Weekly report #30

The 30th weekly-monthly report is on!

Dear Friends!

We've been silent for a long time. And it has even confused some of you. This is why it’s so nice to reach out to you again and tell you what’s happening in great details since we’ve gathered a lot of materials.

Rebase origin or the war with the windmills

At first, we want to explain why we were silent. The 30th report might have marked the victory over the most complicated problem: it is the coordinates uncertainty when one moves more than 3 km away from the origin (0,0,0). It so happened that the first two counties were shifted by 10 km in the X- and the Y-axes which resulted in the catastrophe regarding the uncertainties. We’ve already discussed in details at our forum what sort of problems such uncertainties brought and told you about the methods for solving them. Also, due to this reason, we had to transition to UE4.22 and went against the road-map.

This is why we just mention here briefly:

1. The transition to the new engine has been completed successfully;
2. The unified methodology for shifting the coordinates has already been implemented for all parts of the combat system, except Raycast which is the foundation for the magic of the electric beam, for instance;
3. As of now while writing this report, we are compiling the build. Tomorrow we will update the status of the pre-Alpha in details. We will walk you through the errors on the way to the stable build and what’s already been fixed.

Now about the content.

I Jumps

If anyone among those who are reading this post thought that we did not realize negative consequences of the current arcade jumps (from the standpoint of animation and flying speed) and the bunny hopping they entail, then we would like to assure you it is not so.

It is just that everything has its time.

It would have been rather fascinating to cut this section of the report right here with the latter statement … No, we are going to discuss what is work-in-progress and what are the plans regarding the jumps:

From the game design standpoint:

1. There will be two types of jumps: the first one is fast and short, and the second one is with the preparation stage and with the height sufficient to climb obstacles;
2. One can use the high jump only while ducking, i.e. from the “squatting forward” position;
3. The squatting will be bound to LCTRL by default. Holding SPACE while pressing LCTRL+W will result in the appearance of the jump bar titled “jump height”. The further the scale is filled, the higher is the jump. If this scale is full by less than 25%, the jump is canceled. This is the protection from misclicking;
4. Obviously, the filling up of the scale expends the stamina;
5. The energy consumption for the short jumps will stack, i.e. each consequent jump within N seconds consumes more energy than the previous one. Thus, it will be very easy to immobilize the character if one is not careful enough.

Now here is a GIF of the new fast jump which is currently work-in-progress (draft). Just to illustrate the point:

Changes with physics and animation:

1. the height of the fast jump is reduced twice compared to the current one;
2. the vertical acceleration is decreased by 30%;
3. the in-flight speed, which is equal to the speed of the character at the take-off, is gradually decreasing;

We want to force the players to use fixed jumps and to eliminate the mechanics of the bunny jumping during combat completely by using this complex approach.

II Dodges and 8th semi-passive slot for buffs

They have got some changes as well and they have become more realistic.

1. From the standpoint of physics and animation:

Dodge

Dodge left

Dodge right

Key points:

1. dodges from all stances have been transferred to mocap data for the bottom part of the body;
2. the delay after the completion of the dodge has been deleted;
3. the initial speed of the dodge has been increased;
4. the distance for dodges to the sides has been decreased to improve realism.

More details are provided in table:

2. From the game design standpoint:

1. dodges get a short-term buff which grants them certain advantages depending on their direction;
2. the current buff will occupy and the semi-passive 8th slot which will be introduced to unify several mechanics: leaps, char of the 2nd level, and combined magic.

The 8th slot will be semi-passive since the buffs will appear there only after certain actions which are not related to actual magic casting. For instance:

1. the 2nd level of the weapon char will allow one to target self with a positive effect (attack increase, a decrease of CD, etc);
2. the dodges will grant a short-term (< 3 s) increase of the Physical or Magical Defense, and the dispel defense depending on the direction;
3. the combined magic affects the player even if all his 7 slots for buffs are in use;
4. certain buffs will grant a chance to receive a certain advantage in the 8th slot similarly to point 1).

III Lightning

We've had enough text already, time for some images.

We are still working with the TrueSky, since, even with some lack of polishing, the technology has a wider functionality from the game design standpoint.

The most important thing is that we’ve made the lighting richer and nights brighter.

We’ve moved the setting to the golden latitude to increase the average duration of the daytime.

10th of March, 13:00

10th of March, 18:00

11th of March, 02:00

11th of March, 02:00

IV Mobes

Today only animations and no description:

1. The skeleton (oh yeah, the belt will be skinned for low/mid settings and it will be processed with apex cloth for max / epic settings)
So far we’ve remade the movement animations (earlier they've been shown in report #26) and added gnashing of teeth:

Idle

Step forward

Run forward

The animations of the attack will be redone from scratch later.

2. Forest

Idle

Sprint

Death

Slow cast

Middle cast with left hand

Middle cast with right hand

Fast cast

V The Necromancer

We talked long enough about the necromancer in the 27th and the 28th reports, we showed work stages. Now we will show his completed set, except the gloves.

We will show how we’re aging the armor with the help of the material using the robe as an example:

Step 1: the geometry with the base material

Step 2: the geometry and the material with the use of a texture with a “worn” alpha-channel (Diffuse map)

Step 3: dirt and dried blood

The rest of the items of his set will be shown for Step 1.

We concluded to have 3 headgears for the Necromancer (I, IV, and VI tiers) after your feedback.

On the 1st tier is only a hood:

In the 4th tier, a death mask split in two pieces and reattached with metallic clamps is added to the headgear:

The 6th tier will feature a crown from metal and bones. However, the 6th and partly the 5th visual tiers of armor will be made later after we finish the 1-3 tiers of other items completely.

Other parts of the set:

Which part of the set do you like the most?

P.S. It should be noted that now we make all the screenshots at brightest lighting of the TrueSky right within the game world. This is why the scene is so full of light, unlike the separate scene we used before.

VI The Crusader

We are remaking the Crusader’s armor for the 5th level, because the armor is not universal for both the old characters and the new ones:

Unlike the Master of Steel, the Crusader on the 5th level has only chainmail, which is the 4th tier out of 6 based on general rules for the visual heaviness of armor.

However, the Crusader’s chainmail will have an increased resistance against magic. In this case, we proceeded with making several colors for future customization.

Regular chainmail with a tabard won’t have symbols of the Crusaders’ school, because it has nothing to do with it. However, it will get rather sympathetic colors:

VII UI

New effects which additionally notify about damage received:

Interface for the guild window:

VIII Conclusion

The best news is for last: during the publication of the current report, we've received a build, where most of the raised issues described in the first part have been tackled.

A dozen of brave men of the ROG Club, who got access to the most classified :) dev-PTR, will receive an invitation to update the game tomorrow. The ROG Club as a whole will join a bit later.

We've removed some content from the report because there is just too much information. However, at last, YO-YO version by ROG:

We will try to make the next report in the video format.

It's Tuesday evening. ROGgoms up, friends, cause now there is a reason indeed!

Yours sincerely,
The team of Reign of Guilds