BAdler

I am not sure if it will make sense for the next update, but I can see if we can get a UI screen for the one after that.

Update by Brandon Adler, Lead Producer Hey, everyone. Due to E3 crunch we are going to push off Josh's next class update for a couple of weeks. Instead, I will give an update about the general state of affairs for each department on the project now that we are getting ready to head into our Beta period. The next update will feature Josh's final class update along with info from the Eternity E3 presentation. Let's get into it. Status Area Design All of the areas have been in the game for about a month now, and the area designers have been revisiting each area to make sure everything is in order. They're using specially crafted Alpha checklists to make sure that none of the major items are missed. For example, designers are checking that the area has a proper navigation mesh, ambient sound effects are placed, and scene transitions are working as intended. Josh (Project Director) and Bobby (Area Design Lead) are heading up meetings to review all of the quests in the game. Each quest is played through by the team and analyzed. We ask basic questions like "Why is this quest fun?", "Does the player care about this quest?", and "What hooks the player into starting the quest?" If anything is lacking, the design team spruces the quest up to make it a memorable one. Over the Beta period the designers will continue fixing bugs and polishing content. Environment Art Much like our area designers, our environment artists have been revisiting all of the areas of the game and performing their Alpha checklists to make sure all of the areas pass art Alpha. In addition to the checklists, they are performing polish work that had been identified previously by Bobby and Rob (Art Director) on areas. Currently, the environment artists have done a pass on all of our critical path areas and they will be moving onto our side content once we enter Beta. Take a look at one of the areas that has gone through Alpha polish without a paint-over pass: Systems Design Now that our systems are all in place, Josh has been focused on balance and polish bugs that have piled up over the course of the project. For me, this is one of the more exciting times in the project because the game really starts to take shape and become fun. Game balance will continue throughout our Beta period, right up to our release. UI Kaz (Concept and UI Artist) has been finishing up the last remaining UI screens. He is now working on Scripted Interaction images, icons, area paint-overs, and portraits and will be doing so for the foreseeable future. Animation The animation team has been wrapping up the last B priority items and will moving into full-time polish until the end of the project. B priority animations are things like special creature attacks, class-specific spell casts, or animations for minor creatures (animal critters, for example). Once the animation team has finished up creating the animations, they will be focused on animation polish. Character Art Our character artists have completed all of the creatures and creature variants we planned for the game (and even a few that we hadn't planned on). They have also created all of the base weapon and armor variants, and now character art is focused on finishing up all of the unique armors and weapons. Once they complete the last bit of gear, they will move onto creating a few additional head and hair variants for each race. Like the rest of the team, they will also be polishing content for the remainder of the project. Have a peek at one of our unique armors: Narrative The narrative team finished up the critical path a few weeks ago and now they have their focus on completing side content in our various regions. Eric (Lead Narrative Designer) has been tweaking and polishing the E3 demo areas, while Carrie (Narrative Designer) has been hard at work finishing up some of our companions. Narrative is also polishing up the areas that will be used in for our Backer Beta. Over the next few months narrative will finish our companions, and we are going to start finalizing and locking down on the writing to prepare for localization and voice over. Programming At this point, the project is completely feature locked. The programmers are fully focused on fixing the mountain of bugs that have built up over the course of the project. There are still some items that need to be finished (installers, for example), but the majority of the work will be put towards fixing and polishing existing systems. This is where the build (that may have been unstable throughout development) really starts to come together. VFX The team is continuing to crank away at VFX. It is one of the areas of the game (along with narrative and audio) that are not at an Alpha level, which is intentional. The later on the project that you can bring the VFX team on, the lower the amount of rework that they will have to do on assets that may get changed. We have added VFX on a little less than half of the spells and abilities, on all of our VFX creatures (creatures that are VFX driven instead of our normal creature pipeline), and on all of the critical path areas. We are scheduled to be finished with VFX in a couple of months. Audio Much like VFX, audio usually comes onto our projects a bit later than other departments. Many of our areas have had an ambience pass and are sounding really good. Same goes for our creatures - more and more of their SFX are being hooked up every day. We have also completed our initial pass on things like UI sounds, and very shortly, our audio team will create sounds for our spells and abilities. Justin (Audio Director) has been working on finishing all of the music tracks for the game. In fact, he just finished composing our main theme. Much like VFX, this audio team is scheduled to finish in a couple of months. Overall Overall, the project is coming together nicely. We have a ton of work that still needs to be done, but the team is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are no major roadblocks ahead of us at this point and now it's a focus on getting as much polish done as we can before our final release candidate. That's it for this update. Let us know what you think in our forums. Kickin' It Forward - Witchmarsh From time to time we like to spread the word about interesting Kickstarter Projects that catch our eye. This time around, it's a project called Witchmarsh - a story-driven action RPG set in 1920s Massachusetts with a supernatural flair. Here is a quick summary taken from their Kickstarter page: "It's the Roaring Twenties! Join an unlikely team of detectives as they charge headlong into the darkest corners of rural America. Their mission: find and return twelve missing townsfolk who vanished under mysterious circumstances. A handsome reward is in store should they succeed, but with the supernatural lurking around every corner, will any of them live long enough to collect it?" Take a look and if you like what you see, show them your support! There's only a short time left before their campaign ends.

Well, I posted this in the morning before I got to work. Fortunately, I was able to integrate the edits and code it up faster than I thought. Looks like it won't be that much later than normal (if at all).

Hey, everyone. Just so you are aware, I will be posting this update a couple of hours later than our new normal 10 AM PDT time. I have been at E3 all week so I need the time to prepare it this morning.

I'll toss them a heads up. It's just a bit of text, but it's something that I feel is more than worthwhile. Another forum member stated a long while back that his brother had recently died and would have loved a game like PoE, as he loved games like this and was an avid RPG/CRPG fan. But the member in question couldn't afford to pledge enough to do this. The story touched my heart, so I offered to mention his brother's role-play name in my text block as a way to have him somewhat immortalized. I'll shoot myself in the face if I'm too late for this to get in. You have my promise that we will get that in for you. Just fill out your survey and we will make sure the memorial gets added in.

I would check it out. The rules can be a bit convoluted, but if you have the mind of a systems designer, you will probably enjoy it.

your friend were expressing the prevailing view regarding grogs and companions. no doubt a great gaming group and a competent gamemaster could make non magic guy fun to play in the ars magica we know, but the system itself made grogs and companions less immediate appealing. much less appealing. HA! Good Fun! Strangely, I enjoy playing my companion more than my magus. While magi are really powerful compared to companions and grogs, they also have large downsides that companions excel at. Since magi tend to spend lots of their experience on their magical arts, they end up pretty deficient in some basic things that are really useful in normal adventures (hunt, stealth, awareness, combat skills, athletics, etc.). Magi can use magic to get around lots of those deficiencies, but sometimes nothing beats having a high ability score in Area Lore.

We are playing 5th edition. The rules are still a jumbled mess sometimes, but I am really enjoying the metagame of managing the covenant and planning my character advancement.

Ars can be pretty daunting for new players. I ended up completely scrapping the first character I made for the campaign because I was so inefficient with the way I built him. This is pretty common for a lot of first characters in a new PnP RPG, but it was magnified in Ars Magica. I ended up settling with a Verditius magus who is completely min-maxed for his item creation. It is interesting how I can be having so much fun with a character who isn't even built to really go on "adventures." Ars Magica, the only game I can think of where reading and lab work is more rewarding than adventuring.

There is an additional pro. The beta costs more than the final game, since you need to match its price to the beta Kickstarter tier. As Wasteland 2 has demonstrated, there are plenty of people out there willing to pay $60 for an unfinished RPG. It'd be a shame to leave that money in their pockets. That is a pro, but it isn't as good as it seems at first blush. Let's say that EA is a $10 premium over what we would normally sell the game for on Steam. This isn't necessarily the number, but it is an okay placeholder. Say we sell an additional 10k - 25k copies of the game as EA. Again, I am not sure if this number would be legitimate, but it seems reasonable. Assuming that EA cannibalizes our future sales, this would generate an extra 100k - 250k in cash. After Steam takes its cut (30%) that leaves anywhere from 70k - 175k. That isn't a paltry sum of money, but it also isn't enough to really affect the game's development in any substantial way. That is enough to pay for an extra couple of weeks of development on the game. We have to weigh that against all of the potential problems and ill will if things aren't handled perfectly. EA is like playing with fire, in my mind, and if it isn't handled correctly it could burn the project (and the company).

Hey, does anyone on here play Ars Magica? Josh Sawyer started up a game around the new year and I have been taking part (with a few other Obsidianites). Man, that game is pretty cool. It's the only RPG where I have been creating/using multiple spreadsheets for basic tasks like tracking my character's progression or magical item creation. Just wondering if anyone had cool Ars Magica stories to share.

Our team is still discussing whether or not we are going to do Early Access. Early Access has pros (influx of money, additional feedback from the community) and cons (releasing the game in an unfinished state to the general public, lesser impact of our final release), so it isn't really a slam dunk either way. As a gamer, I am not a huge fan of Early Access and I am usually wary of games that go that route. It is a good thing for some games (I think WL2 did a great job of using the money to help polish and finish out their game), but other games use it as an excuse to have a never-ending development. PE's asset list and feature set is essentially locked at this point. There are still a large amount of bugs to fix and things to polish, but we aren't really generating additional content (besides audio, VFX, and a few B priority weapon and armor sets). Any money raised would likely into future projects (PE XP1).

Update by Adam Brennecke, Lead Programmer and Executive Producer Over a year ago, in Update #49, we showed you the first movie of Pillars of Eternity. The movie showcased a beautiful scene in the Dyrwood complete with dynamic lighting, per-pixel occlusion, dynamic water and waterfall, and a day-night cycle. In this update I would like to give you an inside look on how these images are put together and rendered in the game, and I will cover new rendering features that we've added over the past year to address feedback from our backers about how our characters look in the scene. Warning: things might get technical! E3 We are going to be going on update hiatus for the next three weeks as we prepare for E3 in Los Angeles. After E3, the next update will feature the final classes covering The Front Line (fighters and barbarians). At E3, the team will be showing Pillars of Eternity at the Paradox booth behind closed doors. To avoid spoiling what we will be showing, we will be saving these moments until you get to play it. Because we want to include you in the experience, we will be taking photos at the booth, and in a future update we will be sharing more screenshots from the demo. To give you a small taste, here's a sneak peek at a scene that will be shown at E3: Rendering TimeBackgrounds As we mentioned previously, our beautiful backgrounds are rendered out of Maya as a 2D image. They are very large images, sometimes over several gigabytes of raw data, and before the images get into the game we run a program that compresses the data. Maya renders out the backgrounds in four layers or "passes": final, depth, normal, and albedo. These passes are combined together in Unity for per-pixel occlusion of 3D objects, and for real-time dynamic lighting. When we bring the backgrounds into the game, they look like a flat 2D plane, and when viewed in Unity's editor the whole world has an awkward skewed look to it. The illusion comes together only when an orthographic camera is placed at the perfect angle. Characters Next we overlay the 3D world on top of the 2D rendered image. The characters are dynamic 3D skinned meshes that are animated and then rendered into the scene with a variety of shaders and materials. Our default material that we use on most characters includes a normal map (adds tiny variations in surface detail), specular map (adds shininess), and an albedo map (adds the base color). The default material also supports a tint map, which allows our designers and you to customize the colors of armor, hair, and skin. We have other shaders that can change the look and feel of characters. For example, we have a metal shader for armor that adds an extra level of shininess and can reflect the environment via an environment map. A Cloth shader removes the shininess, and allows the character artists to make outfits made up of cotton, wool, and satin. We have special materials, like an emissive shader that isn't affected by light, used for the fire-godlike, ghosts, spectres, and the windows seen in the screenshots and video. Because the characters are 3D, they need to be lit differently than the background image. We use a system with two directional lights. The first directional light is the key light and typically matches the sun color and intensity in outdoor scenes, and this light can be modified by the day-night cycle to cast moonlight at night. The second directional light is used as a fill light to make sure the "back side" of a character isn't in total darkness. The two lights are adjusted per scene depending on the pre-rendered light settings to match the sun direction, mood, and desired atmosphere. In addition to the directional lights, we use dynamic deferred lights that can affect the background and characters. For example, if a torch is placed in a scene, the torch can illuminate both the 2D environment and a 3D character standing nearby. In addition, deferred lights are used for spell effects; a fireball explosion emits a burst of light, brightening up a dark dungeon room. Bringing it all together We noticed, and so did many of you, after releasing our first few screenshots, the 3D characters were not matching the 2D rendered scene as much as we would have hoped. So we put our thinking caps on, and we came up with new features since our first batch of screenshots, including dynamic ambient and a shadow control system. To really make sure the characters fit in the scene, we came up with an ambient system that samples color from the 2D background, simulating a quick and dirty global illumination model. Characters pick up subtle color variations depending on where they are standing and what type of environment they are in. If a character is standing in a lush green jungle, it will pick up a subtle green hue from the light reflected off the environment. Game programmers love fast and cheap methods, and the ambient system gives us great results with little impact on rendering performance. Ambient before and after: Another feature that we've added recently to solve the issue of grounding characters into the scene is a system to shadow 3D characters when traversing into dark shadowy areas in the 2D image. The new system samples a low resolution image map which controls the contribution of the directional sunlight on the character, and to avoid double shadows, the same image controls the value of the dynamic shadow map. Lastly, to better match the 2D and 3D shadows, we color the dynamic shadow to match the 2D rendered shadow color (which often has a blue hue to it). Shadow Blending before and after: To tie everything together, we can optionally add post process effects. In this scene, we've added a very subtle bloom effect that effects both the environment and characters. I hope you didn't get lost in all the technical talk! The important thing is that we hope you like the end result. We are satisfied with where we are at, but we always have a few ideas on how to improve the look and quality of the graphics. Improving the look of the game will be an ongoing process until we ship... and beyond. If you have any questions, please ask in our forums! Thanks for reading.

Whoops. sorry about the typo on the update number. I will change that up.

Our next update will be pushed until Wednesday morning (10:00 AM PDT) due to the Memorial Day holiday. We are also in discussions about permanently moving the updates to Wednesday mornings. Once we have a definitely answer we will let you guys know.

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director For our third class update, we will be covering chanters and priests. Along with paladins (covered in Update 56), these classes provide parties with their core support bonuses and healing effects. Different games refer to these types of characters using different terms -- usually "leader" or "support" -- but at their core, they excel when they are providing assistance to their teammates. The benefits they provide to the group often outstrip the contributions of individual party members in the final tally, but their abilities must be used carefully to maximize their impact. Our next update will be from Adam Brennecke. He has some great graphical enhancements to share that we hope you'll enjoy. After that, our final class update will be on The Front Line: fighters and barbarians. All three of the leader classes have a balanced suite of offensive abilities and though there is overlap in the effects of their various support abilities, they differ significantly in how they are used. Paladins utilize persistent auras to provide strong bonuses to allies in their immediate vicinity and limited-use single-target commands to grant powerful buffs to individual teammates. Chanters' phrases create a rotating cycle of bonuses that shift over the course of combat, building up energy until they can utter powerful invocations. Priests are traditional casters, relying on large area of effect bonuses mixed with small area offensive spells to direct combat from afar. Kana Rua, a chanter. Chanters are storytellers and repositories of ancient lore from myriad cultural traditions. They use these stories and legends to stir the memories of the dreaming lost souls and soul fragments that surround them. The spirits respond by creating magical effects, essentially playing their part in the recreation of the legends. In this way, chanters act as directors of supernatural actors playing out momentary plays for the chanter's benefit. Due to their heavy focus on folktales and storytelling, they have an inherent bonus to Lore. As explorers of many lost and forgotten vaults dating back to Eora's antiquity, chanters also have a bonus to Mechanics, helping them bypass tricky locks and traps. To use their special kind of magic, chanters link together individual short phrases from different legends to create longer chants. The phrases have distinctive, thematically-appropriate effects that are of low power but can be applied while the chanter is engaged in other combat activities. As one phrase ends and another begins, the effects of the first phrase will linger, allowing multiple phrases to overlap with each other. Through the clever overlapping of phrases, chanters can grant their allies a sizable stack of minor bonuses. But chanters aren't entirely about their passive phrases and chants. With each phrase that passes, chanters gain greater control over the spirits assisting them. When enough control is gained, chanters can direct them to perform a single powerful spell called an invocation. Invocations are often support-oriented, but some contain powerful offensive effects. Invocations are so powerful that they disrupt a chanter's chants, disabling their effects for several seconds until the chanter can recover. While Eora's wizards are known for their "colorful" spell names, chanters' phrases are far more loquacious, often incorporating the entire spoken text of the phrase. Sample chants: Blessed Was Wengridh, Quickest of His Tribe - Movement rate and Reflexes increased for allies in the area of effect. Thick Grew Their Tongues, Stumbling O'er Words - Enemy Concentration is reduced. (Will) The Fox from the Farmer Did Run and Leap - Enemy Disengagement Attacks have reduced Accuracy. The Silver Knights' Shields Broke Both Arrow and Blade - Increases the Deflection of allies in the area of effect. At the Sight of their Comrades, their Hearts Grew Bold - Increases the Fortitude and Will of allies in the area of effect. Sample invocations: Not Felled by Axe, Nor Broken by Storm - Increases allied Slash and Shock Damage Threshold. If their Bones Sleep Still Under that Hill, None Can Say - Summons three skeletons. The Thunder Rolled like Waves on Black Seas - Stuns and pushes enemies in the area of effect. (Fortitude) The Lover Cried out to the Beloved, "I am Yours!" - Charm effect on all enemies in the area of effect. (Will) Rise Again, Rise Again, Scions of Adon! - Revives unconscious allies and heals a small amount of Stamina in a large area. This has no effect on characters who have already been Maimed or Killed in combat. The Brideman Slew Thirty 'Fore they Crossed Half the Hall - Increases the Might, Constitution, and Resolve of allies in the area of effect. In addition to their chants and invocations, chanters' close association with the Lost gives them one final, passive power: Ancient Memory. This ability activates whenever the chanter is in combat and grants low-level Stamina regeneration to all nearby allies. It is not as strong as a fighter's Constant Recovery or a priest's Holy Radiance, but can affect even faraway allies at all times. Cadegund, a priest. Priests are devoted followers of one or more deities, though almost all have a primary dedication to a single god above all others. They are well-versed in philosophy, myths, and legends, giving them an inherent bonus to the Lore skill. Additionally, the requirements of their faith often involve traveling long distances in difficult circumstances, giving them an inherent bonus to Athletics. In the world of Eora, priests do not gain power directly from their deity, but from their belief in the deity and the tenets of their religion. Paladins share a similar source of power, but differ from priests in the intensity and nuance of their beliefs. Paladins' faith is single-minded, extremely passionate, and held above all other concerns. The faith of priests is more philosophical, open to criticism (both their own and from others), and malleable from individual to individual. While paladins are ever-burning wellsprings of spiritual energy, priests gather energy into their own souls and release it through the use of specific prayers. These prayers form the common spells priests use in battle, ranging from healing magic and divine attacks to a variety of blessings and curses. Compared to wizards, priests have access to a smaller number of spells overall but do not need to prepare those spells in a grimoire. And while priests do have offensive spells, they are smaller in area and generally weaker in power than similar effects available to wizards and druids. Here are a few: Restore Minor Stamina - Part of a series of progressively powerful Stamina-healing spells. Restores Stamina to all allies in the area. Armor of Faith - All allies in the area gain bonus Damage Threshold. Withdraw - Caster or ally is momentarily phased out (cannot act, cannot be targeted) and regenerates Stamina. Divine Terror - All enemies in the area are Frightened for the duration (Will). Consecrated Ground - Creates a long-lasting circle of Stamina regeneration on the ground for allies. Divine Mark - Blasts the target with Burn damage and reduces their Deflection for a short duration (Will). Holy Power - Allies' Might and Resolve are increased. Pillar of Faith - Does Crush damage to the target (Reflex) and knocks enemies Prone (Fortitude) in a small area (Foe Only). Prayer Against Restraint - Part of a series of spells that ward against afflictions. Grants a bonus to resist any attack containing the Hobbled or Stuck afflictions. If those afflictions are already on the target, their durations are reduced by 10 seconds (Hobbled) or 5 seconds (Stuck) respectively. Watchful Presence - All affected allies gain an effect on them that will last until the end of combat or until triggered. When any affected character drops below 20% Stamina, Watchful Presence will heal a significant amount of Stamina on the character. Triumph of the Crusaders - Allies gain a bonus that restores Stamina every time they defeat an opponent. The ally must strike the "finishing" blow to gain the benefit. Revive the Fallen - Revives and restores a modest amount of Stamina to unconscious allies in a small area. This has no effect on characters who have already been Maimed or Killed in combat. Salvation of Time - Extends the duration of all beneficial effects on allies. Crowns for the Faithful - Increases the Perception, Intellect, and Resolve of all allies in the area. Cleansing Flame - Hurls a ball of holy fire at an enemy. It does continuous Burn damage to the target and reduces the duration of beneficial effects (Reflex). After a few seconds, the Cleansing Flame leaps to another enemy within 3m and repeats the process again, ultimately affecting up to three targets. If no valid targets are in range when a leap occurs, the spell expires. In addition to their spells, all priests have two inherent abilities: Interdiction and Holy Radiance. Interdiction is a fast-acting Dazed effect that the priest can apply to a group of enemies. It does not have a long duration, but can be valuable in gaining a quick advantage. Holy Radiance regenerates Stamina for all allies in close proximity to the priest. Additionally, any vessels (spirits bound into unliving matter like dead flesh, copper, or bronze) hit by the effect take Burn damage and are Frightened if the radiance overcomes their Will. The power of both Holy Radiance and the paladin's Faith and Conviction abilities can be modified by their behavior and the reputations they develop from the choices they make. When players make a paladin or priest character, they select an order or deity, respectively. Each choice highlights two types of behavior that are celebrated and two types of behavior that are condemned. For priests and paladins played as the main character, their Holy Radiance and Faith and Conviction power will shift based on their behavior. Reinforcing their deity's or order's preferred behavior will gradually increase their power, while playing against type will cause a small diminishment in their power. These changes are not dramatic, but reflect a measure of dissonance between the character's stated faith and how they choose to conduct themselves. A few paladin orders: The Shieldbearers of St. Elcga - An order of Aedyran holy warriors who emphasize kindness and diplomacy over cruelty and aggression. The Shieldbearers were founded in honor of an elven noble who helped unite the Aedyr and Kulklin kingdoms after a long war. Kind Wayfarers - Knights-errant who assist troubled travelers and celebrate love, condemning deception and malice even when dealing with their enemies. The Kind Wayfarers are a diverse group of people and can be found all over the known world. Bleak Walkers - Soldiers dedicated to conducting warfare mercilessly and with extreme brutality in order to bring a swift end to conflicts. Known for their unyielding, terrible nature, most nobles will only call on them as a last resort. Some of the deities priests can select: Eothas - Presumed dead by many, Eothas is (or was) the god of renewal and light. His followers exemplify honesty and benevolence in their interactions with others. In the Dyrwood, Eothasians are often victims of prejudice due to the aftermath of The Saint's War, in which the Eothasian peasant known as St. Waidwen led a holy war into Norwaech. Magran - A goddess of fire and warfare, Magran is celebrated by many Dyrwoodans for her priests' assistance in The Saint's War. Already known for their use of firearms, the priests collaborated to develop the "Godhammer" bomb that destroyed St. Waidwen at Evon Dewr Bridge. Statues of Magran can be found all over the Dyrwood and Magranites are popularly known for their boldness and quick wits. Berath - The god (or goddess) of the dead takes many forms in different cultures, but their names are widely invoked by most people at one time or another. Theologians see Berath as the guardian of all gateways, including the gates of life, death, and rebirth that all mortals must pass through. Common folk fear the priesthood of Berath but respect them for their level-headedness and unflinching resolve in the face of endless death and suffering. The Leaders of the Band are a powerful trio of classes for players who choose to focus on bolstering their allies. Each class has its own style of providing benefits and we hope you enjoy experimenting with their varied mechanics. That's all for this week. Let us know what you think of the chanter and priest in the forum. As always, thanks for reading.

Hey, everyone. Tomorrow's update (5/13) is being pushed until Wednesday (5/14). There are a few things that we want to polish before showing off to you guys. Also of note, we are going to try out posting the update in the morning instead of the afternoon. Look for it around 10:00 AM Pacific Time.

I need to figure out this ban functionality. =p

No way, man! Maybe for amateur-gramming. These are pros. u_u Okay, seriously though, I think the programming there is feature programming. Finishing the narrative might involve further dialogue implementation and content tweaks/additions, but it doesn't seem like it's really feature additions. I guess one is "programming", the other "scripting"... Avoiding the side discussion... every project is different. There isn't one specific way that a project has to be done to be successful. As it relates to Eternity (and other Obsidian games) we will continue writing until we are localization locked. Even when we are loc locked, we will still do a bit of writing in areas if we feel it is absolutely necessary. Normally we would be farther along in our writing, but, as with everything else, sometimes there are things out of your control. Our narrative designers came onto the project later than expected, but they are making really great progress. It isn't an ideal situation, but it has worked out for us.

i'm glad there's been nothing revealed about the plot. i hope it stays that way. We are deliberately trying to avoid talking about the plot very much. We love talking about the world, but we don't want to spoil any surprises.

It's a xaurip hut... they aren't the smartest creatures.

Did dynamic cloth and hair end up making it in? We do have dynamic cloth, but we are probably not going to do dynamic hair.

These areas have not had a paintover yet. We want to lockdown all of the geometry before we do any of that. We should be starting the paintover process in a few weeks if everything goes well. As for characters blending into the environment, Adam has been hard at work coming up with a solution. Maybe we can convince him to do an update about it.

We are in our Alpha phase right now. We are currently going through all of our previously created areas and revising anything that we think needs more work - both art and design. Programming is nearing feature complete. We are tracking to be feature complete in a couple of weeks. This means that we are feature locked and most of the programming team will be diverted into bug fixing, feature polish, demos, etc. Narrative will have a full pass done in a few weeks, as well. We are almost completely finished with the first pass on our crit path narrative. Audio and VFX are still a ways off and won't be finished until July or August. They come onto the project later than the other teams because they require that content exists in a locked down form before they can do their work. Character Art is working on creature variants, armor variants, and other miscellaneous items. Soon they will be adding in unique armors and weapons. Also, they will be creating head and hair variants in the next few weeks. Animation is finishing up the last remaining A priority tasks and is moving on to some of our B priority animations (special attacks and whatnot). UI/Concept Art has most of the UI in at an Alpha level. Kaz is finishing up things like Scripted Interaction slides and special UI screens. Also, he has a ton of portraits and areas to paint in the near future. Production is figuring out project finalization, localization, Kickstarter rewards, convention plans, expansion planning, and a ton of other small things.

Next week? It's been your trend for quite a while to release an update every other week. Do we actually get the treat of a new update next week? I won't complain . Oops... I messed up. We are going to do one in two weeks - not next week.