DEV DIARY #4

Hello all! It's been a whilte! It's time again to share with you what's been going on with AEGIS Kingdoms! If you don't like reading paragraphs, there's a TL;DR at the bottom of this post!

Alternatively if you want to read this post on our website, you can do so here: [url=]https://aegisgamestudios.co.uk/aegis-kingdoms-dev-diary-4/[/url]

It's crazy to think the last Dev Diary was back in the beginning of May, and here we are at the end of July. A lot has been happening behind the scenes, so let's get to it!

CURRENT STATE OF THE GAME

As mentioned in this post, and in this post we announced that AEGIS Kingdoms will be launching into "Alpha Island Access" which is where Alpha Knights (our testers) can play AEGIS Kingdoms on the weekends. Become an Alpha Knight here (click the green registration button). Alpha Knights will have free roam of Mistral - an ancient island in the Southern Kingdoms. It's lower-to-sea-level landmass makes it a great destination for travellers looking for adventures.

As mentioned Mistral will very much be a "tutorial island" of sorts, however there won't be the too much restriction over where you travel or what you do. In the grand scheme of things Mistral is actually a rather small island when compared to other landmasses in Sor'res.

But Five... You said this last time! What's new???? Well my dear readers, I made a bit of a boo boo in June and made some decisions that had some unintended consequences in the development environment. This was basically just a lot of errors and problems that needed solving due to an ever evolving multiplayer framework that we use to build AEGIS Kingdoms on. Mix that with the custom additions made on top of that and it becomes a lengthy process when something breaks or needs upgrading.

So the sad, rather disappointing truth is that sometimes things simply just break and take time to fix. That being said, the next question you may be asking is "was it worth it?" and I'm glad you're asking this... Because yes. Yes it was worth it. Now let me tell you about the new features that are here:

PROFANITY FILTER

A staple feature in every game that has online chat, the beloved profanity filter has been added. For the time being, this will be enabled permanently, but don't fret! For those who like to live life in the fast & spicy lane, there will be a toggle option to disable it later™ coming in a future update.

It pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin. It filters rude and profane words from messages sent in the chat. It would irresponsible to not do our part in ensuring AEGIS Kingdoms is a safe and inclusive environment, and that means protecting users from derogatory and hurtful messages. I personally don't believe that such an awesome community would stoop to such lows, however this is simply a failsafe should someone decide to cross that line.

Of course you won't, because you're awesome.

ITEM RECOLOURISING

Does this really count as a feature Five? Yes. Yes it does, stop trying to derail my Dev Diary imaginary other side of this conversation! ... Ahem. I've been spending a copious amount of time recolouring the art assets that we use to ensure they are aesthetically pleasing and represent the correct metals used when crafting the items. As you can see below, the Bronze Weapons are now looking like... Normal bronze weapons! Which is good!

For those game dev tech savvy, this was editing the UVs and colour palettes of each Bronze item (too many to put on this dev diary), which is foundational for the rest of that type of weapon. In the future for any colour variations, it makes life a lot easier when changes the colour palettes, ensuring content can be released quicker, too. Noice.

WEIGHTED LOOT TABLES

No image for this one, just a satisfying understanding of what weighted loot tables are. Rather than be based purely on a percentage liklihood of dropping an item, there is now "weighted" bias that can be applied. This means if you have 100 items that a mob can drop, a health potion might be it's most common drop and rare items be even less likely to drop. This is all thanks to weighted loot tables.

Mobs in AEGIS Kingdoms now have weighted loot tables for this exact reason, with many of them having much more common drops and others having very hard to achieve / rare drops within it's loot tables.

SAFE ZONE INDICATORS

This feature simply highlights above a player's head if they're in a safe zone or Sanctuary. It will tell you whether you're safe from combat, or whether you can be attacked.

At present the icon is a glowing white star, but this may change in the future. Feedback is welcome, so let us know what you think!

DIALOGUE OPTIONS

This is a rather small, but immersive feature. Previously in games you may have been given a nickname that all NPCs would address you by such as Adventurer, Dragonborn or Deputy etc. Now when NPCs of AEGIS Kingdoms talk to you, they'll address you by your character's name as seen below in the (slightly blurry) screenshot below.

This is just a little feature aimed to add ever so slightly to that immersion, and hopefully help you feel a tad more at home in AEGIS Kingdoms.

QUEST TRACKING REWORK

Quest tracking has been changed ever so slightly so that toggling which active quests are tracked is a bit more intuitive. This is both in the quest summary that can be toggled on the left side of the screen, as well as from the quest log.

GUILD FOUNDATION REWORK & IMPROVEMENTS

Whilst Guild features are not currently available, we've been making some changes to the "foundational mechanic" that will act as a base for Guilds. These improvements include reworking the design and functionality of how we'd like guilds to operate in AEGIS Kingdoms. The plan is to release Guilds as a dedicated update later on.

DROP RATES CHANGED

This is a minor note to say drop rates have been changed up a bit to make things a bit more fair across the board, and inline with the weighted loot tables. You'll find more health potions and bronze items, but occasionally rarer items that can be looted off common and more difficult mobs.

ITEM EXPIRING & TEMPORARY ITEMS

Temporary items and item expiring is making it's way to AEGIS Kingdoms. From temporary mounts & travel forms, to weapons and armour that you want to try before you buy. Now you'll be able to do this. These features are quite staple to MMO games and as a team we thought it would be useful to have it. Personally my reasoning for it is as mentioned: sometimes you want to try out a weapon or an item but you're not sure that you want to commit to spending all that gold on it. These will help with those situations.

Likewise temporary mounts and travel forms will offer a similar experience, as well as go-between before you get your first permanent mount or travel form.

HITBOXES UPDATED

Previously we had a single hitbox that would receive damage if hit, now that's been split up between body hitboxes and a head hitbox. The various hitboxes will have different multipliers of damage based on the location of your strike. Headshots will do slightly more damage.

GRAVITY, JUMP HEIGHT AND FALL DAMAGE

One of my favourite additions to AEGIS Kingdoms has been the stat modifiers for gravity, jump height and fall damage. These features are technically part of the "Adventure" content rather than the "Relic" content, but I just love them. From potions giving you temporary slow falling, to boots that allow you to jump very high and complete parkour challenges. There will also be items allowing you to receive less fall damage, giving you a niche advantage in some situations (PvP, boss fights, you're clumsy and fall off things a lot etc...)

OTHER CHANGES & ISSUES

• Minor UI changes have been made to notify you of what you're acquiring completing actions such as killing mobs and receiving items.
• Lots more lore has been added to the AEGIS Kingdoms Lorebooks in our Discord. You'll need the "AEGIS Kingdoms" role that you can get from the #assign-roles channel. If you would like to read about AEGIS Kingdom's extensive lore, now you can!
• Some issues with inverse kinematics, foot and hand placement have arose. These features have been disabled for the moment whilst it's being investigated.
• Potential fix for falling through the world has been added.
• Global loot timer is now set to 15 minutes. After this droppped loot will be lost forever.
• Loot lock timer is now set to 7 minutes. After this anyone can pick up your loot.
• Player corpse expire timer is now set to 15 minutes. After this the corpse will be destroyed and any loot will be lost forever.
• Mob corpse expire timer is now set to 1 minute. After this the corpse will be destroyed and any loot will be lost forever.
• Party EXP Share distance has been increased to 20 metres. Outside of this range you will not receive shared exp.
• Party Item Share distance has been increased to map wide. If you are in a party, regardless of distance, you can loot mobs killed by party members.
• Camera issues persist and are being investigated.
• New item icons have been made!
• In PvE areas, you will only drop your inventory. Equipped weapons and items will remain upon respawn.
• PvP areas is full loot. You have been warned.

CHANGES AND CLARIFICATION ON AEGIS KINGDOMS

This is something you may notice on the AEGIS Kingdoms Steam page. The description has been updated to reflect the intentions of AEGIS Kingdoms and why it's being made.

However it can be summarised rather easily:

AEGIS Kingdoms is a heartfelt project, harking back to the days of close-knit gaming communities and private servers. As a developer, my aim is to foster a vibrant, inclusive space, not a commercial product to shove down your throat. This free-to-play indie game offers a cozy realm for adventurers to interact and engage in a multiplayer journey together. While there is an optional premium subscription to support the game's development, it doesn't limit the gameplay for non-subscribers and is only there to support on-going development. The creation of this game is focused on building a fun community which I invite everyone to join, which at the moment we are gathered on Discord whilst the game is in development, and partake in shaping the world of AEGIS Kingdoms.

So AEGIS Kingdoms was never meant to be a commercial game, but instead just a fun and inviting space for people make their "home game".

COMING IN THE NEAR FUTURE

• As mentioned the hotspots around Mistral are mostly for skilling, combat and questing, however there is also an element of exploration. Due to the horizontal nature of combat progression, the difficulty in mobs you face will be a mixture of higher damage & health, as well as faster and stronger enemies. There are also cases where force multipliers will be used, too. What this boils down to is your ability to maximise how effective you can be as an individual player, and how best to overcome the various enemies you face - it won't simply just be the ability to out-damage enemies.
• Instances and how they are handled will be coming to AEGIS Kingdoms in the near future. This has some pretty big, but positive, rammifications. It means faster loading screens and we're closer to having instanced arenas, dungeons, minigames and player housing (by extension possibly guild halls). So this is exciting!
• Party-Mode PvP (Minigame) will make an entrance in the future. You will "register" with an NPC, and then be teleported to a Hub where you'll be waiting until the match starts. You'll then be teleported to an arena to fight. It will feature different game modes that rotate (hence "party mode"), as well as specific game modes only being available on specific days. I.e "Free For All Thursdays" etc. This will be a latter update post the various skill updates.
• A premium subscription feature is currently in the works. As mentioned, this is for those who would like to support the on-going development of the game. This will not be available during the Open Weekends due to the limited access of the game.
• Vanity pets to accompany you on your adventures are on their way. Look for the arrival of the pet store!
• Duelling is coming to AEGIS Kingdoms soon. Exclusively for challenging you friends outside of safezones.
• Player Titles are coming to AEGIS Kingdoms soon. More on this later.
• PK PvP Toggling is coming to AEGIS Kingdoms soon. Toggle on PvP to start rampaging against others who want to do the same!
• Player Shops are coming to AEGIS Kingdoms soon. More on this later.

NEXT UPDATE FOCUS

The focus is STILL (still?) on the Open Weekends and getting Mistral (and by extension AEGIS Kingdoms) to a point where it is playable and there is enough varied content to keep you occupied.

So focus after the initial release of "Alpha Island" (aka your access to Mistral), will be the combat skills. Combat skills track your progression in a given combat style. For example using a "2H Sword" - the more you use the 2H Sword, the more you will gain EXP for it, and level it up. At certain levels, for example level 5 - you will be able to equip different aesthetic-variants of the 2H Sword weapon-type. The higher your level, the more access to rarer cosmetics will be available.

It is important to note that these cosmetic variants will NOT have any additional stats for the most part and will perform the same as a regular 2H sword. HOWEVER there are some exceptions with some Legendary (Orange) and Mythical (Crimson) items, which will have alternative stats. You will need to have progression (high levels) in a variety of trade skills (gathering, crafting & combat) in order to equip these. In some cases you may also need to have completed specific quest(s).

TIMELINE

1. [WE ARE HERE] Get Mistral ready and AEGIS Kingdoms as bug free and playable as possible.
2. Implement Combat Skills (level up your proficiency using a specific weapon type).
3. [GAME BECOMES PLAYABLE] Launch Open Weekends.
4. Implement Gathering Skills (Mining, Woodcutting, Fishing etc).
5. Implement Crafting Skills (Blacksmithing, Woodworking, Cooking etc).
6. Implement Faction Reputation system.
7. Introduce Relic Hunter content (quest types), faction hub and Dungeon.

After we've implmented the Relic Hunters, we'll look to add the other factions and their content. We'll also be listening to community feedback, adding hotfixes and additional tweaks as we go.

TL;DR

• AEGIS Kingdoms still working towards "Alpha Island Access" for Alpha Knights (testers) to play on the weekends.
• Mistral, an ancient island in the Southern Kingdoms, serves as the Alpha testing environment and a kind of "tutorial island".
• Development setbacks occurred in June due to technical issues, which have now been resolved.

New features include:

• Profanity filter added to the chat.
• Item recolourization has been done for better aesthetic representation.
• Weighted loot tables have been implemented for loot drops from mobs.
• Safe zone indicators added to inform players if they're in a safe area or can be attacked.
• Dialogue options updated to address players by their character's name.
• Quest tracking has been reworked to be more intuitive.
• Guild foundation has been reworked for future guild-related updates.
• Drop rates have been altered to be more fair.
• Temporary items and item expiry introduced.
• Hitboxes updated to receive different damage based on the hit location.
• Gravity, jump height, and fall damage stat modifiers added.

Other changes include:

• Minor UI updates.
• More lore added to AEGIS Kingdoms Lorebooks.
• Fix for falling through the world added.
• Global loot timer, loot lock timer, player corpse expire timer, and mob corpse expire timer set.
• Party EXP and item share distance updated.
• Camera issues under investigation.
• New item icons added.
• Loot rules in PvE and PvP areas defined.
• AEGIS Kingdoms is meant to be a fun and inviting space for players, not a commercial product.

Future additions include:

• Instance handling.
• Party-Mode PvP (Minigame).
• Premium subscription for game support.
• Vanity pets and a pet store.
• Dueling.
• Player titles.
• PK PvP toggling.
• Player shops.
• The next update will focus on Open Weekends and combat skills.
• Cosmetic variants of weapons to be introduced which won't have additional stats but will be purely aesthetic. Some Legendary and Mythical items may be exceptions.

Join the Discord for more screenshots, insight into AEGIS Kingdoms and impromptu tests.