Update of the Avatar #90 – 2014.09.12: Darkstarr Training Montage, New Designers Join Team, Baron & Knight Cloaks, Elves, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• Darkstarr Training Montage
• New Designers Join SotA Dev Team
• Founder’s Developer Blog: Daily Standup Notes and Developer Q&A
• Baron’s Cloak
• Knight’s Cloak
• Creature Spotlight: Elves
• Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon
• Upcoming Events

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Darkstarr Training Montage

At long last, the Darkstarr Training Montage that was part of the $3.25M stretch goal (Lord British and Darkstarr fencing in puffy shirts), has been completed! Rustic Dragon hit it out of the park with his excellent writing/directing/editing, and special thanks to the Space Bards for their great “Bane of Britannia” composition/performance. Enjoy!

Knowing he was going to need a lot of practice to defeat Lord British, Darkstarr continued his intense training at home with the help of his daughter:

Be sure and check out next week’s update for the official Lord British vs. Darkstarr Fencing in Puffy Shirts video!

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New Designers Join SotA Dev Team

For the past couple of months we’ve been searching for level designers/world builders and we’re excited to announce that our search has ended! Two great designers have joined our team this month: Artie Rogers and Abe Robertson!

Artie Rogers is a professional game developer who has been working in the industry since 1996. He has held a wide variety of positions ranging from Quality Assurance to Creative Director. He is best known for his work on Wizard 101, which was voted the best new MMO for 2010. Artie has worked on dozens of titles, including Elder Scrolls Online, Area 51, The Hobbit, Medal of Honor 3, and Ultima Online. His portfolio covers a wide variety of genres such as FPS, Action RPG, RTS, TCG, Strategy, Mobile, and MMOs. His games have targeted a wide range of different demographics from families to adults and casuals to hard cores. Artie has also published numerous articles in the Massively Multiplayer Game Development book series.

Artie is currently crafting a new war-torn scene called Solace Bridge, scheduled for Release 11 (October 23). Here is a sample map that Michael Hutchison provided to Artie as an example of the damage wrought in this war-torn environment:

Andy Cortez has been working on these damaged castle wall pieces and damaged drawbridge that Artie might be able to put to good use in the war-torn Solace Bridge level:

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Abe Robertson is a Game Designer/World Builder with just over 5 years of industry experience, and an additional 4 years in the modding scene. Before joining Portalarium, he created levels and systems for a few titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo 4, and Black Mesa. Abe is new to the Portalarium tribe, and is super excited to be working with a small team of passionate and proven devs.

Each of the level designer applicants were required to submit a test level as part of the interview process. Abe’s test map had several unique characteristics to it so we asked him to further develop those ideas for inclusion in the game. This scene, currently called Vertas Pass, is being designed as a future “control point” for when that tech comes available. A control point is where an enemy faction can temporarily take over that area, turning it into a combat zone until it is re-taken. Depending on Abe’s progress, you may see the first version of Vertas Pass in Release 10 (September 25). Here’s a screen shot of the current Work-In-Progress (using some unfinished, placeholder components):

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Total team size has fluctuated slightly over the past few months, and as of this month we are at 38 active team members:

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Founder’s Developer Blog: Daily Standup Notes and Developer Q&A

One of the rewards of the Founder Pledge tier includes access to the Founders Developer Blog, an exclusive, read-only collection of Developer postings, including the dev team’s daily “standup” notes, and the Developer Q&A.

Standup Corner

The SotA Dev Team uses elements of Agile software development and SCRUM methods, including the Daily Standup Meeting. Each and every morning there are three “Standup” meetings (art, design, and programming), lasting a maximum of 10 minutes each. These meetings are carefully guided so they don’t exceed 10 minutes per group, including no one sitting down and getting comfortable (hence the nickname “standup meetings”). Each attendee states the tasks they worked on yesterday, the tasks they plan to work on today, and whether they are blocked by anything. Rick Holtrop (Associate Producer), known in the forums as Chaox, takes notes during the meeting (he’s the only one that sits since he’s writing the notes). Rick then posts these notes every day in the Standup Corner forum thread.

So, if you’ve ever been curious as to exactly what each team member is working on every day, then head on over to the Standup Corner and check it out (requires Founder Pledge tier or higher). There’s even a thread in the Developer+ forums (accessible by backers at the Developer pledge level or higher) where members discuss (and speculate) about the daily standup notes. Members of the Dev Team occasionally weigh in there to address member questions regarding the standup notes.

Here’s an example of standup notes from earlier this week:

Wednesday September 10, 2014

ARTISTS
Alyssa Reuter: Death and dying VFX
Andy Cortez: Crumbled set polish finish & Bugs
Bob Cooksey: Bugs
Bren Wilson: Weapon transitions & Draw/stow animations for two-handed
Geoff Mellon: Automatons & Meetings & Faces
Jay Reichman: Bugs
Kevin Wells: Bugs & Cloth sim & Knight’s Cloak
Scott Jones: Dungeon kit additions
Stephen Daniele: Graf Gem Mines in-game map & Geothermal concept preparation

DESIGN
Abe Robertson: Vertas Pass terrain
Artie Rogers: New user setup & Meetings
Bill Kirkman: Bugs & Underworld entrance and exits
Brandon Cotton: Vendors & Shopkeeper bundles & Guard Davis loot nuke & Skills
Finn Staber: Combat FX & Bugs
Gina Dionne: R10 NPC polish & Virtue quests
Scott Jennings: Oracle & Virtue quests

TECH
Erik Touve: Ranged AI & Meetings & Slimers
Jason Yenawine: Build process & Server reports &
Joaquin Del Canto: Character creation & PvP arena bugs & Facebook Screenshot option
Justin Gilbert: Water Lot Island
Ken Pfile: Challenge dungeon support & Bugs
Tassilo Phillipp: Shader support & Additional payment methods
Zack Sheppard: Crafting & Resource nodes

QA
Aaron Holden: CS & QA
James Cousar: Sanity checks & Regression & AI smoketest & Underworld testing

PROD/MGMT/OTHER
Chris Spears: Memory issues & Water performance & Animation performance
Dallas Snell: Business
Michael Hutchison: Wartorn biome & Tree 8 black-screen testing
Richard Garriott: Music approvals & Schools of magic names feedback review
Rick Holtrop: Backers & CS & Crowd payments & CS & backer support
Starr Long: LotM home feedback review & Forums & Creature AI direction

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Developer Q&A

Periodically the community submits questions to the dev team, and the answers are posted in the SotA Developer Q&A forum. Community member Mitch [MGT] coordinates the collection of questions, as he explains in his most recent Q&A post:

I want to help the community get some answers to the hard hitting questions so FireLotus has given me the honour of taking questions from the community and forwarding them to her once a week (Wednesday) with the plan to have them OFFICIALLY answered by the Devs as early as Friday of THAT week (We might be pushing this back until Monday going forward). *These answers are only posted in the founder forums, so it’s important to help support the game to take advantage of this process. Please PM me if you need help becoming a “founder”* This is a fantastic opportunity to get some questions answered and to avoid the confusion that comes from the broken telephone/forum posts that sometimes plague this fine site.

The process is simple, post your questions and “like” the questions you would like forwarded to FireLotus. The highest voted (# of Likes) of these questions (Top 5), will be forwarded directly to FireLotus by Wednesday afternoon.

Here’s an example of a recently posted Q&A:

Question: Following the recent addition of lot permissions in R7, how much further is the permissions system expected to go? Is it going to remain at a ‘house’ level, or will it go into more detail, such as being able to restrict access on doors? This would be a great way to offer multiple user housing, if it existed.

Currently permissions are set to the entire lot but perhaps it could be expanded to be more granular. We have also discussed the possibility of making keys with time limits something players can craft to allow something similar.

Question: Can we have a first person view while walking or running?

While this is not currently on our schedule for Episode 1, we have gotten numerous requests for this along with VR support. We would love to make this happen as we are personally passionate about this as well but for now it has to be lower priority than our other features. For now there is a similar feature to this where if you zoom in completely your avatar disappears.

Question: How many people are needed to form a guild? 5? 8? Is there a planned maximum number in a guild? Will there be different types of organizations in-game? ie. guilds vs societies where a society may have a larger member cap but a guild a smaller one?

Guild designs and tasks are going to be post Release 10. At that time we will release more information and begin detailed dialogue with you the backers.

Question: Will there be mini games within SoTA? If 5 players “engaged” a table with a deck of cards, will it actually function as a poker mini-game complete with the ability to gamble?

Mini games are not currently part of our Episode 1 feature list, but we would love to get them in if we can, especially because we have fond remembrances of playing chess and checkers in the taverns in Ultima Online.

If you have a burning question you’d like considered for the Developer’s Q&A then send a forum message to Mitch [MGT] and get it added to the queue!

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Baron’s Cloak

Included in the basic rewards for the Baron pledge level is this unique cloak sporting the Baron’s symbol, sewn with silver and gold thread suitable for carrying an enchantment. It is permanently enchanted to function as a light source.

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Knight’s Cloak

Included in the basic rewards for the Knight pledge level is this unique cloak sporting the Knight’s symbol, sewn with silver and gold thread suitable for carrying an enchantment. It is permanently enchanted to function as a light source.

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Creature Spotlight: Elves

Elves were created during the Obsidian Wars by Obsidian Sorcerers as powerful chaotic leaders with very destructive tendencies. They were created as tools to dominate the natural world and the creatures within it. When the Obsidian cause failed, all of the creatures created by these Obsidian Sorcerers became leaderless, wandered away, and were mostly driven to extinction. Few survive today, and those that do find themselves hunted and hated.

In the intervening two hundred years since the Obsidian Wars, some elves, specifically those known as Vertas Elves, have reemerged with a new outlook on life, somehow they have turned over a new leaf, and found new purpose in life. These elves, while just as smart and powerful as their historic cousins, are masters of their own fate. While still often shunned or hated, they work to improve their own lives and come to peace with their warmongering past.

Outlanders that manifest in New Britannia, often take on a familiar human form, though many have noted their new Avatar manifestation differs significantly from their home world form. It is not uncommon to be taller, shorter, thinner or wider when an Outlander manifests in New Britannia. Even a change of gender is common when an Avatar manifests.

Rarely, very rarely, for reasons yet unknown, human Outlanders may manifest as Elves in New Britannia. So few such Outlanders exist, that any Elf claiming such heritage is likely to be disbelieved.

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Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware’s powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

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Upcoming Events

2014.09.25 – Release 10 Access
2014.10.01 – Monthly Video Hangout: R10 & R11 Discussion
2014.10.23 – Release 11 Access
2014.10.24 – SotA at Captivate
2014.10.29 – Monthly Video Hangout: R11 & R12 Discussion
2014.11.03 – SotA at GDC Next
2014.11.14 – Duke & Lord of the Manor VIP Design Roundtable with Lord British and Portalarium Studio Tour
2014.11.15 – HoBLotH II: Legends of the Hearth
2014.11.20 – Release 12 Access
2014.11.26 – Monthly Video Hangout: R12 & R13 Discussion
2014.12.18 – Release 13 Access

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