Folks,

Time for another reasonably juicy update from us. We have the usual once and future road map/sprint report as well as other news from the front. This week will be a two or maybe three update week for us with the first Piercing the Veil Q&A scheduled for Friday. If all goes well we will also have the reveal of the next Viking race complete with a heaping helping of early concept art from the team. In the meantime, we have a rather cool first cut at the animation of a race that will be near and dear to the heart of one of our Founders and we expect, other Founders as well.  We think she’s a scream and this is just the first pass. This update also has a shout out to a Kickstarter project of both a personal friend and a friend of CSE.  As to how we did with the last sprint, here’s the report.

• Final client entity model finished.
  Completed.
• Begin physics integration.
  Miss. Not started yet.
• Editor infrastructure finished.
  Completed.
• Beginning work on adds to our Asset Pipeline Management system.
  Completed.
• Addition of more features to Animation Editor such as blend tree visual editor, and 3d player integration.
  Completed.
• Begin final phase of first workable User Account Editor.  This will be a multi-sprint task with the goal of having in the Founders’ hands for final shakedown by end of October.  
  Completed.
• First pass defining the visual look of our games’ VFX.
  Completed.
• First pass Banshee VFX in Unity (as a test bed only, we are not using Unity for the game).
  Completed.
• Concept art for next Viking race.
  Completed.

  New race and story will be put out as a separate update this week.

• Banshee basic animations.
  Completed.
• Generic Arthurian human model for use in testing future armor swapping tech.  This will also be a multi-sprint task with work being done on both the low and high poly versions.
  Completed.
• Integration of additional task tracking software and forward planning.
  Completed.
• First pass couple of generic environment art pieces to flesh out demo – help determine poly counts, etc.
  Late.

  It is currently a work-in-progress but it will take a bit longer due to workload.

• Finish 1st pass stats and skills Vision document after review with team.
  Completed.
• Finish 1st pass magic system Vision document after review with team.
  Completed.
• Complete 2nd contest for Founders Forum.
  Completed.
• Complete first “Piercing the Veil” with forum submitted questions.
  Completed.

  The questions are currently in review now with the first Piercing the Veil set for later this week.  

Darn good, especially considering some of the difficulty of some of the tasks. As to our next sprint, here you go.

• Camelot Unchained server code fully up and running and communicating with new client.
• Merge new network code into our rendering client.
• Final concurrency and entity system on client and server.
• Final integration of particle editor with build system.
• Setting up physical build, patch, and DB in office server. Nightly builds and asset pipeline 100% armed and operational. Be able to patch and run the game within the office.
• First pass characters schema defined.
• Characters stored and persisted in Database.
• Basic text-based character creator/selector on client.
• Animation behavior exports.
• Animation 3d viewer player integration.
• Finish protocol buffer integration.
• Encryption – wrap TCP stream in SSL.
• Encryption added to checksum validation to UDP.
• Second pass on user editor for forums.
• Coordination tools for build/edit/patch server.
• Next race concepting complete.
• New Camelot Unchained Logo animation complete.
• Low res Arthurian male modeled, weighted, and ready for parts system.
• First pass tech planning for our magic system VFX.
• Banshee vfx polish pass in Unity.
• Complete first pass on a few environment props.
• Next race story complete.
• Second and final draft of “Vision Document” for magic system.  Next step is first draft system design document.
• Second and final draft of Vision Document for draft stats and skills.
• Prepare new reward tiers for Backers in preparation of pledges reopening.
• Initial story pass on next race or class.
• Start next Founder contest.   

As a successfully Kickstarter-backed project we are committed to Brian Fargo’s “Kicking It Forward” campaign once our game ships. However, we also want to back other Kickstarter projects during the next two years (we won’t be using Founder money for this, I’m picking up the tab myself). While we have already backed a few, we will be backing more and I’m happy to give a shout out to our next backed project, Spark Rising by the folks at Wicked Loot. These fine folks are creating a sandbox RTS with some very interesting bits and pieces. Their Kickstarter can be found here and the game’s website is here.  It is a pretty small initial ask and since I’ve created some early 4X games myself, well, I’m interested in this project and they are friends of CSE so backing it was a no-brainer.  So, if a 4X game with exo-suits, voxels and other cool stuff interests you, well, you know where to go to check it out.

Today’s final notes are about two of our races, the Bean Sidhe (Banshee) and the next upcoming Becoming™ tale. The Banshee animation that accompanies this piece is, of course, a first pass, but I think it’s safe to say that she fits in nicely with the dark setting for this game. That being said, I think she is well along the way to being a harbinger of things to come. Speaking of harbingers, the next Becoming tale & art will be revealed soon. This is the story that some of you have seen me talk about on the forums. It is easily the darkest tale I’ve written so far and while I have toned it down quite a bit, it is still not meant for kids. It is dark, brutal and still manages to cross a few lines so if you like your “safe” fantasy, this will not be the tale for you. OTOH, if you want to read a very dark story that draws on, sadly, real world events for its inspiration, then this story may be for you.

More to come later this week!

-Mark