Again it’s been a very busy week but the biggest news by far is the release of the new Summer Event, The Shadows of Beltane. We’ve pulled one of the designers involved in leading the project away from his monitor to give you a bit of insight into its development.
Say hello to Phil;
Phil’s been with the design team for over a year now but has been an avid gamer for more years than is healthy. He’s also been responsible for running and building online gaming communities as well as reviewing games and films and promoting the positive aspects of gaming to youth and student groups
Take it away Phil;
“Having previously been involved in implementing the last three seasonal events it was great to take a lead role and get my teeth into the latest summer offering. With the new Unity engine taking priority the summer event needed to be tightly coordinated, have something new for the players and while considering what had gone down well in the past. It was important to me that the event had a strong story too, even making reference to how long the winter event had been running.
Having been initially brought into One Thumb Mobile to help develop the background history of the world and working closely with Tom, the established writer on the team allowed me to get a real feel for the land of Dal Riata. Playing the game and keeping an eye on the forums also helped me understand what the players were wanting too. Whilst you may not have seen much of this unfold into the game yet I can guarantee it is coming and, once all the iOS devices are within the warm embrace of the enhanced engine, you’ll see much more story based content coming to the fore. Indeed, from where I sit I can see a tower being created – exciting times.
In resolving the world history I also had to put the gods of Celtic Heroes in order, you don’t know how much of a mess they make leaving things to their own devices, and one thing Tom and I had always wanted to introduce was The Green Man, the very spirit of nature, as well as a reason for him to be called to the world of men. Donn had always been languishing in the catacombs of Dustwither so it was about time for him to rise again and spread his agents across the lands of Lir’s Reach. The plot is a little darker than ones previously and if it goes down well then… well… what happens in summer may just have some impact to Samhain and Yule too.
Building an event like this from scratch takes time however. We need to have meetings about the direction of the event, what assets we need from the design and art teams and if there will be any coders free to help. As mentioned in the previous blog our coders are very busy and so I put together a design document of what I wanted in the event and we looked at what could be done without putting too much additional work their way.
The first step is to understand the key elements that need to be included in the event. Looking back at what things in previous events you, the players, have responded well to and those things that perhaps haven’t gone down so well is a big part of building the central theme of the event. Once we have identified the central pillars of the event a rough design is created and assessed to make sure we’re hitting those important things in a way that will be engaging and fun for the players. The design is still at a quite a high level at this point but it gives everyone on the team an idea of what we are aiming to achieve and the key points we need to hit. It also acts as a sanity check; it’s no use planning a spectacular, cataclysmic event that will change the very fabric of the game world if the game engine isn't capable of keeping up or we simply don’t have the time to create an army of new foes If the high level design meets all the requirements and it’s achievable by our team then it’s fleshed out to add the fine detail and those little things that really make an enjoyable gaming experience. Each team looks at the final detailed design and puts together a list of tasks needed to get it into the game. The concept team creates sketches of mobs and NPCs as well as items and rewards. These get more and more detailed as they are reviewed and then passed on to the art team for modelling and animating.
In recent months our art team has grown and this has meant that for the first time this event and all its assets have been created in the studio and the artists have had a real sense of ownership and investment in the project. I’m really proud of what we have created, excited seeing the Ardmair Fashion costume come together based on my own concept and delighted that the Dryad Charms look superb. I've not even mentioned the Morcas Creature, Tor Caith Faeries and Nature Masks we have created, along with some special jewellery drops from the Warlocks… but you’ll have to find out about them yourselves.
The design team put together an outline of the quests and content involved in the event so they can run through it on our test servers to see how well it plays and how it fits into the overall game. They tweak and refine the mechanics and balancing until they’re happy with how the event runs then again they start adding the fine detail such as quest conversations, mob names and so on to bring the framework alive.
At key points in the process we create a new version of the game that is released to the QA team for them to try to break in all manner of weird and wonderful ways as well as giving a second opinion on balancing and flow. All throughout these stages we refer back to the list of key points needed for the event to make sure we don’t lose sight of the fundamental aspects that will make this something that the players will enjoy, talk about and keep coming back to.
When you start to consider the number of icons, colour variations, balancing the bosses, mystery chests and having to ensure the event works on iOS and Android I hope I've given you some idea of what is involved in the event.
I’ll be happy to read your feedback. “
Thanks Phil.
Also this week the improvements to the inventory system mentioned last week have progressed well and we’re getting some good results in dealing with large inventories to alleviate some of the frustrations some of you may face. The search function was released in the beta version to get a bit of stress testing and real-world feedback. That’s already proved useful and our coders are already using this info.
The iOS version is coming along nicely. Although it may not sound very exciting we have now set up an automatic build system for iOS that periodically takes a snapshot of all code and assets and builds a new version of the game. This is very useful in ensuring that everything we commit to the project doesn't break it
Oh and the Tower…oh the Tower. We’ll be releasing more info on this very soon and if we can twist the Art Manager’s arm some images of the direction we’re going with it and perhaps a chat with some of the artists involved.