Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #144
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
- Play Release 22 Now!
- FireLotus Release 22 Dance Party!
- R22 Patch Notes
- Release 22 Screenshot Gallery: Fishing
- Q4 2015 Schedule Update
Play Release 22 Now!
Release 22 successfully launched yesterday, September 24, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, logging in, and checking out the new changes! Lots of new content to explore, including:
- Dragons!
- Fishing!
- Music! Includes playble Lutes, Pianos, and Synchronized Group Play.
- New Scenes including Isle of Storms, Blood River Massacre and Blood River Settlement
- New Elven homes, Dragon Statues, Stone Building Blocks, and new Decorations, including skeletons, spiders, & crypt
- New Crafting Recipes, including building blocks, fishing poles, lute, piano, coconut bra, trophy fish, gravestones, etc.
- Many new Player Owned Towns
- Emote Teaching
- New Skills and Combat Balanced
- …and more!
Check out the Release 22 Instructions update for detailed information about all the new R22 content.
The Grand Tour Quest
Just as in the last several releases, we have a Grand Tour Quest designed to guide us through all the new content. You will be able to get the Steampunk Goggles by completing the Release 22 Grand Tour Quest. This reward can only be unlocked during Release 22 (did someone say rares?), so be sure to log in soon and talk to all the Tour Guides!
We need all your help with testing the new patches, putting more stress on our multiplayer servers, and testing the new game content, so please join us in playing Release 22!
If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login at www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Pledge or Send Gift!” button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above. The basic Adventurer level pledge is also available on Steam Early Access.
Release 22 Player Instructions
Release 22 Known Issues
Avatars Radio Presents: FireLotus Release 22 Dance Party!
This month’s traditional FireLotus Release Party was held at FireLotus’ Elven House in a Hill in Radio City!
In addition to dancing, other popular themes at this month’s party included coconut bras, fishing, Steampunk goggles, coconut bras, Nightmare “Mounts”, Lute playing, and more coconut bras.
Bit of a wardrobe malfunction with the coconut bras on female avatars, resulting in the bra-on-bra effect. Should have that straightened out in an upcoming patch:
Umm, did FireLotus invite the Chippendale Dancers?
R22 Patch Notes
Thanks to all community members that jumped right into this Release and started reporting bugs. The Dev team already fixed quite a few of them and pushed out several patches. Click here for the most up-to-date Patch Notes.
September 25 2015
Build Number 334 3:45 PM CDT:
- Fixed bug that was preventing looting corpses in some cases
- Fixed issue that would sometimes cause musical instrument playing not to work
- Minor fixes to Arabella dialog
- Fix to Abigail dialog in Soltown.
- Fixed issue that would sometimes cause DoTs not to work
- Shadow Form and Vanish now targeted spells, no longer Area of Effect
- Brightened up the Night Vision spell via tone mapper.
- No longer allow /play or /playstart while dead.
- Removed Skinning Knife from Production and Refining recipes (it should have never been there)
- Locked time of day in Blood River Massacre
- Turning up the ambient light ever so slightly for Etceter Crag Mines. It was truly pitch black in there.
- Reduced bloom visual effect on Isle of Storms
- Fixed piano blocked by chair in Poets’ Circle in Ardoris
- Reduced frequency of random encounters along the Perennial Trail.
- Alexa Herbstile in Desolis now will buy and sell alchemy supplies as intended
- Fixed localization issue with several Player Owned Town names that was causing question marks bracketing the name like this: ?townname?
- Fixed stuck spots in the Epitaph
- Moved Christoph Schneider behind the counter of his shop in Ardoris
- Increased non-combat pet speeds
- Fixed some data with Ranged enemies so they won’t run around so much
- Added owner to Owl’s Rest and Orion’s Hold PoT
- Blood River Massacre and Blood River: Fixed Scene Gap and floating props.
- Fiery Decay was set to do half the amount of life drain that was intended. Fiery decay also now applies both fire bonus AND death bonus to the fire portion of the spell.
- Flame fist was doing half the dot damage that was intended. Now fixed to be the same as Fire Arrow.
- Brought up the Lute sounds one octave
- Healing touch damage was unintentionally slightly better than healing ray. Turned it down to be the same power as healing ray.
- Fixed bug that upon login the first free-form play of an instrument would break another instrument’s sound until scene was changed
- All tools will show up for each table now (molds appear again)
- Upped the range of blink
- Don’t apply experience to Tactics and Focus passives when a producer skill is used (ex. Fishing)
- Bank fix for players with bags from expired player vendor items that would break the bank for them
- Fix for ranged guys failing to attack if you follow them
Known Issues:
- Fishing has no visual effects
- Falling short distances can sometimes kill you
- Cannot /r reply to GMs when whispering
- Spell animations don’t play when moving… if you cast and then move, you slide
- We have not yet tested all Razer Chroma devices, expect anomalies
- Some items cannot be salvaged
- We do not yet officially support Windows 10. If you have upgraded to Windows 10 you may experience instability
- Lighting and fog levels are still being tuned to work with the new weather system, expect anomalies
- Weather has not been propagated to all scenes yet so there may be mismatches
- Zooming into First Person camera leaves floating hair in view
- Some skills have not been fully adjusted to work properly with the new use based system
- Sound effects are not always playing properly
- Players in the same scene will sometimes be invisible to each other, usually leaving the scene and returning will fix
- Death and Resurrection do not work properly in the team arena
- Water lots in Dynamic Player Owned Towns can currently only be placed along shorelines, not on docks
- If you upgrade from a property owning pledge between data wipes you will receive extra lot deeds.
- Some objects and NPCs in game are missing textures and show up bright pink
- Time is not in synchronized between scenes that have the new sky vs. the old sky
- Red crystal nodes in Etceter Crag Mines are all yielding blue crystals.
- If your video drivers are out of date characters will appear as if they are covered in triangles.
- Some cities are experiencing performance spikes
- Some assets create flash bulb like sparks on screen
- Many pledge, add on, and stretch goal items have not yet been built and/or do not yet have tech support.
- The update to Unity 5 caused a host of general texture and lighting related issues, and not all of these have been resolved.
- Distant tree billboards may have a white outline that is especially noticeable at night, and some trees may shimmer with white at night.
- Skin tone will sometimes not match properly on different parts of the body
- Unity 5 engine bug: Terrain is not accepting shadow casting lights and terrain lighting shows up on grid vs. radius
- ALT key can no longer be bound. This was necessary to re-enable quick self cast with ALT
- Unity 5 Engine Bug: Objects in the foreground sort incorrectly against objects in the distance like trees and the horizon
Release 22 Screenshot Gallery: Fishing
Players are posting lots of screenshots in the Release 22 Screenshot Gallery on the SotA Forums as well as the Steam Community Screenshot Gallery. Players are particularly enjoying the new fishing system in R22, judging by the number of fishing screenshots being posted! Even the revelers at the Traditional FireLotus Release Party couldn’t resist the fishing urge!
Winfield in particular is excited for Release 22, as it will be the first time that “Fishing with Winfield” on Sunday evenings will actually involve fishing! Here he is fishing from the roof of his Crab Shack in PaxLair:
Night fishing appears to be popular as well:
Wonder what kind of fish populate Blood River?
Q4 2015 Schedule Update
[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]
Greetings Avatars,
As we have stated previously, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically.
Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, with additional game features like jumping and swimming, and improvements to systems like crafting, conversations, and combat. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.
As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers. Speaking of changes, you will see below we will not be launching by the end of this year as we had hoped. We made every attempt we could to make that happen, but several factors have contributed to us deciding that we wanted and needed more time. None of these factors by themselves moved our dates, but instead, it is the combination of all of them, along with a host of other minor issues. These factors include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Iterative and Responsive Development: Co-development and responding to feedback to improve the game while we are still developing takes a bit longer but we believe that this makes the game better and is the right thing to do. Without this method we would not have swimming and jumping in the game. We also would not have changed to a Use Based Advancement system.
- Unity Engine Upgrade: Switching to Unity 5 from 4 cost us a couple of months but the additional features it supports will be worth this in the end.
- Hiring: As you may know we have been slowly ramping up our hiring as more systems come online and we are ready to build more content to fill those systems. Hiring is always slow and it has been particularly challenging for us in some areas like Visual Effects. This is coupled with a few departures that we have had to backfill.
- Time for Polish and Balance: When we finish adding systems and content, we want to have adequate time to polish and balance before the final wipe / launch.
We will do everything in our power, however, to complete Episode 1 in as timely a manner as possible without sacrificing scope or quality. It is worth noting that based on our current funding and fundraising data trends, that we we will still be able to complete the game without any financial issues, even with slips like this. NOTE: With this schedule change we extended payment plans to February.
I feel incredibly excited about how we are finishing 2015. As I stated in my Release 22 post yesterday, I really do feel we are at a turning point in the project. We are expanding in both axes that are the quintessence of this project: Sandbox and Story. The breadth of features that let you interact with the world and other players continues to widen and will now start to deepen as we add more content to those systems; systems like weather, fishing, crafting, etc. The depth of the story will lead you even further into the murky ethical dilemmas that identify the works of Lord British. There is, however, a third axis that we continue to dedicate ourselves to: you, our community. That third leg of the tripod is perhaps the sturdiest, for it is the base on which this entire experience depends and I could not be more thrilled with the quality of that support. This is truly a magnificent community that delicately balances passionate support with honest critique. You are the ones who will take our work and make it great. Thank you for being here with us.
Now without further ado here are our goals for the Fourth and final quarter of 2015:
RELEASE 23, October 29, 2015
- Full Wipe: We are going to make some fundamental changes to item architecture that require us to do a full wipe for Release 23. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please note that if you have been waiting to melt down add-ons, this is your chance to do so as long as you do NOT login once R23 goes live (which automatically claims the items and prevents melt down).
- Halloween Content: Prepare for an explosion of spooky stuff! Masks, decorations, statues, potions, makeup… the works!
- Servants and House Pets: Players can now place servants and pets in their home. Servants will have conversations and pets will do their own business (note that peeing on rugs is a stretch goal).
- Spells & Skills: We will continue to make a pass through the skill trees and add new skills, balance existing skills, and replace less useful skills.
- Taming: Taming will expand with new skills and will now allow players to have more than one tamed creature in their inventory. Players will also now be able to trade and sell tamed creatures.
- Story: More polish passes will be made on existing maps for balance and story support. We will also continue to expand the story with new scenes including the town of Etceter and Highvale Village, a single player experience that is the starting map for the Courage quest line (and the final starting map of three).
- Player Owned Towns: We will add an additional template for the Underground biome and we will add the ability for Dynamic Town owners to place the various NPCs they chose (Guards, shopkeepers, etc.).
- Crafting: More Refining and Production skills will come online. Additionally Crafting Table quality, location, and calendar will begin to factor into crafting results. We will also create more armor, weapon, and cooking recipes
- Creatures: The enslaved Fauns will start appearing alongside their masters the Satyrs.
- Master / Apprentice System: Adventuring with a player who has achieved Grand Mastery in a skill will increase the rate that you advance that same skill.
RELEASE 24, November 19, 2015:
- Polish and Performance: We will work to improve overall polish and performance in the game. We will focus not only on improving frame rate, but also lowering load times. We may also spend some time on usability issues. This will be the main focus of Release 24 so content delivery will be smaller than a “normal release”.
- Story: The story continues to expand with the control point of Hilt and the dungeons beneath that contain the only known forge capable of forging with Obsidian. Additionally, a handful of new towns will appear beyond the Perennial Coast that include story quests.
- Localization: We will begin crowdsourcing the translation of the game into various languages.
- Weather: More types of weather will come online, like snow. Weather will also be linked to seasonal changes, vary based on location (it won’t snow in the desert generally), though it will have some randomness.
- Earlier Delivery Date: Due to the US Thanksgiving holiday, R24 will be coming out one week earlier than normal releases.
RELEASE 25, December 17, 2015
- Story: More towns with story content will appear in Novia along with the dungeon of Artifice on the island of Elysium that will be the climax of the Truth Quest line.
- Property Tax: Property ownership will now incur regular fees (unless you are using a tax free deed from a pledge). If the fees are not paid, the player will lose their claim, and their possessions (including the house and decorations) will be moved to their bank.
- Combat: The cover system will be introduced and will modify attack and defense values when you (or your target) are behind cover.
- Creatures: Our creature list will continue to expand with Chaos Demons and Wisps.
- Guild Warfare: Guilds will now be able to declare war on each other.
- Agriculture: Players will be able to start planting and harvesting as Agriculture appears in the game.
- Player Owned Towns: We will continue to expand the number of templates.
- Multiple Characters: Players with pledges that include additional character slots can now create and play with those additional characters. As mentioned previously, all these characters share reputation, bank, pledge rewards, add-on items, and property. Additionally, if the first character has a last name, all additional characters will have that same last name.
- Earlier Delivery Date: Due to the Christmas holiday, R25 will be coming out one week earlier than normal releases.
We continue to be incredibly thankful for the support we receive from this amazing community. While the funding you provide makes all of this possible, it pales in comparison with the faith you have in us, the feedback you provide us, and the content you are making for everyone to enjoy. We are humbly grateful, and we cannot wait to see you again in New Britannia!
Before I go, I wanted to include an excerpt from my original post about our Early Release Schedule that is important to set the framework for our ongoing schedule:
As a crowd funded and crowd sourced project, we feel it is incredibly important that we provide our backers with information and access well before game studios would normally do so in a traditional development model. Traditionally, the players are given information and access only after the development team has already decided exactly how things will be done, and at times, even after it has already been implemented. By the time the public normally has access to the product, there is usually no time to meaningfully react to the public feedback.
Shroud of the Avatar is different than the traditional model, as we intend to offer our backers extremely early access to information and even the game itself. With that said, we also want to be very careful that we only provide access to portions of the game when they are ready for a wider range of feedback. If we can play it internally and we know it is not ready, then there is nothing to be gained by having a wider audience come to the same conclusion. In fact, it could be quite damaging to do so.
Our strategy over the next few months is to provide you with focused and iterative releases of content. Your feedback during these releases will be critical to making the final product the best it can be, and we appreciate that you are all so willing to devote your time to helping us. With each release, we will have specific tests we will ask you all to make. As we get closer, we will send instructions on how to download, install, report bugs, etc. After each release we will review the results and reevaluate the plan including the duration of availability of each release. Please note that game data will be wiped periodically during early access.
It is important to note that all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change.
Sincerely,
Starr Long
Executive Producer
Shroud of the Avatar
