Week 7

Submitted by

Mat on Mon, 2017-03-27 01:05

Hola,

To start with the bad news: we still don't have the second "B" from BBAPs (Big Beautiful Animated Pictures). It could look cool, but currently it just isn't so great. Hopefully, with Sándor turning his attention to this task we'll soon score some progress on this field, even though he is also not a pro animator but a graphic artist.

I've also got cold around Thursday and it's still working on me, so I currently feel just a tiny bit better than what Deadpool's face looks like. I didn't want to postpone this update, so if it's a bit more chaotic or raw than the previous ones, you'll know the reason.

^{You can be as peaceful as in Sim City...}

Game Client

During the week, I've been finalizing the CoA Creator GUI with continued testing of the new CoA assets.
Coat of Arms related graphic assets are around 95% done. Sándor was already switching to polish the GUI assets while also finishing the last parts of the CoA works. For the Coat of Arms, we'll have a nice initial set of options; including several set of edge styles, materials (like wood, metal or leather), over 60 charges, dozens of ordinaries with different heraldic lines (topping a hundred variations), a dozen available tinctures and some additional, "vibe and feel" features like battle scratches for your shield. It's just our starting pack, but it already presents a couple dozen of million unique variations (minus the items we may classify as locked rewards for certain achievements or for our supporters or for purchase) .
I've also created / tweaked the Player Module GUIs (based on the workflow we 'sketched up' last week). Part of this was my small experiment with different styles, which ultimately resulted in a quite different menu style, at least compared to what we had in Phase 1. This style would also make BBAP an important part of the composition. This style has been briefly teased for members on the community Discord server for early feedback and we scored a generally positive result. You will see a screenshot of this at the end of this segment. What do you think?
Speaking of BBAP, I've once again dived deep into my poorly animated nightmares. From the results, you would never tell that I spent a day on it... <sigh> Well, it definitely has a quite punishing learning curve for me.
I've also made some smaller bugfixes on the client code.

^{- That's the new menu style I've been talking about! What's your thoughts? -}

Platform & Game Server

Steve's Player Module implementation is almost done. He fixed about a dozen bugs and added a couple missing features and is about halfway to finish the admin views (so it doesn't need a developer to use or tweak the settings or the database). Though it's still short of two features, it's quite ready for being integrated into the client (and the site).

Website

This section has been mostly quiet. I ... think the best word is that I evaded any significant problems this week.

^{...But then those bastards will eat you alive.}

Coming Next

Client: I still continue with the Player Module and CoA scenes and depending on Steve's progress and schedules, we might also start integrating the Player Module into the client.
Server: Steve will finish the Player Module and start to hook it into either the site or the client (even though, we still need to host it for the public first). I also want to fill the game rules and concrete datasets for the various CoA parts (like their dependencies, hint text, etc. It's an easy but time expensive task since we have hundreds of elements).
Site: unless Steve chooses to integrate the Player Module with the site first, my only task here is to setup a new poll for you that will be related to the coming releases - Mark will post on our social channels once it's up so keep an eye on the updates. I don't expect more tasks here, though life has a tendency to completely ignore my expectations.
Game Assets: Sándor will most probably finish all CoA related works and can fully focus on the GUI and BBAP.