Shroud of the Avatar – Update of the Avatar #165

by GolemDragon · February 27, 2016

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

Shooter Jennings’ Countach Breast Cancer Make a Difference Charity
Countach World Premier Party Recap
Play Release 27 Now!
R27 Patch Notes
Player Housing Update: Player Owned Towns, Player Run Towns, and Water Lots

Shooter Jennings’ Countach Breast Cancer Make a Difference Charity

Portalarium is partnering with outlaw country musician Shooter Jennings, son of country music icons Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, and his label, Black Country Rock, to raise money through Shroud of the Avatar’s Make a Difference Store, using Shooter’s newest album: Countach! Fifty percent of the net purchase price* of the Countach Make a Difference items will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The Countach Breast Cancer Make a Difference items include:

Countach Wax Cylinders: Six songs from the new album, plus an exclusive bonus track, “The Death of Lord British,” all on exclusive Countach Pink wax cylinders
Countach Album Cover Art: The incredible album art as a framed painting that you can place on your walls
Countach Pink Dye 12-Pack: This exclusive hot pink dye is sure to catch attention
Countach Phonograph: This exclusive version of the ornate metal phonograph has pink and purple highlights

By purchasing the Shooter Jennings Countach Breast Cancer Charity items, you are helping to make a difference in the lives of those with breast cancer and their loved ones. The proceeds will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), an organization that works to achieve prevention and a cure for breast cancer in our lifetime by providing critical funding for innovative clinical and translational research to over 240 researchers across 13 countries and 5 continents, as well as increasing public awareness about good breast health. BCRF is the highest rated breast cancer organization in the U.S. with an A+ rating from Charity Watch and 4 our of 4 stars from Charity Navigator, with 91 cents out of every dollar committed to tacking this disease.

There are many, many members of our community whose lives have been touched in some way by breast cancer. Portalarium COO Dallas Snell’s mother recently died from the ravages of breast cancer, as did SotA Executive Producer Starr Long’s mother. Shooter Jennings’ wife, Misty, is one of the fortunate breast cancer survivors! Many of the SotA community members shared their own personal experiences with breast cancer on a public forum post where the community discussed how best to use the proceeds from Shooter’s extremely generous contribution of his Countach album material for this charity drive.

If you would like to help make a difference in the lives of those affected by breast cancer, then please check out the Shooter Jennings Countach Breast Cancer Charity items in the Shroud of the Avatar Make a Difference Store!

(NOTE: * Portalarium will donate 50% of the net purchase price of these Make a Difference items to the designated charity on a bi-annual basis. Net purchase price is determined by subtracting any transaction service fees and/or platform service fees from the full purchase price paid by the customer)

Countach World Premier Party Recap

Shooter Jennings Avatar during his Countach Album Release Party in SotA

Shooter Jennings’ in-game World Premier party on Monday, February 22, for his new album, Countach, was a rousing success! The party started with an overflowing crowd at The Bear Tavern in the player owned town of Beran’s Reach:

After Shooter’s new album had been heard from start to finish, he mysteriously disappeared from the party at The Bear Tavern, and a quest was afoot to learn what had happened to him! In true Shooter Jennings “outlaw” style, the quest soon led to the PvP town of Vengeance, a place where all players can openly attack each other!

A protected area (of sorts) had been constructed in Vengeance for the participants to gather and continue the World Premier party. This outdoor courtyard (constructed by Athanil), had only one entrance that was heavily protected by many of Vengeance’s most powerful fighters:

And finally, Shooter was found safe in the bowels of the adjoining Obsidian Tower, where an elaborate party area had been constructed, consisting of the biggest tower of radios in SotA, spacious dance floor, replete with circular dance platforms:

Play Release 27 Now!

Release 27 successfully launched yesterday, February 26, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, logging in, and checking out the new changes! Lots of new content to explore, including:

Several New scenes including Artifice, Paladis Shardfall (PVP), Opalis Ruins (PVP), etc.
New Template Variations for Player Owned Towns
24 New Player Owned Towns
16 New Recipes, including Recall Scroll, Teleport scroll, Walking Cane, Kilt, etc.
Fast Travel: Bind & Recall plus Teleport to Friend
Shooter Jennings’ Countach Breast Cancer Make A Difference Items
Performance Imrovements
Language Translation Progress
…and more!

Check out the Release 27 Instructions update for detailed information about all the new content.

Release 27 Player Instructions

Release 27 Known Issues

R27 Patch Notes

Thanks to all our community members that jumped right into this Release and started reporting bugs. The dev team has already fixed quite a few of them and pushed out several patches. Click here for the most up-to-date Patch Notes.

February 26, 2016

Build Number 385 5:30 PM

Changes:

The skills trainer in Soltown now trains adventurer skills up to Tier 3.
Some super minor nerfs to healing. Healing touch cast time moves from1 second to 1.25 and both Healing touch and healing ray drop by 1 point max heal
Fixed issues where players were stuck on loading screen
Brookside no longer has Kiln’s innkeeper.
Stealth visual effects no longer break when player uses a stealth invoking skill twice
Doubled the number of POT Decoration Limits
Wolf and Dog sound effects no longer trigger constantly and volume adjusted
Skeletons in starting scenes should now be much easier
Discoverable locations should now be showing on compass again
Added Discoverable locations to Novia and Hidden Vale Overworld (Cities, Shardfalls, Dungeons, Control Points). Should make it much easier to navigate.
Fixed issue where images on the columns of the lunar rift were sorting improperly with the visual effects
Fixed issue causing severe hitching in towns with lots of player lots.
Changed salvage and repair timer to be a quarter of a second instead of three seconds
Fixed more exceptions and error messages
Enemy sound effects should now be properly tied to SFX volume slider

Known Issues:

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
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.
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 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
ALT key can no longer be bound. This was necessary to re-enable quick self cast with ALT

[Complete Patch Notes…]

Player Housing Update: Player Owned Towns, Player Run Towns, and Water Lots

[A SotA Public Forum post by Starr Long]

Greetings Avatars,

The recent post about Final Wipe & Lot Selection raised a lot of questions about Player Housing and this update will cover 3 of those topics: Player Owned Towns, Player Run Towns, and Water Lots.

SECTION 1: PLAYER OWNED TOWNS:

I wish to thank all of the town owners for your generous support of the game and the community. I also want to thank you for your incredible patience as we have gone on this crazy quest to push player driven content as far as we can (given our constraints). As we have mentioned previously, we were completely surprised at the popularity of Player Owned Towns (PoTs). We anticipated selling 20–30 and ended up selling 10 times that number.

This success made us reconsider our original strategy of building each town as a custom static map based on templates. We call this type of town a “Custom Static” town. While we still plan to honor that commitment, we have also been steadily investing time in a different direction that would allow Player Owned Towns to be fully dynamic and customizable by player owners. We call this kind of town a “Dynamic” town. Town owners now have the choice between these two options on the town submission form.

An unforeseen consequence of this success (and our rapid introduction of over 300 towns into the game) is the overhead related to change requests. More than 50% of the time we spend on Player Owned Towns each release is devoted to changes of name, location, template, connections, etc. We do not believe this is the optimal use of the pledge dollars and this is not a cost we had factored into the original price.

Therefore, effective immediately, we are changing how we handle change requests and the sequence of when we add PoTs to the game. Previously, we would integrate them as soon as basic information was entered into the form. From now on the owner must first “lock” the submission form, then and only then, will we implement the submission. When “locked” no more changes can be made to the submission form, unless unlocked (see below).”Note that this also means that changes to the form cannot be made until the form is unlocked. We are in the process of adding a new button named “Submit & Lock” and expect it to be ready by R28. The submission form can only be unlocked either by upgrading to a larger size or by purchasing a service voucher (larger change requests may require additional service voucher purchases).

It is worth noting that currently most change requests can only be accommodated when we wipe, so it will be up to 90 days before you will see any changes go live after requesting them. After the final wipe, we will have tech in place that allows us to make changes without wipes, of course. Also, note that transferring ownership of a town will not unlock the submission form. Please note that NO forms will be locked until the owner locks it. This means that if you are waiting to see more templates or more tools come online then DON’T lock your form (but also understand that no interim changes will be made).

As part of this we are making improvements to the submission form by adding descriptions and screenshots of the various templates. We have also made it so that if you select Dynamic we turn off all the sections that are irrelevant (NPC Buildings, Lot Selection, etc.)

Custom Static vs. Dynamic PoTs: The following outlines how the two town types differ and describes the cost/benefit analysis of each as well as the process and schedule.

Custom Static:

Benefits:

These scenes have the potential to look more unique, even though they are built off existing templates. For example you could request that we completely wall off your town even though it is on multiple elevation, something that can’t be done currently with walls in dynamic towns.

Once in game, owners have very little work to do other than unlocking lots.

Process:

Owner fills out the PoT submission form completely, including proposed layouts and customization requests.

Owner locks form via “Lock & Submit”.

Portalarium consults with player about the submissions.

Portalarium builds a custom scene using the selected template and modifies it based on player submissions beginning sometime after final wipe.

Costs:

Scene is completely static, it cannot be modified by the player once it is in the game.

PoT Decorations cannot be placed in Static Towns.

Any desired changes after implementation will require purchasing at least one service voucher, including conversion to Dynamic. The only exception is upgrading to a bigger town size.

Building of these will not recommence until August 2016 and will be delivered on a monthly basis.

Build order will be based first on PoT size and second on PoT purchase date.

Change requests to existing Static towns (including size upgrades) will not be fulfilled until all Static towns are complete (except for conversion to Dynamic which may be sooner)

All towns currently in game will remain dynamic until we are able to get to converting them to Static. This means when the town transitions from Dynamic to Static at later date all residents will need to reclaim and redecorate. Advice for owners would be to constrain population to residents who understand this.

Dynamic:

Benefits:

Owners can modify just about anything at any time:

Lot Locations / Orientations

Lot Sizes

NPC Buildings

NPCs

Scene Music

PoT decorations (walls, pavers, trees, etc.)

PoT will enter the game possibly as soon as the next build after the submission form is locked with just basic information of: name, template, and location chosen

Process:

Owner fills out form with name, template, location, connection(s) and add on store building selections (if eligible). NOTE: All other fields are irrelevant.

Owner locks form via “Submit & Lock”

Portalarium implements Dynamic Town within 90 days of submission (but often as soon as the next month’s release).

NOTE: If your town is already in game and you are eligible, right after you Lock your form for the first time you will receive your selection of Add-On Store Buildings. (See details below).

Costs:

Towns are non-modified versions of the templates.

Nothing will be modified on the template by Portalarium. For example this means that all PoT connections happen from the same place using the same visuals (boats, wagons, manholes, etc.) in each template and cannot be modified.

Unlocking the form to make changes will require a service voucher.

Pre- versus Post-Wipe: Below, you will find a comprehensive list of all items we hope to have online before the final wipe, as well as any items we plan to support after the wipe. Anything not listed below is not currently being considered for Episode 1. For instance, Owner customization of PoT connections is not something we plan to support for Episode 1.

Pre-Wipe Features & Content: The following is a list of all content that we plan is planned for implementation before or for Release 32 in July.

Templates: 14 Templates based on 5 Unique Layouts/Terrain Sculpts that cover all 8 biomes (current count is 12 Templates, 4 Layouts, 7 biomes).

Town Permissions: Ability to designate various levels of delegates to help run the town (working in game now).

Lot Permissions: Ability to flag lots as open or designate for specific players (working in game now).

Add-On Store Buildings: PoTs purchased prior to January 4, 2016 receive a selection of certain Add-On Store buildings. These will be delivered to the owner after their submission form is locked and the PoT is present in game. Goal is to have this functioning no later than Release 29 (April). Please note that for Episode 1 there are only two City sized homes: Twin Spires Manor and Adobe 2-story Keep. Due to an earlier error in communication qualifying PoT owners, village size and above, who do *not* choose the Twin Spire Manor, may opt to choose a smaller house and qualify for a free Adobe 2-story Keep. For example, the owner of a Metropolis can earn up to 4 additional Adobe 2-story Keeps.

Giant Pavers: In game craft-able and add on store versions to better facilitate roads.

Dynamic Towns: All PoTs with locked submission forms by Release 30 (May 26) will be present in game for Release 32 on July 28.

Dynamic Town Tools: These are the tools owners can use to modify their towns:

Lot Marker Placement: Working in game now.

NPC Building Placement: Working in game now.

POT Decoration Placement: Working in game now but current placed decoration limits (including lights) will be doubled (at least).

Scene Music Selection: This will be done via an ingame wax cylinder jukebox. Hope to have this working in R28 or R29.

NPC Placement: Working in game now.

NPC Renaming: Working in game now

Post-Wipe Features & Content: The following items will come online in the monthly releases AFTER Release 32.

Blessings: Certain structures placed in PoTs, like Titan Statues, will convey blessings to players who visit that town. The duration and/or strength of the blessing is tied directly to the occupancy of the town. We do not yet have any other details about how blessings will work, but do not fear being locked into any one structure/blessing because Dynamic Town owners can change any of their decorations and buildings at any time (note that there may be a timing constraint to how quickly and how often you can change your blessing).

Dynamic Overworld Visuals: The number of buildings will indicate size and occupancy levels of the town. Smoke from chimneys and/or lights in windows will indicate if players are currently online in that town. Particles will indicate the presence of a blessing and possibly indicate which exact blessing.

Templates: 20 Templates with at least 10 Unique Layouts/Terrain Sculpts.

Town Public Gardens: The ability for any player or town dweller to plant in a public garden area will come online shortly after Public Gardens come online in the rest of the game.

NPC Behaviors: We hope to support behaviors beyond simple conversations and merchant function for NPCs. For instance we hope to allow POT NPC Guards to act like all other NPC guards where they will eventually patrol player towns and they might notice stealing or combat and fine players for infractions.

Dynamic Town Tools:

Highlight Flat Areas: this will allow owners to see nearby flat areas to ease placement

Snap/Align to Adjacent Lot: This function allows town owners to snap lots together, especially helpful when placing row lots (note we hope to provide this function for walls/fences too).

Entry/Exit Point Locations: Owners will be able to select from a list of possible locations. Note that this will NOT be the ability to place an entry point location anywhere.

PoT Connection Locations: Owners will be able to select from a list of possible locations. Note that this will NOT be the ability to place a connection anywhere.

Town Crier Locations: Owners will be able to select from a list of possible locations. Note that this will NOT be the ability to place a town crier anywhere.

POT Decorations/Structure Lockdown: Anyone who has accidentally grabbed a guard tower from underneath themselves will appreciate the ability to lock structures and decorations.

NPC Visual Variety: We hope to provide a wider visual range of NPCs (clothing, facial features, equipment, hair, etc.) so they are not all so identical.

Lawn Mower: An object that lets players remove trees and foliage from areas without requiring object or lot placement.

SECTION 2: PLAYER RUN TOWNS:

Player Run Towns (also known as Mixed Settlements): These are towns not owned by players, not named on the cloth map, and not part of any story.

To facilitate the number of lots needed for all players we are going to increase the number of these settlements in Novia and Hidden Vale

These will be loosely based on the Player Owned Town templates so we can have a variety of biomes.

They will now also include an NPC core that includes some basic amenities (like bank, basic trainer, crafting stations, crafting supplies, and general goods shopkeeper)

Increased variety of lot sizes, especially for larger lots

SECTION 3: WATER LOTS:
The recent announcements about lot selection raised some questions about water lots that have been confusing to everyone. Please note that all of these lots expired with the Fall 2015 Expiration event.

Water Lots: These are waterfront lots that can be placed along shorelines, piers, and docks. These are limited to Village, Town and City lots.

Water lots can only be claimed with Founder Deeds (pledge rewards for Founders and Royal Founders) starting with the Citizen pledge

Can be found in almost any town that has open water (lake, river, ocean, canals, etc.)

Currently can be placed in Dynamic Player Owned Towns along natural shorelines but currently does not work with manmade areas like docks and piers but we hope to have this fixed post Final Wipe.

Island Lots: These are lots not attached to shore directly (like the regular water lots above). They come with a Keep or Castle sized plot of land.

Island lots can only be claimed with Founder Deeds (pledge rewards for Founders and Royal Founders) starting with the Duke pledge

These can be found in towns with very large open water areas (ocean mainly)

Please note that these are actual pieces of land in the water (i.e. islands) so players will place land homes on them, not water homes on them.

There are currently none of these in the game. We just recently fixed some technical issues that were blocking us implementing them and we plan to have them start appearing as soon as Release 29.

Water Homes: These houses can be placed on Water lots only.

Village Size:

Waterfront Cabana (Citizen)

Waterfront German-Style Cabana (Edelmann & Edelmann – All Digital)

Waterfront Lighthouse (Knight)

Town Size:

Waterfront Houseboat (Lord)

City Size:

Frigate (Baron 1)

Galleon (Baron 2 & 3)

Waterfront Castle (Duke)

Island Lots: There are no specific homes associated with these. Any land based home can be placed on them. As mentioned above these are not in game yet.