Folks,

Happy Friday the 13^th all! While some may fear it, it’s a great day for us, as I have a couple of announcements to deliver. First, as of now, our team is in a “soft crunch” mode, as we move toward the opening of Alpha for Camelot Unchained™. What this means is that members of the team are doing whatever they need to do to get their scheduled tasks done by the end of the month. Will we make it on time? Well, as always, time will tell. However, we want you to know that we are certainly doing what is necessary to make a serious attempt to meet our estimated Alpha date.

One thing to keep in mind is that, in our current Alpha schedule, we didn’t have the building system slated for February. Thanks to some legerdemain, first by Andrew and then with the help of other members of the team, we had a preliminary system up and running well before Feb. So, that’s a nice fun addition to the schedule!

Work is proceeding nicely on other fronts, and as our IT folks know, we got the 25X size map working well. We are scrambling to add features to it, including a modified control game. So, when Alpha opens, you will see a much larger world than you’ve seen in the P.A.T.s, along with so many of the other features that we have already talked about, including the first pass at the ability crafting system. It’s going to be tight, but keep your fingers, toes, and antennae crossed, and we’ll see what happens.

As always, remember that this is the same “old school” Alpha that I’ve been talking about since the Kickstarter began. It is tech-heavy and feature-light, and we will need you folks to come in and help us break our tech. We need large crowds, massive battles, etc., to help validate what we have done so far before we proceed much further. This is how you build a game that can sustain that kind of load at launch so we will continue to work in this manner, but we do need your help!

Also, I’d like to announce the hiring of CSE’s first full-time sound engineer! His name is Daniel Beck, and he comes to us from the fine folks at Red 5 Studios™ and the MMOFPS Firefall™. As I’ve said before, we had a lot of very talented engineers apply for this position. I was blown away by the exceptional people who offered to join us, and I had an incredibly difficult decision to make. Daniel wasn’t as experienced as some of the candidates, but man, did he have the skills (effects and composition with a lot of technical seasoning) and the attitude that I am always on the lookout for, when I evaluate potential new team members. It would be unfair to call him a “diamond in the rough,” as I sometimes refer to up-and-coming people, and I don’t think Daniel (or as he likes to be called, dB) has come close to reaching the top end of his profession. I expect great things from him on all levels, whether technical, creative, or in terms of fitting in with our studio. I asked him to put up a link to some of his pieces, including his spec pieces for Camelot Unchained. So, have a listen here, and let us know what you think. dB’s first day with us will be February 24^th so I hope you’ll be seeing some new and impressive sound effects and music from him soon after that. BTW, my personal favorite was his “Welcome to CU” spec piece. Oh, I forgot to mention that he is also a major PvP/RvR guy. 🙂

In other studio news, we are rapidly approaching the 3.1M threshold. It seems like only yesterday that we passed 3M, right? Thanks, as always, to all of our Backers, both old and new, who have contributed to this great total.

Today’s update will close with two pieces of art. The first one is an early collage, concept piece for our Ulfies, the Bersekers. As you can see from the concept pieces, we were exploring different directions with them, going from the more savage, animalistic approach, to the more refined and civilized approach. Next week, we will show you which direction we chose to go. However, feel free to let us know what you think, as always, on our Forums!

The other bit of art that I would like to share is a bit of Valentine’s Day love to all of our Backers.

That wraps it up for this week! It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks for us here, as well as for our IT/Alpha folks, as we push new builds/tests as quickly as possible. Wish us luck, we are going to need it!
-Mark