Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #129

by GolemDragon · June 13, 2015

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

Zombies!
SotA at E3 Next Week
Solace Forest
Hangout of the Avatar ~ Release 18 Postmortem
Player Created Quests
Public Cache Chests
Time Lapse Video of New Britannia’s Celestial Bodies
Aether Vibration Amplifier Console
Kobold Masks

Zombies!

Character artists Geoff Mellon and Kevin Wells and animator Bren Wilson really nailed it with these awesome zombies!

The ranks of the undead armies have swelled of late with the addition of hordes of zombies. These reanimated corpses move slowly but they carry a foul zombie plague that can only be cured with magic spells or potions. The zombie plague is spread through vicious clawing attacks and a noxious cloud that explodes out of destroyed zombies. Anyone killed by a zombie or anyone who dies from the zombie plague creates another zombie that must be destroyed.

SotA at E3 Next Week

Both Starr Long and Richard Garriott will be showing off Shroud of the Avatar at E3 next week at the Razer booth: 4800 West Hall! Come by and sign up for free access to the opening weekend of Release 20 and other prizes!

Solace Forest

Abe, Hutch, and other members of the level design team have been prepping the new Solace Forest scene for Release 19. Here are a few sample pics:

Hangout of the Avatar: Release 18 Postmortem

There was a Hangout of the Avatar Thursday, with Richard, Starr, and Chris chatting about Release 18 and looking ahead to Release 19. FireLotus was fielding lots of juicy questions live from the chat-room as well as in advance from the OP comments section, and several cool prizes were randomly given out to those attending the hangout! In case you missed it, here’s the video:

Player Created Quests

Greetings Avatars,

Many months ago, I began to see the amazing creativity of our community in the creation of quests. They were hacked in by players despite little intentional support from us to make this easy or powerful. Until now, live players had to stand in real-time to be the waypoints along any quest line. Likewise live players had to take or give any items or be the obstacles along any quest path. We began to explore ways we could create tools to help increase the ease and power of such community created events. Our goal is to allow players to craft deeper quests directly into the game world itself, to be able to leave clues in the world 24/7, and to have treasure (and ultimately protection of those treasures) that do not demand 24/7 live players to be ever present.

In R19, we are releasing the 1st features along this path. Writable books & notes and chest permissions open a broad new pallet for community quest making. Imagine for example, a community purposefully spreading a rumor about the local grave digger and his sinister nocturnal activities… players could write and leave notes in the graveyard they created in their town, describing how this grave digger bargained for body parts of deceased pets in graveyards in allied towns graveyards, or a specific person’s home. Sequences of notes could be placed such that false leads abound, and only carefully following the trail from the start will lead through the correct sequence. Finally when the ultimate destination is found, a new cache chest could be placed (which allows all visitors to take anything out of or put anything into it). The creators of this quest could stock that chest with pet call whistles that summon the supposedly restored pet. Pets that the gravedigger may have brought back to life!

All of these notes and cache chests must be left on a player owned lot at the moment and all “treasure” left in the cache chest must be stocked by the owners as well, but I believe this is an important first step in creating tools for powerful player created quests.

Good luck in your quest building, I look forward to experiencing and celebrating some of the best ones created in each release!

– Lord British

Public Cache Chest

This public cache chest will be available at in-game vendors in Release 19. It operates just like other containers on your lot, only this one allows any player to take items from it, or put items in it (but they cannot move or take the chest). Fill it with any items that you want to make available to visitors. Great for player created quests where you may want to leave quest clues or loot for discovery.

Ornate Public Cache Chest

This ornate public cache chest is only available in the Add-On Store:

Time Lapse Video of New Britannia’s Celestial Bodies

Starting with Release 18, the sky above New Britannia became filled with a full system of celestial mechanics, including 10 orbital bodies and a constellation-filled star field. All of these move independently and will generate phases, eclipses and multiple alignment events. These are all tied to a calendar that has a direct ratio to actual Earth time. Our long term plan is to use all of this data in game play. For example, there may be certain attributes that can only be added to crafted items when Deceit is in the constellation of Chaos. Please note that for now, this new sky only appears when you are in the overworld. Over the next few releases we will propagate the sky to all the other scenes.

Our thanks to long time Ultima and SotA community member, AvatarAcid, for posting a time-lapse video in the SotA forums of The Sky of New Britannia!

Aether Vibration Amplifier Console

For all of you that love listening to Avatars Radio in-game, Bob Cooksey crafted this stylish floor model version of the Aether Vibration Amplifier, now available in the Add-On Store!

Kobold Masks

For those of you that have always wanted to wander around New Britannia disguised as a Kobold (and you know who you are), well now you can with these realistically modeled Kobold masks available in the Add-On Store!

Kobold Mask