Hello Everyone,
This week has been very productive, and I’m excited to talk about a few things.
•Progress
•Next Week’s Update
•What Happens Next?
•Halloween
•Holidays
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Progress
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Over the past three weeks, we’ve been greatly detailing and outlining future features as well as increasing the framework capacity ten fold. Here is a breakdown of improvements, additions, and changes made over this timeframe.
Game Assets
3D:
-Overhaul of Humanoid Units.
-Overhaul of Structures.
-Overhaul of Equipment.
Animations:
-Animations for structures have been revisited, which will give you a very fresh, top of the line visual appeal.
-Characters: An improved, more capable Animation system for Unit & Character actions.
User Interface: The entire UI has been overhauled, with our new permanent solution to UI, we can vastly improve readability and seamlessly incorporate a ton of new functionality.
Modules
General:
-Tips, Error Notification, Active Status, and States have been incorporated for easier readability.
Persistence:
-Syncing.
-You’ll log in and out, being in the same place as you left (unless you’re dead).
-Your stuff will stay there, round the clock.
Chat:
-Chat fixes and upgrades have been made.
Spawning:
-Spawning has been fixed, and greatly improved upon.
UI:
-Permanent UI Solution, completely scalable all the way from adding languages to easily adding new resources, items, flora, etc. The whole spectrum was improved upon, and it is now capable of receiving and transmitting just about anything we can imagine.
Tasking:
-This is the early stages of tasking, but the framework is ready to take new components. Tasking will be updated on a regular basis.
Inventory:
-Inventory framework is complete, and further functionality pertaining to other components of gameplay are ready to take new direction. This is the early stages of inventory, and it will be updated regularly.
Actions:
-This is a big one, the basis for all interactability throughout the entirety of ABD. This system was much more complex than originally anticipated, but the wait has paid off.
Buildings:
-You’ll be able to build structures, as well as interact through Actions, Inventory, Tasking, and Functionality.
-Future items for Buildings include things like Containers, Add-ons, and further functionality I’m not going to talk about yet.
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Next Week’s Update
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As the title says, next week’s update will include the above listed changes and then some. We plan on introducing a few other features and modules as well. The plan is for us to test the crap out of the current build, and release it later in the week. I don’t care if it's ready by Tuesday, we’re going to be testing this until it's solid enough to be a functional state for everyone to enjoy more than a couple minutes. This update is going to be very “Atmospheric” in the sense of sitting around a campfire, gathering a few things, and being on your way to starting your villages.
Although this is a very big, very exciting update, I want to fully elaborate on the fact that there are still a HUGE number of modules that we haven’t made yet, and if I were to give a timeframe to have the rest completed I would say by the 1st of the year. Will this happen? Very likely, within a couple of weeks as it is we’re already approaching on some major content that’ll add some vastly interactable functionality. Until we get to Tiers & Technology (See “What’s Next” in the section below) we will primarily be focusing on finishing the overall framework for modules before moving forward in tier progression. In short, this means that you’ll be cavemen for a little bit, which is primarily the reason you’ve bought the game anyway so enjoy it while it lasts!
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What Happens Next?
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The remainder of the game needs to get made, improved upon, and functionality has to be incorporated. We’ve really been pushing, and a couple of corners have been cut to get us back online. This was my idea because of the utter disaster slash sabotage that Allen did at launch back in the middle of August. As we develop through the rest of the game, we’ll slowly be removing those shortcuts in parallel with us creating further content for the game.
Whats in:
This is a vague, rough list of items that have been introduced during the past three weeks; not to mention what was listed above. There are some things I’m forgetting I’m sure, such a huge leap of progress has been made while we focus on content creation versus anything else.
UI, 2D, 3D Assets.
Database, Instancing, Syncing.
Persistence.
Actions.
Tasks.
Building.
What’s next:
This list is a progression timeline in order (anticipated order) of implementation through major updates. Each major update, or (module) function per week, with additions and minor upgrades at the middle point of the week. Some components will take more than a week, others may take less than a week, but for the most part long stints without a game update are behind us. So woot woot, don’t mind me if I dip into the Whiskey to celebrate it.
Crafting.
Combat.
Diplomacy.
Parents & Children.
Environmental Changes & Conditions.
Classes & Levels.
Tiers & Technology.
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Halloween
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Halloween is going to be a little underdressed, but I would rather we have major functionality of the game than characters and events. We’ll still have a Halloween atmosphere, and some items have been added to give you the feeling of the holiday, but most of the concepts we were using will have to wait until next year. Seeing as Halloween is the first Holiday for ABD: A Beautiful Day, we will ABSOLUTELY go totally crazy for next Halloween.
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Holidays
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As you know, in MMO’s a Holiday is a pretty big deal. It is unfortunate that we weren’t able to develop Halloween like we wanted to with Allen's sabotage. In the end, we have fully recovered from him, and the upcoming Holidays will be remarkable. With the systems we’re adding for Halloween, you’ll see similar items for Thanksgiving. For Christmas, we’ll be closer to the end of our stint with basic mechanics and the possibilities will fully reveal themselves; to us, as well as our players. Christmas is going to be pretty spectacular, and I’m utterly excited about showing that concept off.
Stay tuned for information and visuals on Twitter & Facebook.
-Robert Bonner
Creative Producer - ABD: A Beautiful Day
www.Twitter.com/GAM_Ent
www.Facebook.com/GagAMaggotEntertainment