ageofaincrad
Patreon Devlog #11 - June 2022
Published: June 30th 2022, 6:51:04 pm
Hello Patrons!
Welcome to our June update!
We’re sorry it’s out so late, but there’s been a few factors at play that really delayed our efforts. We’ve wasted more than a week on an issue that’s been causing regular engine and .exe crashes, so we were crunching and losing sleep trying to fix it. Finally, we found the root cause and fixed it. Silly as it sounds, it was a wolf, out of dozens of wolves which corrupted itself, (the file of it, quite literally), and it kept crashing the client without leaving any error traces.
We recently made a nice build for staff only for the time being, and this coming month we will write smaller announcements regarding the next Patreon test that’s planned (both Patreon and Discord). The upcoming test will involve new dungeons, improved questing and a lot more, so we hope you’re looking forward to it as much as we are.
This month’s winner for the Patron picture is:
Sterling P.!
We’ll send you a message soon on Discord! We want to know what you’d like to have drawn. If you have no ideas, that is also fine, we got time and there’s no rush.
Reminder: Patrons can skip their turn or push it off for a different month if they like as well - we can push you down the ladder whenever you’d like and someone else can take your place for that month.
We still have a few winners who skipped their turns, so please do let us know if you want to jump back into the queue and we’ll get right away to work on your picture.
We will resume contacting everyone who skipped their turns next month to see if you guys are in the market for a picture now :)
Recruitment Notice!
Yes, yet again, we are still recruiting!
We have our level designer and narrative designer, but we’re still lacking on the art front, regrettably. As we were last month, we are still on the lookout for additional 3D artists and animators especially, be it for weapons, structures, or mobs. If you know someone who might be interested in helping out, please let us know!
Visuals & Environment Rendering:
After a long period of nothing, the long-awaited vegetation renderer update has finally been released. For us, this means more work, for you, it means an additional 20 frames per second on the average test we’ve run so far. Quite the improvement!
This includes trees and all kinds of grass for now, but in a few weeks, it’ll include all in-game objects as well. We hope to end up with a total potential 40% framerate increase compared to the previous test we ran a few months ago.
Visually, shaders have been improved for all vegetation, and we finally planted flowers. Rocks and miscellaneous props will come right after.
Water was also improved according to tester feedback and it’s quite a bit more punchy now!
Grass will be getting a shiny motion effect next week, just a matter of finishing up work on the shader code for it.
Cliff Structures:
The final set of rocks is finally complete, once and for all. While we love rocks, this is the last we’ll ever produce for months to come if not years. The plan is for these to last us a lifetime so that we can focus on other matters.
Temple of the East :
While we worked on a proper map layout, redesigning the details of the storyline a bit, we decided to pour some more love into our first dungeons, deepening the lore. Not only that, the Temple of the East will make up a maze-like open area that concludes in a dungeon. This one will definitely take a special place on the list of Floor 1 dungeons. For the explorers and achievement hunters among us, hidden areas and lore are sure to await! There are puzzles to solve that let you in on important secrets about this place. Known by the people as the temple dedicated to Silirad’s guardian deity Rashun, the watchful eye of the east. However, is that really all there is to our beautiful temple? For the curious, we are sure you are going to find out very soon!
Story and Lore:
As mentioned above, we have been slowly building up and re-writing parts of the prequel lore for AoA to connect it more closely to the new storyline we have planned. We spent some time setting up documentation in a cloud setting to collaborate on writing more efficiently. So far we’ve put together the base for the world’s history, and worked on documenting the gods, factions, clans, and a hundred years’ worth of story content for the game’s setting.
As a small teaser, we would like to reveal a few of the Demi-Gods you’ll be able to encounter in Age of Aincrad.
Goddess of Nature and Life, Flora.
Goddess of Fire and Flames, Solaris.
Goddess of Darkness, Vulnere.
Guardian of the East, Rashun.
Not all of them will be good, not all will be antagonists toward you.
Below is an excerpt of our lore, for those interested:
Ancient civilizations, the leylines that give life and created this world, and the gods that swear to bring balance to uphold eternal peace. While each floor is its own world and people dedicate themselves to a different god, they all swear loyalty to the highest being that takes its place at the entrance to the world above. On the first floor, chosen by the goddess Vulnere, the cardinal guardians act as the eyes, protecting the leylines’ stability. Home to each respective direction, the one you are the most likely to encounter first is the guardian of the east. Not all of them will be able to keep their honorable vow forever, you might even find yourself face to face with a future enemy. The reason for this, however, is something you must find out by yourself. Outside of the official deities, there are many self-proclaimed ones, or those chosen by the people, to live on as a legend that served to bring change to the world. Among the latter is the goddess Flora, brought upon by an old story that used to be told, symbolizing the strong bond of love.
Level Design & Environment:
We’re done with improving the level design in terms of rocks and cliffs around the demo zone. This is final and will not be touched anymore.
This includes the entire terrain planned for the demo, not just bits of it. Take a look at the screenshots below to know what you can expect!
Controller Progress:
As we mentioned a few months back, we’re still working on improving the controllers.
Currently, we still gotta implement and merge the code for smoothing, as well as proper animation states for movement and the double jump to glide motions.
Once that’s done we’re good to go for a showcase, but for now, we sadly don’t have any visuals on it yet. It’s all very much WIP.
Endword:
Thanks for reading and thank you for the patience! We're sorry yet again for taking so long!
This month was holding us back with fixing bugs, preparing our game for resuming builds, and all the above updates!
The primary thing we didn't manage to get to this month was fixing up Skywind Puzzle for a nice showcase and the controller improvements.
The level design also needs some improvements still (spawning rocks and placing the massive rock structures). Otherwise, F1-DemoZone is done with the layouts and can now be fully focused on quest-wise.
Here's a run-down of our plans for the coming month:
- Set up all NPCs;
- Finish up the level design (environment);
- Finish up working on the controller (gliding, double jump);
- UI improvements for graphics and new features & controls;
- Respawning points of interest for mining, fishing and gathering;
- Revisit Skywind Temple, set up spawn rules for it (night-only);
- Set up all mob zones for demo;
- Set up the secret dungeon fully - layout, mobs, boss (Temple of the East);
- Re-implement all quests (side);
- Finish the main questline rewrite (implementation might have to wait for next month);
- More optimization and visual work;
We expect, after next month, to focus fully on producing a build for you all to explore again. Our target frame is the end of July, but at worst expect it sometime in August.
See you next month!