Welcome one and all to our weekly Dev Blog! Apologies for the delay, it’s been a busy week!
We’re still recovering from a long crunch fixing particularly difficult V0.17 bugs. So, this week we’ve got something a bit different! We’re going to take a look at The Plague itself, and talk about how we can tell stories through death, a quick note on animation work progress and a war happening over the weekend!
The update forecast: All forecasts indicate next update will be Friday, August 18th.
**This section is full of ideas – nothing here is currently solidified in terms of planned development**
TELLING A STORY THROUGH DEATH
The black death. One of the most devastating pandemics in human history. With an estimated death toll of 75 – 200 million people, 30-60% of the world population.
" The pestilence arrived in London at about the feast of All Saints [1st Nov] and daily deprived many of life. It grew so powerful that between Candlemass and Easter [2nd Feb-12th April] more than 200 corpses were buried almost every day in the new burial ground made next to Smithfield, and this was in addition to the bodies buried in other graveyards in the city."
A whole lot of people died.
The goal in the Black Death is to adapt and survive against an unrelenting enemy – the plague itself. For this to be as effective as possible death needs to be an ever prominent part of the world. We want the infection to be a constant challenge that varies in difficulty as the player carves out an existence in a harsh place.
So, the plague being prevalent in the world is important. But how can we execute on that in an interesting way? Can we do something unique? Something more interesting that stacking bodies all around the world?
Well, maybe. But bodies are definitely part of it!
First, let’s take stock of the parts of medieval life that we can build on to re-enforce the scale of the plague in Mercia.
- More corpses – I know I just mentioned this, so we may as well get it out of the way first. Our semi-fictional region of Mercia is a coastal land, with rich trade, a huge river used for transporting people and goods and a diverse set of regions. A busy land! When the plague struck it would have spread rapidly through a bustling and dynamic population. The results would have been catastrophic with many people dying, as we have seen in the real world quote above. So more corpses are a necessity!
- Poor sanitary conditions – A well-known fact about medieval life is that people used to empty their chamber pots (toilets!) out of their windows and into the streets, this wasn’t just poor peasants but wealthy citizens as well! Streets were covered with both human and animal excrement, rotting food and animal entrails. This would have been a huge contributing factor to the spread of the plague.
- Poor weather conditions – Wet weather and freezing winters were prominent during the 1300’s, destroying crops and turning water sources to ice. Some historians even theorize this contributed to the pandemic. Rain and mud would be a common sight and definitely contribute to the overcast and oppressing nature of the world The Black Death is set in!
- Warnings – Posters, banners and the ominous red X’s painted on doors would be present throughout the land, warning people of the risks of the infection spreading.
- People of the land – Flagellants, grave diggers, corpse collectors, plague doctors, muck-rakers (medieval street sweepers!) and religious zealots would roam the country preaching and plying their trades. A lot of these professions would have only existed or been much more prominent during The Black Death. These sort of people inhabiting the world could act as a constant reminder to the player of what’s occurring.
- Burial pits – These scattered the land, with such a volume of death people would struggle to find places to bury their dead. We have these in the game already, but they could easily be more numerous and prominent. With the addition of larger corpse piles, these could be very visually striking features.
- Fires – Fire was widely used to “cleanse” infected areas. Houses, people, animals and even whole villages and towns would have been burnt.
- Fauna and Flora – Rats, dead animals, dead crops and flies would of all been a permanent feature in the Medieval 1300’s. These can be quite expensive in terms of development, but significantly increase the visibility of the plague in the world.
If you imagine the above as a palette, we can use these elements to create interesting settings for players to explore and interact with. The world as a whole is dead so we have to rely on the game development trope of environmental storytelling – constructing narratives through scenes in the world. What happened here? How did these people die? How does this relate to the world as a whole?
I asked Mike our resident concept artists to spend 15 minuets applying the breakdown of elements above to the screenshot posted earlier, here are the results:
Some thought provoking stuff.
Next week we’ll have some more regarding vitality and infection.
Animation progress
A quick note on the animation overhaul. Work is ongoing. Nothing specific to show yet but expect to see more on this in the coming weeks.
Weekend event – Tides of War (Event Concluded)
This event has now concluded, thank you to everyone who attended!
Will you make Mercia your next port of call and turn the tides of war?
This Sunday, the 13th August we are hosting another battle with the SIG team! Grab your best weapons and armour and head on over to Freeman’s Port to test your mettle. The battle will be the Community vs the Devs! In our past events such as The Beta Wars we started out having the two sides face off against each other and ended things with an all out last-man-standing!
Each Dev will be carrying 10k Gold on them, so the race is on! The team will not be parting with their Gold and items easily, so expect a challenge!
Location: Freeman’s Port
Server: SIG Mega Server
Time: 5:00pm BST / 4:00pm UTC
Day: 13th August 2017
Punishment for Hackers & Exploiters
We’ve recently had a few players using exploits and hacks to gain an unfair advantage within the game. Anyone caught using hacks or exploits on official servers will be banned.
Hacking and exploiting will not be tolerated.
That’s all for this week!
See you in Mercia!