Enshrouded has just had it's second official Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) with our talented World Design Team, and you can check out the original thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Enshrouded/comments/1hbvfl5/enshrouded_ama_come_ask_the_developers_your/
But if you're not a fan of Reddit, we've also collected all the questions in answers in a post on our website, which you can find here: https://enshrouded.com/news/ama-2-recap
And finally, here are some highlights of our 10 favorite questions, enjoy!
Roadmap When?
Optimal-Debt-2652: Will we get an awesome roadmap for 2025 like the one we had this year? Loving the game and the support you have been providing
Answer
We're happy that you love the game! We also love working together with Enshrouded's wonderful community. Rest assured that we are already working full force on the roadmap for 2025. We plan to post some news around the end of January.
What's your average day like?
Creepy_Pin_1572: What is your typical day at work ? Do you place every single piece by hand or do you use assets for towns or houses ? Coffee or tea ?
Answer
Jonas: We have people working in the office as well as many people working remote so there is a big range - what all have in common is a daily meeting to get alligned and than i'd say the typical day is quite focused and productive nowadays since there are fewer newly-developed features which require lots of research and going back and forth. We have a system called "Whiteboxes" that select from a pool of asset options, but when it comes to more important entities its mostly handplaced to fit the location. Water for me, thanks.
TopCat: I'm mostly working remote from home nowadays. Aside from needed brainstorm meetings and planning tasks we mostly work directly on the topology of the world and creating or polishing already existing pois. Most of the poi("point of interest")- defining assets are being placed by hand to ensure the greatest possible quality. For less important parts of a POI like furniture, plants and loot locations we use our "Whiteboxes" which act as a shufflebag for valid props. For me it is tea :)
Maracujahah: I do hybrid, depending on the day. Since I also have a focus on writing, I have workdays/ weeks where I get to brainstorm, ideate, implement and partially playtest stories and quests. It's usually solitary work unless we're brainstorming bigger story ideas for new biomes or NPCs, in which case I often work with Dan. There's a push and pull when it comes to lore - sometimes, we create a new poi with a great core idea that the added story bits help to flesh out. Sometimes, the story or quest idea come first, and we create pois together to support the lore! Coffee all the way!
Toast: I don't build houses, just Reddit posts like this one 😅 And definitely tea, I have a whole cupboard of tasty caffeine plants that get me through each and every day.
How did you create the world of Embervale?
NotScrollsApparently: How do you create so much content on such big maps, can you talk about tooling a bit? Is the first pass procedurally generated or is it all handcrafted? Do you have some ingame editor mode for it or is there an external tool you developed for it? Do you start with the terrain and then think of locations, or do towns and other POIs come first and then you adjust the mountains and terrain to fit?
Answer
Jonas: there is an older video on our youtube channel where i talk about the general process of injecting 3d models into our voxel world - usually the process when tackling a new biome starts with a very rough 3d model which can come from any tool really (its usually sculpted) which serves as a very rough foundation to get an idea for distances and possible poi locations - this is then added as a subbiome scene into the main scene and bit by bit smaller poi subscenes are added as placeholders to their locations while the environment connecting the pois is being plastered with hand placed voxel stamps to give the rough 3d topology base as much detail as the voxel resolution can display. I am in the industry for quite some time now and apart from art content creation was always heavily involved in game and world design (especially for terrain and topology they often go hand in hand) and i cant remember when working on a game world was so much fun as working with our voxel engine is in terms of speed and productivity.
How long has it been since the Elixir War?
Atlantikus: Hello, Keen team! First of all, I want to say thank you! Enshrouded is quickly becoming one of my favorite games. The amount of energy and care you have put into it is obvious and I’m so excited to see where it goes from here! I have a question about the setting and lore of the game. How much time has passed since the player and other Flameborn were sealed in the cinder vaults, and Embervale finally succumbed to the Shroud? I recently explored Raven’s Keep and found the notes describing Lupa’s escape from prison. From that I gather the final collapse occurred within the lifetime of some living characters. So was it not so long ago? Or do Scavenger Matrons have abnormally long lifespans? Maybe this is answered somewhere in the game and I haven’t found it yet. If so, please let me know and I will keep exploring!
Answer
TopCat: We kept the passage of time ambiguous on purpose, but we're generally in the realm of 20-30ish years. During that period not all humans were gone already. There were still people trying to get away from the Shroud. And that is also the reason why some areas look less demolished then others. When it comes down to our larger destroyed castles and towns they have been largely affected by the Elixir War happening shortly before the fall. This timeframe has been picked to ensure quest reasonability and giving us options for new content in the future
What will the world size look like?
The_Nights_Path: Not holding you to any firm commitment on this answer, but what is the world size going to look like out of early access? Also, why are so many people in this world dying on the toilets?
Answer
Jonas: The original worlds size was 8*8km, but we added an extra km on each border to have a more organic world border after we packed too much in too close to the border, so we are currently looking at 10*10km - so there is plenty of space left for us to fill especially since there is a lot of volume left underneath the surface and in addition to that the future might also bring locations outside of the current game world to travel to.
Maracujahaha: I think the toilet deaths were added as an homage to other classic games!
How did you design an intuitive open world?
UchiR: Although this game is open world, we know the player is expected to advance from one area to the next in order of difficulty. How do you try to convey to the player the order in which they ought to transverse between zones, without relying too much on quests and dialogue? (In terms of world design) (Because while playing I totally knew when I was going to meet a spike in difficulty, but it was never explicitly said. Just through observing the environment)
Answer
Jonas: in terms of world design we early on saw that we can't really force the player to take a certain route because apart from various means (like movement skills, the glider and especially transforming the landscape) players can often reach places that we didnt have in mind - so we tried as good as possible to foreshadow the rise in difficulty with locations that look more dramatic if they directly lead into higher level areas - Great to hear that observing the environment worked for you that well!
Maracujahaha: On top of that, I think the only reliable gating we have are the fog zones and their level. They visualize where you can go or what new areas will open up to you when upgrading your Flame. But players can find ways around that when they really want, so it's not a hard cut-off point.
What are your dream features you could add to the game?
ChefRoyrdee: I want to start off by saying I love this game! You folks have done great work and I’m so excited to see where the game is headed. Are there any features in the pipeline that you all are particularly excited about? What was the feature you all wanted but logistically is not feasible?
Answer
Maracujahaha: Thank you very much! On the lore and NPC side, we've got one or two things in the works that excite me for sure. Something I wanted, that we couldn't implement (yet?), is NPCs interacting with each other. Think little mini convos and quips that happen when the NPCs pass each other in the base. Something to flesh them out and make them feel more alive. Aside from that, we all want water, crazy weather and more gameplay opportunities like traps and moving objects etc. in the game world.
TopCat: Yes, for me the most exciting things I would like to see in the world are mostly more interaction possibilities for the players, talking about water, traps, moving things, new ways for traversal and so on. Two of those things we have implemented with the mountain biome already (Ice and Upstreams) but couldn't use their full potential yet, stay tuned for more. :)
What's up with those mysterious structures?
DigitalExpanse: I am curious as to why there are so many ancient structures in the game that have no visible access. Are these meant for future areas to explore or just design choices to add to the atmosphere of the game. I get the mysterious vibe they give, but it also gives the feeling of "unfinished".
Answer
Jonas: Exactly, we often used them as placeholders so we keep places blocked (players can't tear down ancient structures or modify them) so we can flesh out the ancient lore throughout the world down the road.
TopCat: Also, they are keeping the secrets which are still waiting for you to be discovered in the future. So stay tuned for the day we open them up.
Will we get building voxels of different shapes?
No1Schmuck: The voxel building mechanic has allowed for unique structures and deep customization of our bases, as well as interesting destruction effects. In the early access, we are primarily provided mostly angular options and I wonder if there are any plans for the team to provide more curved walls or dome ceilings?
Answer
Jonas: We've recently made experiments to have voxels that look like building materials but are voxeled the same way as terrain materials (so they can be more organic) but so far it has not been that easy to implement those into the ingame building workflow - if we want to add options like those we would not like to just limit those to the hardcore building masters, that are used to create large structures voxel by voxel but we would want it to work within a streamlined part of the building system, so with snapping options and large blueprints available - research is still ongoing on those topics but in general - yes we would love to provide players with more building options in the future.
Did you expect Enshrouded to be as successful as it was?
_bromok_: Hey hey. Were you expecting your game to be such a success when you started developing it? Was there points where you thought you wouldn’t make it? (Like running out of money or huge obstacle’s) Keep up the grate work and stick to your way!
Answer
We obviously hoped for a big success, but our internal plans actually aimed for a much lower number of sales. We wanted to make sure that even then, we could support our team and to continue the development of the game in early access. Now that we have this level of success, though, we are actively expanding the team to develop the game faster and have a bigger level of polish. Prior to the Steam next fest of 2023 - there have been several difficult situations that we needed to overcome in order to be able to continue to work on our vision for the game and to make Enshrouded a reality. We are so proud of the team to have made it this far :)
And that's all for now!
Thanks so much for reading this far, and like we said, if you want more answers like this feel free to check out the original thread. We answered over 70 questions in total!
Until next time, Flameborn
The Keen Team