Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place. And here's our Weekly report #11 (originally released 11/23/18)
Friday is on the air and we open the next ten reports.
Hello everyone and cut to the chase!
I 3D models
Light pants
This week we worked on the diversity of light pants. Modellers still have the freedom to design it.
II Updated character texture
New modular system of armour and clothes is already in the works. But we forgot about one more detail, perhaps, the most important detail - underwear that would hide a nakedness when pants fell after death)
If this model was a separate model we wouldn’t have any difficulties. But we needed to make this skin (read as texture) look worthy. In this, the borders of underwear are very strict and come from the modular system.
That’s how it will look like. Yes, we wanted to make it older and more ragged on purpose.
III Mobs
The quality issue of realistic mobs is significant. 2016-18 years have been marked by bears and wolves with the fur showed by the giants of industry. But technologies are still far from optimization. The realistic fur in the game about witch hunter brought to its knees many game systems.
We are working towards the studying of new technologies that are still to develop.
It’s time to introduce the work with NVIDIA Hairworks in ROG.
We are not sure that we will fall within the optimization of MMORPG genre but we will try. But either way, we will leave this “feature” in addition to ultra settings of graphic.
[By the way]
As usual the fur and hairs are created through addition to the character image the polygonal lines and invisible textures. It’s simple but very labour-intensive method. Fur and hairs look static and visually boring. Creating dynamic fur and hairs one can add hundreds of hairs each of which will respond to the movements of a character and external factors realistically.
This dynamic hairs provide more saturated colour gradient and also interact with the light and shadows more natural then it was earlier. Common and local lightning passes through every layer. Even the deepest layers get the natural shading that improves the image quality significantly.
***
IV Optimization
In the last report we mentioned that we got a new member of ROG team responsible only for optimization. His name is Dmitry. For the first week extensive work has been done. One report isn’t enough to tell about it so we will dedicate to it a separate report. Now we will tell only about a small part of the work done.
[By the way]
Optimization of our level design project we can divide into the main sections:
Optimization of the main settings of the project;
Optimization of the landscape material;
Optimization of every mesh (3D models with textures) separately: its LOD’s, the rules of displaying of materials, simplification of materials at a distance, the rules and quality of casting the shadows depending on the same distance;
flora (especially trees of SoeedTree);
buildings and elements of building constructor;
little details (log, lamp post, signboard, anvil etc.);
An integration of identical meshes by certain rules in one big mesh or instance-group (fences, piles of stones or logs, etc.);
Light and shadows in the open world, light and shadows in the instances;
Rules and parameters of loading of world objects are located in particular area around a character but belong to the other level (i.e. the other submap). We remind that the continent consist of 64 parts (“submaps”), and each of them covers 6.25 sq km. A part of them is located underwater.
On the one hand, it’s basic set of methods to optimize the project. But every project is unique, there are no two similar projects. The difference between first-person and the third person, the difference in altitude on the continent etc.
We started with detail adjusting the tool for optimization. It makes an engine avoid the processing of objects (i. e. it doesn’t show the objects but reserve it) less than particular size. It bases on the distance from this object to the camera. The main thing is to pursue a middle ground, it will help to avoid the discomfort of houses, appeared in front of you, and it won’t “smother” with FPS. Even first attempt within this parameter produced some results.
We will show an example of a village.
Before the setting:
Cull Distance Volume Off, ~35ms, 10k+ DrawCalls
After setting:
Cull Distance Volume On, ~20ms, 4k+ DrawCalls
P.S. The above FPS is the FPS of the project, not of the integrated build. It’s always significantly lower.
***
V Conclusion
In conclusion we will traditionally talk about around-development:
The best news for us is that the technical work on the site has almost done. On the next week we will start working on the design of the new site with our designer Tatyana.
There is good news for the future streamers: Reign of Guilds appeared on Twitch. It will help the streamers and us to promote the game in the nearest future. It’s empty now, but you can already subscribe.
Also we have finished the site of the studio Atlant Games.
The new site, private IP network, servers etc will be talked in greater detail in the next report dedicated to “Around-development”.
That’s all for now, take care and have a nice weekend!
Join to the voting and discuss the report on our Forum.
It’s Friday’s evening - ROGgoms up!
Yours sincerely, Reign of Guilds Team
Weekly report #10
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #10 (originally released 11/16/18)
First anniversary report is on the air!
Hello everyone and straight to the point.
I 3D models
Siege towers and hedgehogs
Last time we showed ladders not only tightly fixed in the open world but also moveable ladders that the players could place against the wall of a besieged castle.
Today we are going to talk about siege towers and hedgehogs.
[Plenty of time - we’ll read it!]
Siege towers are made by the armourers as the other siege weapons.
Siege towers will have a few levels. Its size and durability will depend on the levels. At the moment the concept provides a separate controller to move a siege tower, it works like this:
To move a siege tower we will need 4 characters with (strength+stamina) > N;
They come to the handles along the edges and press “E”, ensuring a traction force to move the tower;
After activation of the movement controller, a player can press only “W” and “S”, a tower moves only when all 4 players press “W” (back - “S”);
To turn the tower right or left only players of one side should push it;
To deploy the tower fast the players of the opposite side should move backwards;
In all other cases the tower stops and doesn’t move.
Thus, the controlling of the siege tower is kind of a mini-game where only coordinated movements of fantastic four can deliver the tower to the destination. The number of actions and restrictions are deliberately reduced. It should be taken into consideration that this characters should be protected and healed.
[Had the time - we’ve read it!]
That’s how the towers of first tier look like:
1. usual tower
2. skin with nordic shields and medium metallic part
3. skin with Roman shields (scutum) and heavy metallic part
Here’s the variant of the same towers but of dark wood:
The characteristics of towers don’t depend on skins. It isn’t changed.
Now let’s talk about defensive hedgehogs.
That’s how it looks like:
As ladders, there will be 2 types of them:
tightly fixed without durability, it therefore can’t be destroyed;
made by armorer, players can’t independently place it on the field to make temporary defense store or block the way for the towers.
[Question]
We had one important unresolved issue - after creating siege weapons by armorer we want to take it apart to parts. Every part will weight about 50-100 kg. All guild members will have to take this parts and pull it to the castle. Then the armorer should build it again using finished parts. Building or taking apart is possible only if the guild is renting the closest store for the armorer.
Another variant - armorer creates a draught in his workshop. Following it he can build the siege weapons next to a castle. In this case, guild members will have to get resources instead of parts.
And the third variant - is a casual decision, typical for the majority of games. The siege weapon is one item in the tools, appearing instantly after activation.
[Write your ideas in the comments]
Middle weight pants
Denis, our armour and clothes modeler, has the freedom of creation. That’s why we are often surprised with stylish decisions.
II Level design
No comments, only contemplation.
Lumber mill
Cotton farm
Attentive reader will obviously raise this question: why there is a yarrow on the cotton farm? Answer is very simple - we will approve all plant models later. That’s why the fields have many weeds. Difficulty lies in its optimization. Beautiful and realistic cotton “costs” for GPU as ¼ of a character.
III VFX
This VFX was created for the AOE healing magic.
At the moment we are thinking of giving one of this types of magic not only to druids but to other classes, requiring water (reducing ECE).
Firstly we want to talk about this magic.
[Plenty of time - we’ll read it!]
From the start we had the aim to make an active (skillful) druid more useful than other druids that eats during game session.
Method was typical - to make a few different types of healing.
From left to right: medium AOE with small radius, strong conical AOE, faint AOE with huge radius.
Standing in the thick of things let the druid use stronger AOE skills. The spatial orientation and keeping the group in front of the healer let the druid heal them with the cone.
[Had the time - we’ve read it!]
IV Conclusion
Again about around-development:
On the “Alpha” page we added an information about the level of implementation of finished content in the client. On the next week we will determine the most convenient steps of implementation. Then there will be more status bars. There you will see what will be expected on the test server. Information will be updated 1 time a week on Mondays.
On this week one more member joined our ROG team - Dmitry. He is responsible for the optimization. We need a separate worker because we can’t afford to allocate programmers for it. Optimization of such large-scale world can slow down our work, that we are trying to speed up. And we do it successfully.
And also good news - we made first and the most important step of making new site. There will be one account for the game and forum. And there will be one unified registration on the xsolla+site+forum.
We took care not only of those who had accounts on the forum but also of those who wanted to link another forum account to your game account.
That’s all for now, take care and have a nice weekend!
It’s Friday evening - ROGgoms up, friends!
Yours faithfully,
Reign of Guilds Team
Weekly report #9
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #9 (originally released 11/09/18)
Reporting Friday is on the air, friends, for the ninth time and right on schedule!
Hello everyone and get to the point.
Firstly, we want to talk a little bit about an implementation of a structure for our reports. Our reports basically consist of demonstration of the content (pictures) and text. The text often contains simplified recap of a project development, description of mechanics or just our thoughts and experience.
We want to highlight such text in a certain style. If our reader isn’t interested in it or doesn’t have enough time he can just skip it.
We need to make up a new title for this section. Write your variants in comments and remember - don’t be so serious! This section has the title “Plenty of time - I’ll read it!”
And the best one win (majority of likes)!
I 3D models - ladders
And today we’re gonna talk about step ladders. Behind the apparent simplicity, it’s a big headache for developers. Mechanics of ladder interaction seems working only with some tricks.
But first let’s see them.
That’s how the simplest ladders look like in close up:
There are many ladders of different length:
And there are ladders of different strength:
Also there are ladders of different tree species, but we’ll talk about it later. Now let’s talk about difficulties, caused by step ladders.
II Animations with ladders
[Plenty of time - I’ll read it!]
The main problems with this animations are:
feet shouldn’t step on air;
a character should “hold on” to the right place on the ladder and do it with a suitable range;
a character should come down off the ladder;
and a character also should climb the ladder from upstairs.
Developers solve the problems in different ways:
someone turns a blind eye to “ski” and invisible steps;
someone speeds up the third person camera and moves it backwards from a turn of a character to make different fails invisible (movements near the ladder, sliding);
someone creates all step ladders at an angle to let a character to use it without a loss of functionality;
and someone turns a ladder into the interactive subject, teleporting a character up or down.
This is not an exhaustive list of decisions. It is used even by giants of industry. Anyway all of you met these moments somewhere;
[Had the time - I’ve read it!]
We don’t reinvent the wheel, only add the rim. Let’s see the results.
That’s how movements up and down look like.
A character steps the suitable places because the animation based on unified set of parameters such as the height and thickness of ladder steps.
Yes, it means that all step ladders can look different but this parameters will be the same.
This is an example of unification of the in-game content that allows to optimize work input and time but reduces the diversity.
That’s how it would be if our ladders didn’t have a ledge upper the last step about 1 m:
A character holds on the void because this is not an unified ladder.
III Level design
Mikhail, our producer (he is also responsible for the instances - internal parts of buildings) is so obsessed with the review of the level design of our designer Vladimir that he can’t stop taking screenshots of the world.
[Plenty of time - I'll read it!]
We remind that at the moment 90% of 2 counties are ready, each of which has 1 big city, 2-3 villages, 14-18 mining places. Its total surface area is about 70 square metres.
We’ve already told that such world area gives us huge space to add more content. It could happen that you leave beta at the edge of the desert forest and came back into a little village or a new mine. May be even next to a river or a lake.
[Had the time - I’ve read it!]
Now we offer to look at these locations while we think how to optimize it!)
Mason's workshop
Village
Donjon
It deserves clarification.
[Plenty of time - I’ll read it!]
We have come to the moment when we want to show our castles, adapted only to our system of castle capture.
Castle, as a building complex with its instances, will be unusual for the players.
First basement of a simple little donjon with a level 15 is presented below.
The castle mostly consists of the wood but the donjon (as the main building) has stone basement.
It is basically semi-basement section for the storage. But we know that the storage without table and wine for the storekeeper - is not a storage at all!)
In the next reports we will talk about scrolls, treasury, mechanics of capture and holding of the castle and territories!
[Had the time - I’ve read it!]
IV Conclusion
In conclusion we’re going to talk about around-development:
A new programmer, Pavel, is engaging in work successfully! The controller of the flying mobs was under his mouse. Now he is responsible for the mechanics of controller’s movements on the ladders. And then, more likely… drum roll… - mechanics of the siege weapons. It’s not the most important work on schedule but it’s easier to join the project with this work.
New site has some problems, as always. It could not be otherwise, so we don’t worry. We failed the deadlines, previous executors were fired. New executors started the work yesterday. Some may ask, why? Because we have an extremely non-trivial task. If you make MMORPG in a big way, you need the same magnitude with the website!
Expect the updating of Alpha page with added status of the remaining work next week. We’re still searching for the testers. We will start inviting those who have left applications by the end of the month.
And also we will return to the promoting in the West and add a page about ROG in Steam. Before this we will put to a vote few artworks, that will be used for this page.
And it’s only a small part of our plans and goals. The report isn’t made of elastic!
That’s all, take care and have a nice weekend!
And one more feature at the end:
It’s Friday evening - ROG’n’roll, friends!
Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team
Weekly report #8
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #8 (originally released 11/02/18)
It’s reporting Friday and it’s time to talk about ROG.
Hello, everyone, let’s start!
I Animations
Third person animations with the book of mantra
The creation of animations is a process as imaginative as the creation of other parts of the game. But different strokes for different folks. And we have a funny story.
Our animator, Vlad, previously made this animation of a run with the book:
Our producer, Mikhail, blamed the creator for the strange behavior of the model’s right wrist.
Thereafter Vlad sent a corrected version of the animation and answered: “Is it better?”). Here’s this variant:
Then we found the golden mean. That’s how it looks like:
And that’s how running in the other direction looks like:
Here is a character standing in a combat stance with the mantra book:
P.S. The mantra book will have VFX in a hand similar to the using of a powder.
II Camera
Now let’s talk about mechanics that has influence on the visual components. We’ve already told that a character’s height will influence not only on a hitbox but also an altitude of the camera and the range of a melee weapon.
The height of the M character ranges between 160 and 196 cm. Now we are using the project with 196 cm.
The most interesting is that the camera will change its position with the combat stance. In the combat stances a character puts the feet apart and bends his legs. Eventually, 196 cm become 176-178 cm.
We decided to show this detail through the camera. In the end, that’s how it looks like.
Standing up straight (usual stance) character looks at the other character that stands up straight (both 196 cm):
The same character got a weapon, took a combat stance and the camera declined:
That’s how an unarmed character looks at an armed one:
The both characters are standing in the combat stances:
The lifting and lowering of the camera will be used only with taking a combat stance. Also the camera will swing if a player equips a weapon.
The camera doesn’t move when changing weapons.
P.S. Re-equipping will have technical cooldowns. It won’t be shown on the CD bar. But the camera movement will report about the temporary restriction of the functional. It allows us to solve the problems that we faced during the prototype with the instant re-equipping of weapons.
III Level design
Without further ado, let’s look at the pictures all together.
Cutting site
Village
Forest
IV 3D models - trousers
We worked on the trousers this week. Pictures below show the light and heavy samples of the different tiers:
V VFX
Let’s talk a little about walls. As we told in the last Report, there will be a few variants of the walls. That’s how an interim wall looks like (between magic and stone walls).
Magic replicates the form of the masonry mortar:
This walls can be different – from 2*2 to 12*6 (meters).
VI Conclusion
We will handle the organizational issues, tell about things close to game development, and also update information on the site in the near future. Then we will invite the new testers of those people who applied the appropriate topic.
We would like to conclude with humor.
Here’s the sketches of appearance customization of M. We test its variability and efficiency:
Let’s play! Find the real-life and game roles for these 3 characters. You have only one week.
The funniest variants will get the rewards from ROG Club!
Take care and see you later on open spaces of our social media, forum and website!
Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team
Weekly report #7
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #7 (originally released 10/26/18)
It’s reporting Friday on the calendar, so settle in and check the results of our work!
Hello everyone, let’s start!
I VFX
We’ve already told pretty much about mechanics of obelisks.
That’s how the magic tower shield will look like. We will tell you about differences between usual and tower shield in more detail in the video-review of combat system 2.0.
That’s how the most basic magic wall will look like. This wall will be possible to cover the whole group. Also there will be a wall with a pronounced stone outline. Spell will cost more mana, cast will be longer, but the wall will be stronger.
This is an egg that can cover a character on all sides and save him from an enemies’ attack. And a “stowaway” who will be lucky to drop in it.
II Animations
We also prepared animations with the mantra book. But it makes a page with GIFs heavier, so we decided to show the whole dwarf animation and leave the book for the next time.
Dwarf is a complicated person. On the one hand, he has unattractive appearance but on the other hand the animations are different - some of them are serious and some of them are funny.
Let’s start with serious one.
That’s how a dward runs into battle. He is not a yellow-bellied and never runs away - only fight!
That’s how his fast attack looks like. Even better: “fast”.
Here’s the thing. The fast animations actually look pretty bad. We added nasty dispels and debuffs to his attacks.
That’s how his heavy attack looks like. Almost every hit will put the nastiest debuff.
That’s how the tragic death of a dwarf looks like:
Here’s a dwarf passing the time and he doesn’t care if someone is watching him:
Now, pay close attention, that’s a dwarf’s gait:
Recognize?
Well, a dwarf is one of the most outrageous mobs in the game. And he can afford it, for God’s sake! Drawing this animation, it was hard to adapt it to the height and an axe in hand.
It’s difficult to determine who suggested this idea, but let’s get one thing straight - it’s “in step with the times”.
III 3D models
Head
Someone asked us on the forum - if we had many inappropriate or outdated content.
We will certainly devote our report to it because we have a lot of such content, especially test tasks (they are paid so we can’t publish it).
And now it’s time to introduce a new head.
Last head had bad face morphs. On the stage of coding it was impossible to use it.
Here’s new head and its variants with the little edits in proportions of face and hairs.
That’s our first draft on the left. “Can we make NPC of the handsome head?”
In our opinion it turned out quite funny.
How do you think, how can we use left head? What character? In contrast, right head is lean variant of a character’s face.
Gloves
It requires no comments. They have different heaviness.
IV Conclusion
We would also like to say - today our new programmer Pavel have moved to Saint Petersburg. He is going to start the work on the project this weekend.
We will tell you about the development, our ideas and worries soon, but it’s not as interesting and funny as game content)
Thank you for reading us!
Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team
Weekly report #6
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #6 (originally released 10/19/18)
Friday’s on the air and we’re going to talk about past working week with ROG!
Hello, everyone!
I 3D models
Bracelets
There are many different bracelets by the end of the week: from light rope, decorative and jewelry bracelets to bracelets that completely covers forearms.
We remind that you have 2 slots for bracelets (for every arm separately). Bracelets are shown on a character in comparison with an amulet. But they are invisible in the case of glove cuffs and tabards with wide sleeves (it’s a little spoiler about a modular system and a system of morphs).
Shirts
Shirts are divided into 2 main types. This is what sleeveless shirts look like.
Shirts almost won’t give stats to characters. Their appearance is a result of technical requirements under the desire to make clothes, weapon realistic and original.
“Long sleeve shirts. It differs from the sleeveless one with the… suddenly… sleeves.” (We prepare dashing descriptions of items)
Let’s say a few words about the system of weapon and clothes morphing (it’s similar to KCD). For MMORPG it’s not the most typical method to form the modular system of armour.
So for example, shirt: like any 3D models it has its geometry - as combination of polygons and peaks (it has .fbx format for modelers). It is further opened in Maya using .fbx. In addition to main geometry it has derivative forms (as shirt shrinks after washing). There are 4 parts (2 for arms, 1 for body, 1 for shoulder girdle in the case of a long helmet). And thanks to that the parts of the clothes don’t penetrate each other. Also we created LOD to optimize the loading of GPU. Thus, one initial geometry turns to 7-8 geometries.
If you are bored to read this short and simple descriptions of the process of development, write about it and some of us will definitely read it))
II Animations
Animations with crossbow
First, we want to mention that heavy master looks really funny with some piece of wood in hand))
Targeting
Reload
Run forward
Dodge right
Looking at this 4 animations, we need to highlight it, in addition to the common edit:
Mocap bounce became slower and won’t spoil gameplay;
And the most important thing is the targeting. It’s the part of the combat system 2.0. The players of our “Prototype” convinced us to implement it. RMB has this unique feature for the weapon. It’s targeting for the crossbows and bows. Buffs can change the ZOOM. After an effective range an arrow goes in parabola, but has the same damage. So it makes sense to shoot with the ZOOM of a sniper rifle at a distance 300+ meters, especially if a hunter specializes in physical attack (PA).
Animations of dwarves
It was daunting task for our animator to make a midget as special as a stickman. The midget model was fairly less interesting that the stickman model. That’s why animations should be more attractive.
Vlad (our animator) made something special in response to demands. So, please welcome - mocap for mobs!
Ye, ye, that’s right! Right here, in our office! We had inappropriate light that hindered us. But it’s mocap! And the most important thing that it’s an independent initiative of the animator to speed up the process of animation creating and also to make them more lifelike.
The process
And the result
We remind that we can’t allow such luxury as mocap in many animations because of the timing of combat system.
And the Great Mop of Violence (GMV) will also be included in ROG after this as a meme)
III UI
Those, who have tested the trade with vendors in PTR, knew this mechanics.
Now we will shortly talk about some aspects of this trade:
Every vendor has his own dynamic balance. This mechanics creates semi-automatic system of inflation control and new requirements for the procedure of ‘looted stuff’ selling.
To avoid the abusing this trade uses shopping cart similar to online shops, contrary to all MMORPG market.
Furthermore, in the lower part of the screen there is information about taxes for the Count and his guild (to realize who spoiled your life and whom you need to find).
Someone’s Friday is already over, someone’s is coming to an end, and someone’s is just beginning, in spite of a calendar showing the 20th of October)
Take care, have fun and follow the news and our project!
Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds team
Weekly report #5
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #5 (originally released 10/12/18)
It’s Friday again and welcome back!
We keep to the schedule of reports, despite a lot of problems that our team faced in the light of current tasks - assembling of build of the team work for the period over a year.
Now let’s see what we’ve done.
I Animations
And this time, looking at the animations together, we will tell you a little about the skinning of armour because it’s interesting enough. Very briefly about the most interesting things:
every element of armour uses the same skeleton (invisible) as the character (i.e. it contains an information about bones and its structure), that’s why every item can exist in the game separately, without any character;
elements of the joints (elbow pads, knee pads, shoulder pads) have 3 types - soft, hard and compound. Soft armour is fixed to the different bones and bends with the covered joint. Hard armour is fixed to the one bone. When the joint bends, a gap appears at the side without fixing. Compound armour - 2 pads are connected with soft straps. These elements are able to move, following the leading bone.
physics of materials. The following animations show that lower part of the armour is cuffed and follows the thigh bones. The engine and the epoch allow to configure the physics of materials to make this part soft and considering a collision of the character. You’ve already seen something similar in an earlier version on the prototype (tabard of crusaders etc.). We’ve already configured the physics of material for the new armour but the integration is the issue of painstaking tests and optimization. The burden is entirely on GPU. We wait for the bot system to take the final decision. It will allow to have a couple of hundred characters in view, check fps, activate (make them jump, for example) and see how the different video cards will react.
Sword thrust 10-04
Sword thrust 07-01
Therefore 2 questions:
Are you interested in report dedicated to armour and clothes in the game?
Which hardware would you recommend to test (processor and video card)? We certainly check the steam statistics of configuration of gaming PCs, also we have standard assemblies. We’re going to use it in the last stages of development to optimize the work. But we are always receptive to your enquiries and wishes.
II Mobs
Minotaur
It’s time for something new. We’re all know him - big, strong, with slurred mooing (as our executive director when he drinks), he is about 3 meters tall. Will he have his own labyrinth? Or will he be homeless in our Dwarhan Kingdom? Will see! But you would better to have a ball of thread.
Werewolf
It’s harder to handle with this guy. In the format of ‘Maximum” concept - it’s metamorphosis of the wolves. Wolves from the earlier version hurt not only your nervous system but ours too. That’s why we decided to upgrade them.
We’ve already told that dark nights would regularly occur (it would be not only darker but also it would change the distance of displaying of text and HP bars above players and mobs). It’s the night when random wolves will turn into the werewolves, while player gets aggro. And typical grind changes into typical rapid escape. We will tell about unusual fight with werewolf when it will be liven up with animations.
III 3D models
Boots and gloves
In this section we are preparing for the winter.
Gloves and boots - from the light to the heavy armour. We remind that in the ROG will be informal division by heaviness of armour requiring different attributes. It’s easy if there is the main characteristic of armour. Light and heavy variants will give the same quantity of the main characteristic but different protection. It is connected to the increasing of attributes in general to transform a hardy character into really heavy tank. And strong character should damage with impressive thrusts of his Zwei but die from a glance of an archmage.
IV UI
After about a week of edits and working on UX, we are close to the final screen of an item. It looks like this:
Naturally, set points are random.
V Conclusion
That’s all that we wanted to report for the past week.
Follow the news and have a nice weekend!
Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum.
Reign of Guilds Team
Weekly report #4
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #4 (originally released 10/05/18)
Today is Friday and it’s time to report on the work done.
We ask you to assess this form of little and regular reports about what’s going on, after reading the 4th weekly report. Do you like this form?
Now let’s go!
I Animations
We continue to train our steel master, soon he’s going to get 52.15. Here’s some shots of his training.
Hit 01-08
Thrust
Hit 07-01
Hit 02-07
II Mobs
Dwarf
We tried to imagine midget’s appearance for a long time, especially when he ruins players’ life with debuff during getting levels! He was too noble and we were forced to spoil his appearance several times.
Now we are satisfied with our work. He has 3 variants of clothes. The red one is festive.
And most importantly, there is also his dead variant. It looks more like a leper and there is a fear of getting infected through a screen.
Lich-niphone
We decided to diversify the niphones. Dead niphone lives at cemeteries and other locations with all things wicked. He shriveled and split his two tails in half, in total: four tails. We’ll see - whether it allows him to move like tiphone!
P.S. Originally, niphone has only 2 legs-tails, as it should be.
III VFX
Magic shield
And now for the best part. Do you remember that we mentioned the obelisks in the game? It is a protective item for the off-hand. If blocking is active it will raise magic shields. It is the same as physical block.
Moreover, high level obelisks allow to hold the wall in front of the player, protecting from arrows, hits and enemies. But this obelisks are extremely costly and take a lot of mana. That’s why you shouldn’t suppose that this wall will cover the pass at Thermopylae.
The apogee will be the obelisks that rise a hemisphere around the character and his companions. We’ll get to that later. They are currently under development.
Blind
This debuff will look like that.
In fact, it will be redrafted to make it more useful. You won’t dispel it with little purge powder. But this debuff will require many attributes of magic skills.
IV Conclusion
Many of you are interested in Alpha, as before.
Trust me, we are concerned about it even more than you!
Have you probably noticed the lack of level design in this report? The reason is that our level designers are involved in fixing technical gaps. It appears when levels are integrated in single mode but should be integrated in the open MMORPG world, divided into the servers.
Anyway, it’s a challenge to bring the year of work of the whole collective together. The longer we work on it, the more we are sure that it’s hard.
That’s why we are appreciate your understanding, patience and support.
Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum.
Stay with us and wait for the news from the front, see you later!
Weekly report #3
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #3 (originally released 09/28/18)
Let’s start the third weekly report with the discussion about Alpha. It is important for us to make Alpha not only impressive but showing the difference in our level in comparison with the Prototype of previous year. Moreover, we intend actively to promote our project and new site would be a big help for us (not so much design as possibilities for promoting).
That’s why we beg you to understand the deferrals. The integration of collective work for the whole year (code, models, level design, animations, UI) in one project is a diligent and careful work.
And now what we will show to our readers.
I 3D models
Hunter
It is the 3 and 4 tiers. A character still wears light armour. The only thing that is conceptually changed - weight of a pad. It turns to a breastplate but doesn’t humper the movements on the side. Hunters still wear ‘cloths’, but they have agility and mobility.
Respawn places
Players will respawn in the buildings like that after death. One building is for the players with neutral and better karma, the other is for the "bad boys", except ‘psychopaths’. Any ideas about their place of respawn?
II VFX
Cold lager
Buff or debuff? That is the question. It depends on the quantity. On a Friday night it’s probably buff)
Bloody chains
You could meet this debuff in the other games. It doesn’t slow down the target, but it damages depending on the covered distance.
Weights
A weight is a weight. Every weight has about 2 pounds. You won’t go far with it. Unlike debuffs requiring the air, this spell will allow players who have a lot of stamina to slow down the other players by adding them the weight in the bags!
III Animations with one-handed sword
It’s been a long route to show you the new animations in the third person with the new model of the man, wearing the new armour. Well, we are almost ready to show the new modular system. The new animations in the third person will be prettier thanks to it.
A stance without shield became lighter and the movements became less uptight. A character without shield will receive a bonus to the swordplay.
Hit 03-09
Hit 10-04
Thrust
Hit 04-10
IV Conclusion
Our team has small changes - the new CM (Alexander, as @Ловен on the forum) joined our team. Many of you have already known him.
Follow the news, join Alpha (who hasn’t had a chance), thanks for the support and feedback, see you later!
Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum.
P.S. Our ROG team is leaving to buff with lager and other beverages ;)
Weekly report #2
Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #2 (originally released 09/21/18)
Friends!
Today is Friday, and 2-nd weekly report is on the air. Here you will find the work on the level design, 3D models, VFX, animations and UI.
I Level design
Mining and processing of resources
We obviate the need to spend thousands of hours clicking LMB next to the rock and watching the character fill his supplies with sparks flying from the pick.
However, you still should spend much time in mining locations.
A list of types of locations and resources has already been approved, but recently we made two important decisions:
We rewarded the counties with some resources in varying degrees with an obvious surplus and deficit to stimulate the trade and movement of resources between the counties;
We increased the number of locations with resources in 4 times (now the number will be about 16) to minimize the risk of holding of all respawns by one zerg.
Locations look like this:
This farmer was clearly a lieutenant in the closest military unit. Training dummies discarded by himself keep hated birds away from his favourite vegetable patches.
II 3D models
Hunter
Hunter will have 2 ways of development: light armour and bow, and medium armour with crossbow. A suitable variant can be to use high tiers of light armour with low tiers of medium armour and vice versa.
Today we will show first two tiers of light armour for hunter. As always a part of items - his “prof. items”, and the other part has no professional requirements.
III VFX portals
The teleport system is significant factor in development of the scale and structure of the realm. Players need the teleport tokens to use the portals. Some of them will be available, but some of them will be very hard to get. We already told about teleport system in our previous article.
Now it’s time to show VFX of portals:
Little, round with red glow - castle portal, located… “Inside the castles!” -prompting captain. Only legal castle owners can use it.
Triangular and big, - city/village portal;
Mossy and moldy - abandoned portal.
IV Animations
4.1. Stickman
Our old and favourite friend from the previous report got his own animations. He’s ready to show it:
It’s his basic stance. He’s just standing.
He’s looking around.
He’s taking part in the competition in power walking of summer 1072. Unfortunately, he will never be able to run.
He’s hitting. No one knows why he’s bouncing, because he’s not pocket-size.
He’s hiding with fear if you show him the fire.
4.2. First-person animations
Work does not terminate on the first-person animations.
Sword + shield. Hit from the block. This is unique attack that will be available only for gladiator (It’s buff. Gladiator can use it almost constantly on the high levels).
Sword and free hand. Hit 08-02. Left hand! By the way, it will have its own advantages. Some of them are essential.
One-handed sword and free left hand. Hit 02-08. Some of advantages: reducing the cooldown time of 25%, unique attack with RMB. We are not sure in the need for the shield!
V UI
This week we were working on the equipment screen. At the moment, taking into account available mechanics, there will be additional 21 slots (Don’t pay attention to the icons - they are temporary).
Moreover we work on the compass: now it shows not only points of the compass but also the selected objects of the realm, marked places and group members.
But the happiest news for us: showed interfaces has already been implemented in the game. And soon it will be “alive”!
VI Conclusion
About essential for the alpha: audit is to develop, game client is lighter now - 15 gb (within the realm). But mobs, models of armour and weapons will add about 5 gb.
Little announcement of next report: active work is being conducted under the mobs. Probably we will show someone of named and huge mobs (bosses), and also other mobs: forest dwarf or niphon (it depends on who will be ready).
Thank you for your interest, watch the news, see you in a week!
Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum and Facebook.
