Reign of Guilds News

Weekly report #10

I 3D models

Siege towers and hedgehogs

Last time we showed ladders not only tightly fixed in the open world but also moveable ladders that the players could place against the wall of a besieged castle.

Today we are going to talk about siege towers and hedgehogs.

[Plenty of time - we’ll read it!]

Siege towers are made by the armourers as the other siege weapons.

Siege towers will have a few levels. Its size and durability will depend on the levels. At the moment the concept provides a separate controller to move a siege tower, it works like this:

To move a siege tower we will need 4 characters with (strength+stamina) > N;
They come to the handles along the edges and press “E”, ensuring a traction force to move the tower;
After activation of the movement controller, a player can press only “W” and “S”, a tower moves only when all 4 players press “W” (back - “S”);
To turn the tower right or left only players of one side should push it;
To deploy the tower fast the players of the opposite side should move backwards;
In all other cases the tower stops and doesn’t move.
Thus, the controlling of the siege tower is kind of a mini-game where only coordinated movements of fantastic four can deliver the tower to the destination. The number of actions and restrictions are deliberately reduced. It should be taken into consideration that this characters should be protected and healed.

[Had the time - we’ve read it!]

That’s how the towers of first tier look like:

1. usual tower

2. skin with nordic shields and medium metallic part

3. skin with Roman shields (scutum) and heavy metallic part

Here’s the variant of the same towers but of dark wood:

The characteristics of towers don’t depend on skins. It isn’t changed.

Now let’s talk about defensive hedgehogs.

That’s how it looks like:

As ladders, there will be 2 types of them:

tightly fixed without durability, it therefore can’t be destroyed;
made by armorer, players can’t independently place it on the field to make temporary defense store or block the way for the towers.

[Question]

We had one important unresolved issue - after creating siege weapons by armorer we want to take it apart to parts. Every part will weight about 50-100 kg. All guild members will have to take this parts and pull it to the castle. Then the armorer should build it again using finished parts. Building or taking apart is possible only if the guild is renting the closest store for the armorer.

Another variant - armorer creates a draught in his workshop. Following it he can build the siege weapons next to a castle. In this case, guild members will have to get resources instead of parts.

And the third variant - is a casual decision, typical for the majority of games. The siege weapon is one item in the tools, appearing instantly after activation.

[Write your ideas in the comments]

Middle weight pants

Denis, our armour and clothes modeler, has the freedom of creation. That’s why we are often surprised with stylish decisions.

II Level design

No comments, only contemplation.

Lumber mill

Cotton farm

Attentive reader will obviously raise this question: why there is a yarrow on the cotton farm? Answer is very simple - we will approve all plant models later. That’s why the fields have many weeds. Difficulty lies in its optimization. Beautiful and realistic cotton “costs” for GPU as ¼ of a character.

III VFX

This VFX was created for the AOE healing magic.

At the moment we are thinking of giving one of this types of magic not only to druids but to other classes, requiring water (reducing ECE).

Firstly we want to talk about this magic.

[Plenty of time - we’ll read it!]

From the start we had the aim to make an active (skillful) druid more useful than other druids that eats during game session.

Method was typical - to make a few different types of healing.

From left to right: medium AOE with small radius, strong conical AOE, faint AOE with huge radius.

Standing in the thick of things let the druid use stronger AOE skills. The spatial orientation and keeping the group in front of the healer let the druid heal them with the cone.

[Had the time - we’ve read it!]

IV Conclusion

Again about around-development:

On the “Alpha” page we added an information about the level of implementation of finished content in the client. On the next week we will determine the most convenient steps of implementation. Then there will be more status bars. There you will see what will be expected on the test server. Information will be updated 1 time a week on Mondays.
On this week one more member joined our ROG team - Dmitry. He is responsible for the optimization. We need a separate worker because we can’t afford to allocate programmers for it. Optimization of such large-scale world can slow down our work, that we are trying to speed up. And we do it successfully.
And also good news - we made first and the most important step of making new site. There will be one account for the game and forum. And there will be one unified registration on the xsolla+site+forum.
We took care not only of those who had accounts on the forum but also of those who wanted to link another forum account to your game account.

That’s all for now, take care and have a nice weekend!

It’s Friday evening - ROGgoms up, friends!

Yours faithfully,
Reign of Guilds Team

Weekly report #9

Notice: We respect the desire of the Steam community to get familiar with the new projects within Steam, so we decided to publish regularly (every 2 days) previously released reports on our Steam page, until we catch up with the current ones. By the way, you can read all the reports on our website. Reign of Guilds roadmap - combines all development reports at one place.
And here's our Weekly report #9 (originally released 11/09/18)

Reporting Friday is on the air, friends, for the ninth time and right on schedule!

Hello everyone and get to the point.

Firstly, we want to talk a little bit about an implementation of a structure for our reports. Our reports basically consist of demonstration of the content (pictures) and text. The text often contains simplified recap of a project development, description of mechanics or just our thoughts and experience.

We want to highlight such text in a certain style. If our reader isn’t interested in it or doesn’t have enough time he can just skip it.

We need to make up a new title for this section. Write your variants in comments and remember - don’t be so serious! This section has the title “Plenty of time - I’ll read it!”

And the best one win (majority of likes)!

I 3D models - ladders

And today we’re gonna talk about step ladders. Behind the apparent simplicity, it’s a big headache for developers. Mechanics of ladder interaction seems working only with some tricks.

But first let’s see them.

That’s how the simplest ladders look like in close up:

There are many ladders of different length:

And there are ladders of different strength:

Also there are ladders of different tree species, but we’ll talk about it later. Now let’s talk about difficulties, caused by step ladders.

II Animations with ladders

[Plenty of time - I’ll read it!]

The main problems with this animations are:

feet shouldn’t step on air;
a character should “hold on” to the right place on the ladder and do it with a suitable range;
a character should come down off the ladder;
and a character also should climb the ladder from upstairs.

Developers solve the problems in different ways:

someone turns a blind eye to “ski” and invisible steps;
someone speeds up the third person camera and moves it backwards from a turn of a character to make different fails invisible (movements near the ladder, sliding);
someone creates all step ladders at an angle to let a character to use it without a loss of functionality;
and someone turns a ladder into the interactive subject, teleporting a character up or down.

This is not an exhaustive list of decisions. It is used even by giants of industry. Anyway all of you met these moments somewhere;

[Had the time - I’ve read it!]

We don’t reinvent the wheel, only add the rim. Let’s see the results.

That’s how movements up and down look like.

A character steps the suitable places because the animation based on unified set of parameters such as the height and thickness of ladder steps.

Yes, it means that all step ladders can look different but this parameters will be the same.

This is an example of unification of the in-game content that allows to optimize work input and time but reduces the diversity.

That’s how it would be if our ladders didn’t have a ledge upper the last step about 1 m:

A character holds on the void because this is not an unified ladder.

III Level design

Mikhail, our producer (he is also responsible for the instances - internal parts of buildings) is so obsessed with the review of the level design of our designer Vladimir that he can’t stop taking screenshots of the world.

[Plenty of time - I'll read it!]

We remind that at the moment 90% of 2 counties are ready, each of which has 1 big city, 2-3 villages, 14-18 mining places. Its total surface area is about 70 square metres.

We’ve already told that such world area gives us huge space to add more content. It could happen that you leave beta at the edge of the desert forest and came back into a little village or a new mine. May be even next to a river or a lake.

[Had the time - I’ve read it!]

Now we offer to look at these locations while we think how to optimize it!)

Mason's workshop

Village

Donjon

It deserves clarification.

[Plenty of time - I’ll read it!]

We have come to the moment when we want to show our castles, adapted only to our system of castle capture.

Castle, as a building complex with its instances, will be unusual for the players.

First basement of a simple little donjon with a level 15 is presented below.

The castle mostly consists of the wood but the donjon (as the main building) has stone basement.

It is basically semi-basement section for the storage. But we know that the storage without table and wine for the storekeeper - is not a storage at all!)

In the next reports we will talk about scrolls, treasury, mechanics of capture and holding of the castle and territories!

[Had the time - I’ve read it!]

IV Conclusion

In conclusion we’re going to talk about around-development:

A new programmer, Pavel, is engaging in work successfully! The controller of the flying mobs was under his mouse. Now he is responsible for the mechanics of controller’s movements on the ladders. And then, more likely… drum roll… - mechanics of the siege weapons. It’s not the most important work on schedule but it’s easier to join the project with this work.
New site has some problems, as always. It could not be otherwise, so we don’t worry. We failed the deadlines, previous executors were fired. New executors started the work yesterday. Some may ask, why? Because we have an extremely non-trivial task. If you make MMORPG in a big way, you need the same magnitude with the website!
Expect the updating of Alpha page with added status of the remaining work next week. We’re still searching for the testers. We will start inviting those who have left applications by the end of the month.
And also we will return to the promoting in the West and add a page about ROG in Steam. Before this we will put to a vote few artworks, that will be used for this page.

And it’s only a small part of our plans and goals. The report isn’t made of elastic!

That’s all, take care and have a nice weekend!

And one more feature at the end:

It’s Friday evening - ROG’n’roll, friends!

Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team

Weekly report #8

I Animations

Third person animations with the book of mantra

The creation of animations is a process as imaginative as the creation of other parts of the game. But different strokes for different folks. And we have a funny story.

Our animator, Vlad, previously made this animation of a run with the book:

Our producer, Mikhail, blamed the creator for the strange behavior of the model’s right wrist.

Thereafter Vlad sent a corrected version of the animation and answered: “Is it better?”). Here’s this variant:

Then we found the golden mean. That’s how it looks like:

And that’s how running in the other direction looks like:

Here is a character standing in a combat stance with the mantra book:

P.S. The mantra book will have VFX in a hand similar to the using of a powder.

II Camera

Now let’s talk about mechanics that has influence on the visual components. We’ve already told that a character’s height will influence not only on a hitbox but also an altitude of the camera and the range of a melee weapon.

The height of the M character ranges between 160 and 196 cm. Now we are using the project with 196 cm.

The most interesting is that the camera will change its position with the combat stance. In the combat stances a character puts the feet apart and bends his legs. Eventually, 196 cm become 176-178 cm.

We decided to show this detail through the camera. In the end, that’s how it looks like.

Standing up straight (usual stance) character looks at the other character that stands up straight (both 196 cm):

The same character got a weapon, took a combat stance and the camera declined:

That’s how an unarmed character looks at an armed one:

The both characters are standing in the combat stances:

The lifting and lowering of the camera will be used only with taking a combat stance. Also the camera will swing if a player equips a weapon.

The camera doesn’t move when changing weapons.

P.S. Re-equipping will have technical cooldowns. It won’t be shown on the CD bar. But the camera movement will report about the temporary restriction of the functional. It allows us to solve the problems that we faced during the prototype with the instant re-equipping of weapons.

III Level design

Without further ado, let’s look at the pictures all together.

Cutting site

Village

Forest

IV 3D models - trousers

We worked on the trousers this week. Pictures below show the light and heavy samples of the different tiers:

V VFX

Let’s talk a little about walls. As we told in the last Report, there will be a few variants of the walls. That’s how an interim wall looks like (between magic and stone walls).

Magic replicates the form of the masonry mortar:

This walls can be different – from 2*2 to 12*6 (meters).

VI Conclusion

We will handle the organizational issues, tell about things close to game development, and also update information on the site in the near future. Then we will invite the new testers of those people who applied the appropriate topic.

We would like to conclude with humor.

Here’s the sketches of appearance customization of M. We test its variability and efficiency:

Let’s play! Find the real-life and game roles for these 3 characters. You have only one week.

The funniest variants will get the rewards from ROG Club!

Take care and see you later on open spaces of our social media, forum and website!

Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team

Weekly report #7

I VFX

We’ve already told pretty much about mechanics of obelisks.

That’s how the magic tower shield will look like. We will tell you about differences between usual and tower shield in more detail in the video-review of combat system 2.0.

That’s how the most basic magic wall will look like. This wall will be possible to cover the whole group. Also there will be a wall with a pronounced stone outline. Spell will cost more mana, cast will be longer, but the wall will be stronger.

This is an egg that can cover a character on all sides and save him from an enemies’ attack. And a “stowaway” who will be lucky to drop in it.

II Animations

We also prepared animations with the mantra book. But it makes a page with GIFs heavier, so we decided to show the whole dwarf animation and leave the book for the next time.

Dwarf is a complicated person. On the one hand, he has unattractive appearance but on the other hand the animations are different - some of them are serious and some of them are funny.

Let’s start with serious one.

That’s how a dward runs into battle. He is not a yellow-bellied and never runs away - only fight!

That’s how his fast attack looks like. Even better: “fast”.

Here’s the thing. The fast animations actually look pretty bad. We added nasty dispels and debuffs to his attacks.

That’s how his heavy attack looks like. Almost every hit will put the nastiest debuff.

That’s how the tragic death of a dwarf looks like:

Here’s a dwarf passing the time and he doesn’t care if someone is watching him:

Now, pay close attention, that’s a dwarf’s gait:

Recognize?

Well, a dwarf is one of the most outrageous mobs in the game. And he can afford it, for God’s sake! Drawing this animation, it was hard to adapt it to the height and an axe in hand.

It’s difficult to determine who suggested this idea, but let’s get one thing straight - it’s “in step with the times”.

III 3D models

Head

Someone asked us on the forum - if we had many inappropriate or outdated content.

We will certainly devote our report to it because we have a lot of such content, especially test tasks (they are paid so we can’t publish it).

And now it’s time to introduce a new head.

Last head had bad face morphs. On the stage of coding it was impossible to use it.

Here’s new head and its variants with the little edits in proportions of face and hairs.

That’s our first draft on the left. “Can we make NPC of the handsome head?”

In our opinion it turned out quite funny.

How do you think, how can we use left head? What character? In contrast, right head is lean variant of a character’s face.

Gloves

It requires no comments. They have different heaviness.

IV Conclusion

We would also like to say - today our new programmer Pavel have moved to Saint Petersburg. He is going to start the work on the project this weekend.

We will tell you about the development, our ideas and worries soon, but it’s not as interesting and funny as game content)

Thank you for reading us!

Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team

Weekly report #6

I 3D models

Bracelets

There are many different bracelets by the end of the week: from light rope, decorative and jewelry bracelets to bracelets that completely covers forearms.

We remind that you have 2 slots for bracelets (for every arm separately). Bracelets are shown on a character in comparison with an amulet. But they are invisible in the case of glove cuffs and tabards with wide sleeves (it’s a little spoiler about a modular system and a system of morphs).

Shirts

Shirts are divided into 2 main types. This is what sleeveless shirts look like.

Shirts almost won’t give stats to characters. Their appearance is a result of technical requirements under the desire to make clothes, weapon realistic and original.

“Long sleeve shirts. It differs from the sleeveless one with the… suddenly… sleeves.” (We prepare dashing descriptions of items)

Let’s say a few words about the system of weapon and clothes morphing (it’s similar to KCD). For MMORPG it’s not the most typical method to form the modular system of armour.

So for example, shirt: like any 3D models it has its geometry - as combination of polygons and peaks (it has .fbx format for modelers). It is further opened in Maya using .fbx. In addition to main geometry it has derivative forms (as shirt shrinks after washing). There are 4 parts (2 for arms, 1 for body, 1 for shoulder girdle in the case of a long helmet). And thanks to that the parts of the clothes don’t penetrate each other. Also we created LOD to optimize the loading of GPU. Thus, one initial geometry turns to 7-8 geometries.

If you are bored to read this short and simple descriptions of the process of development, write about it and some of us will definitely read it))

II Animations

Animations with crossbow

First, we want to mention that heavy master looks really funny with some piece of wood in hand))

Targeting

Reload

Run forward

Dodge right

Looking at this 4 animations, we need to highlight it, in addition to the common edit:

Mocap bounce became slower and won’t spoil gameplay;
And the most important thing is the targeting. It’s the part of the combat system 2.0. The players of our “Prototype” convinced us to implement it. RMB has this unique feature for the weapon. It’s targeting for the crossbows and bows. Buffs can change the ZOOM. After an effective range an arrow goes in parabola, but has the same damage. So it makes sense to shoot with the ZOOM of a sniper rifle at a distance 300+ meters, especially if a hunter specializes in physical attack (PA).

Animations of dwarves

It was daunting task for our animator to make a midget as special as a stickman. The midget model was fairly less interesting that the stickman model. That’s why animations should be more attractive.

Vlad (our animator) made something special in response to demands. So, please welcome - mocap for mobs!

Ye, ye, that’s right! Right here, in our office! We had inappropriate light that hindered us. But it’s mocap! And the most important thing that it’s an independent initiative of the animator to speed up the process of animation creating and also to make them more lifelike.

The process

And the result

We remind that we can’t allow such luxury as mocap in many animations because of the timing of combat system.

And the Great Mop of Violence (GMV) will also be included in ROG after this as a meme)

III UI

Those, who have tested the trade with vendors in PTR, knew this mechanics.

Now we will shortly talk about some aspects of this trade:

Every vendor has his own dynamic balance. This mechanics creates semi-automatic system of inflation control and new requirements for the procedure of ‘looted stuff’ selling.
To avoid the abusing this trade uses shopping cart similar to online shops, contrary to all MMORPG market.
Furthermore, in the lower part of the screen there is information about taxes for the Count and his guild (to realize who spoiled your life and whom you need to find).

Someone’s Friday is already over, someone’s is coming to an end, and someone’s is just beginning, in spite of a calendar showing the 20th of October)

Take care, have fun and follow the news and our project!

Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds team