at it next week. The Wyrmling Prep server will be up for testing with IT and Alpha level Backers for the weekend, unless it goes boom, as we’re looking for any lurking issues we may yet be unaware of.

  This is probably the most appreciated thing our Backers can help us with: test and break things! Please be creative in your ability building and usage. Run around jumping wildly in a group, literally anything random you can think of that may bring a lurking bug to the forefront.

  Weekend testing details:

Where: Wyrmling Prep

Who: Alpha and IT level

When: Now until Monday morning, unless something goes boom.

  Instructions:

1. Open the patcher and jump into WyrmlingPrep.

2. Run around, build abilities, and try to kill other players or dummies.

   1. If you run out of munitions, use the command /refillammo to give yourself more.

   2. Players will default to combat stance. If you’d like to switch between combat and travel stances, you will need to craft your stances as an ability beforehand.

3. Post any issues you find here (https://forums.camelotunchained.com/topic/15448-weekend-alpha-and-it-testing-feedback-friday–december-2nd-2016/).

How you can help:

• If you hit an assert, please post either the text or a screenshot to the forums with a description of what you were doing, or what was going on around you, when it occurred. Bonus points if you are able to reproduce the assert more than once!

• Report any crashes, random slow-downs, or anything that produces unexpected behavior.

Known issues:

1. There’s currently a known graphics issue that will throw up an assert about your GPU device being removed. Ignoring this assert will crash the client. We are still investigating this one, but it has proved difficult to track down. Any information you can provide to reproduce the issue is greatly appreciated!

That’s it for this week’s update. Have a great weekend all! Also, just in case you missed it, we sent out our 28th newsletter (http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=2b70fd18d895dd960141bac55&id=9c4ffd8b11) yesterday, which includes lots more info as well as introductions to two new team members! Let’s end this update with a great piece of concept art Michelle worked on this week for our first Place of Power! Or as we say “Powah!”

– t + b