Afternoon Update – Friday, May 15th, 2015

Folks,

Happy Friday, all! We have a lot to talk about, so…

First, we will be running another 24 hours of Tech Alpha, starting today at 3PM Eastern Time and ending tomorrow, May 16th at around 3PM Eastern Time. This test will be open to all Alpha and IT Backers. If all goes well with this 24-hour cycle, next week or weekend we will again open the servers to some of our Beta Backers for some fun and frolic in the current Tech Alpha Build. As always, the full patch notes are available in the Alpha section on our Forums, as well as on our website as User Stories. Sorry about the short notice but it’s a 24 hour test so all of our Alpha/IT folks have plenty of time to jump on in.

Secondly, our Backers continue to show their awesomeness, by not only putting up with my bad puns and frequent movie references, but by being patient with our occasional “heads down” approach. Sometimes, this results in a bit less communication than they or we would like, but our Backers keep supporting us by doing things that just make us smile from ear-to-ear, whether through continued support of the game or sending amazing things!

In the last few weeks we have had two of our Backers do things that are really quite lovely. One Backer, Raygar, sent us a really unique and special gift, which was a classic poster to inspire the team. We are currently having it framed, and it will proudly reside on one of the walls of the studio. Thank you for that, Raygar! This is the “Journey” poster that he sent us.

Another Backer, who apparently is blessed with a sarcastic streak to match his generosity, sent us some, well, very memorable t-shirts. So Failboat, thank you so much for these shirts. I’ll certainly wear the one you made especially for me quite proudly! After all, if we can’t laugh at ourselves a little bit, well, we won’t survive the next six months, let alone the next 18 months.  Here are two photos of the t-shirts that Failboat sent us.

Thirdly, in terms of our hiring push, things are going quite nicely. While we have nothing we can announce yet (okay, I’m cautious to the point of superstition about this stuff), it shouldn’t be much longer till we have some very good news to share. As always, no promises, but well…

Fourth, in terms of work on our game, we’ve been rather busy. We have 39 new completes and 4 new adds to our User Stories section. I’ll highlight some of those here, but as always, these can be best viewed on our website and in our Forums:

1)    As a Backer, I’d like to be able to damage, and ultimately destroy structures in the world.
Define first pass of building data structure. – Add and complete.

Note: Blowing, blasting and otherwise reducing the hard work of your opponents draws ever closer.

2)    As a Backer, I’d like to be able to use modifier components when building abilities.
Integrate modifier component with pre-existing ability components. – Complete

Note: If you haven’t had a chance to check out the ridiculous new combinations you can make through our ability-crafting system, well, you are missing out on some stupidly fun stuff. J  We will begin balancing these abilities in the coming months, but the groundwork that we have laid down shows just how much control our players will have over their abilities. Our Backers wanted to see some BSC stuff in the game to complement the old-school stuff, and well, they can see some of that now, not 18 months from now.

3)    As a Backer, I’d like Camelot Unchained to have sound through the start up, character creation and selection process.
First Pass: Server select background music. – Complete
First Pass: Loading screen background music. – Complete
First Pass: Character select input sfx and background music. – Complete
First Pass: Character creation input sfx and background music. – Complete

Note: Our Backers funding of the Stretch Goal made this happen so I hope that they have liked what they have seen so far. I know I’m quite happy with it.

4)    As a Backer, I’d like to be able to be able to play an Archer.
First pass: Camera offset positioning for first pass archery. – Add and complete.

Note: Baby steps and all that. 🙂

5)    As a Backer I’d like to see general improvements in C.U.B.E.’s interface and functionality.
Facebook integration to share screenshots. – Complete
First pass: Added the ability to place a light in the world. – Add and complete.

Note: The ability to add lights is a perfect example of our Backers telling us what was important for them to have as soon as possible, and us making it happen.

6)    As a Backer, I’d like to play in a procedurally created environment. – First Pass.
Gut & Clean the existing zone editor and bring it back to life. – Complete
Add ability to move “stuff” around by dragging it. – Complete
Add new subdivision terrain code into a proper editor. – Complete
Terrain saved in DB, through builder, and sent to client as part of binary zone data. – Complete

Note: This is a big one, and our resident code wizard Andrew has been head down, headphones on, consuming vast quantities of coder fuel to bring about the magic. And it is almost there, like really almost, as in today possibly, for our IT folks to see the first pass.

7)    As a Backer, I’d like to see the sun, moons, and stars in the sky with sky color changes based on time of day and position of those celestial bodies.
Render the sky in a different scene. – Complete
Render a tessalated icosahedron with uniform face distribution. (A skybowl :P) – Complete
First pass: Sun and moons. – Complete

Note: Part of the difficulty in building out your own engine is that you have to build so much from scratch. While this might not seem like a big deal either in terms of importance or difficulty, well, it needed to be done, and it is moving along nicely. So, as I’ve said so often “Watch the sky!”

We also have some new cards to add to our glowing deck, including:

1)    As a Backer I’d like to see abilities use a requirement system to further define the ability system. – Code
Create foundation of requirements system. – Complete
Abilities check stats. – Complete
Abilities check stance. – Complete
Abilities check active effect tags. – Complete
Abilities check race and archetype. – Complete
Abilities check player or target. – Complete

2)    As a Backer, I’d like to test the updated male luchorpan model.
Create base body concept and worksheets. – Complete
Model high poly sculpt. – Complete
Model and rig low poly model. – Complete
Import and test model parts. – Complete
Replace old model with updated model in game. – Complete

Note: This is important because we continue to refine our modeling system for the game. The Luchorpan is on that new and improved model.

We have also added some non-card stuff too, including:
1)    Fixed the spawning under the world bug related to invalid abilities.
2)    First pass transfer of momentum. “Pushing!”
3)    Minor improvement to visual accuracy of knockback affects.
4)    Additional materials added to C.U.B.E.

Whew! And there’s more as well, which can be found on our website and the Forums. We’ve been busy boys and girls! As promised, the pace on visible improvements has picked up, and will continue to gain momentum going forward.

Finally, on Monday, May 18th at 3PM Eastern Time, I’ll be doing a Live Streaming update. So, if you can drop by our Twitch Channel at 3PM you’ll see yours truly talking a blue streak and doing a Q&A afterward!

For today’s art update, here are some updated Golem models from Michelle. As you can see from these concepts, Michelle has made some significant changes to the Golems, while retaining all of the “golem-ness” which sets them apart from other races.

Here are two individual studies from her as well.

As always, feel free to stop by our Forums and let us know what you think!
And, not to be out-quacked, Sandra has a new Stretch Goal duck, this one for the Camelot Unchained Herald.

That’s it for today’s update. From all of us at CSE to all of you, have a great weekend, and I’ll see many of you (or more accurately, you’ll see me) on Monday!

-Mark