Reign of Guilds News

Weekly report #5

I Animations

And this time, looking at the animations together, we will tell you a little about the skinning of armour because it’s interesting enough. Very briefly about the most interesting things:

every element of armour uses the same skeleton (invisible) as the character (i.e. it contains an information about bones and its structure), that’s why every item can exist in the game separately, without any character;
elements of the joints (elbow pads, knee pads, shoulder pads) have 3 types - soft, hard and compound. Soft armour is fixed to the different bones and bends with the covered joint. Hard armour is fixed to the one bone. When the joint bends, a gap appears at the side without fixing. Compound armour - 2 pads are connected with soft straps. These elements are able to move, following the leading bone.
physics of materials. The following animations show that lower part of the armour is cuffed and follows the thigh bones. The engine and the epoch allow to configure the physics of materials to make this part soft and considering a collision of the character. You’ve already seen something similar in an earlier version on the prototype (tabard of crusaders etc.). We’ve already configured the physics of material for the new armour but the integration is the issue of painstaking tests and optimization. The burden is entirely on GPU. We wait for the bot system to take the final decision. It will allow to have a couple of hundred characters in view, check fps, activate (make them jump, for example) and see how the different video cards will react.

Sword thrust 10-04

Sword thrust 07-01

Therefore 2 questions:

Are you interested in report dedicated to armour and clothes in the game?
Which hardware would you recommend to test (processor and video card)? We certainly check the steam statistics of configuration of gaming PCs, also we have standard assemblies. We’re going to use it in the last stages of development to optimize the work. But we are always receptive to your enquiries and wishes.

II Mobs

Minotaur

It’s time for something new. We’re all know him - big, strong, with slurred mooing (as our executive director when he drinks), he is about 3 meters tall. Will he have his own labyrinth? Or will he be homeless in our Dwarhan Kingdom? Will see! But you would better to have a ball of thread.

Werewolf

It’s harder to handle with this guy. In the format of ‘Maximum” concept - it’s metamorphosis of the wolves. Wolves from the earlier version hurt not only your nervous system but ours too. That’s why we decided to upgrade them.

We’ve already told that dark nights would regularly occur (it would be not only darker but also it would change the distance of displaying of text and HP bars above players and mobs). It’s the night when random wolves will turn into the werewolves, while player gets aggro. And typical grind changes into typical rapid escape. We will tell about unusual fight with werewolf when it will be liven up with animations.

III 3D models

Boots and gloves

In this section we are preparing for the winter.

Gloves and boots - from the light to the heavy armour. We remind that in the ROG will be informal division by heaviness of armour requiring different attributes. It’s easy if there is the main characteristic of armour. Light and heavy variants will give the same quantity of the main characteristic but different protection. It is connected to the increasing of attributes in general to transform a hardy character into really heavy tank. And strong character should damage with impressive thrusts of his Zwei but die from a glance of an archmage.

IV UI

After about a week of edits and working on UX, we are close to the final screen of an item. It looks like this:

Naturally, set points are random.

V Conclusion

That’s all that we wanted to report for the past week.

Follow the news and have a nice weekend!

Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum.

Reign of Guilds Team

Weekly report #4

I Animations

We continue to train our steel master, soon he’s going to get 52.15. Here’s some shots of his training.

Hit 01-08

Thrust

Hit 07-01

Hit 02-07

II Mobs

Dwarf

We tried to imagine midget’s appearance for a long time, especially when he ruins players’ life with debuff during getting levels! He was too noble and we were forced to spoil his appearance several times.

Now we are satisfied with our work. He has 3 variants of clothes. The red one is festive.

And most importantly, there is also his dead variant. It looks more like a leper and there is a fear of getting infected through a screen.

Lich-niphone

We decided to diversify the niphones. Dead niphone lives at cemeteries and other locations with all things wicked. He shriveled and split his two tails in half, in total: four tails. We’ll see - whether it allows him to move like tiphone!

P.S. Originally, niphone has only 2 legs-tails, as it should be.

III VFX

Magic shield

And now for the best part. Do you remember that we mentioned the obelisks in the game? It is a protective item for the off-hand. If blocking is active it will raise magic shields. It is the same as physical block.

Moreover, high level obelisks allow to hold the wall in front of the player, protecting from arrows, hits and enemies. But this obelisks are extremely costly and take a lot of mana. That’s why you shouldn’t suppose that this wall will cover the pass at Thermopylae.

The apogee will be the obelisks that rise a hemisphere around the character and his companions. We’ll get to that later. They are currently under development.

Blind

This debuff will look like that.

In fact, it will be redrafted to make it more useful. You won’t dispel it with little purge powder. But this debuff will require many attributes of magic skills.

IV Conclusion

Many of you are interested in Alpha, as before.

Trust me, we are concerned about it even more than you!

Have you probably noticed the lack of level design in this report? The reason is that our level designers are involved in fixing technical gaps. It appears when levels are integrated in single mode but should be integrated in the open MMORPG world, divided into the servers.

Anyway, it’s a challenge to bring the year of work of the whole collective together. The longer we work on it, the more we are sure that it’s hard.

That’s why we are appreciate your understanding, patience and support.

Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum.

Stay with us and wait for the news from the front, see you later!

Weekly report #3

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 #3 (originally released 09/28/18)

Let’s start the third weekly report with the discussion about Alpha. It is important for us to make Alpha not only impressive but showing the difference in our level in comparison with the Prototype of previous year. Moreover, we intend actively to promote our project and new site would be a big help for us (not so much design as possibilities for promoting).

That’s why we beg you to understand the deferrals. The integration of collective work for the whole year (code, models, level design, animations, UI) in one project is a diligent and careful work.

And now what we will show to our readers.

I 3D models

Hunter

It is the 3 and 4 tiers. A character still wears light armour. The only thing that is conceptually changed - weight of a pad. It turns to a breastplate but doesn’t humper the movements on the side. Hunters still wear ‘cloths’, but they have agility and mobility.

Respawn places

Players will respawn in the buildings like that after death. One building is for the players with neutral and better karma, the other is for the "bad boys", except ‘psychopaths’. Any ideas about their place of respawn?

II VFX

Cold lager

Buff or debuff? That is the question. It depends on the quantity. On a Friday night it’s probably buff)

Bloody chains

You could meet this debuff in the other games. It doesn’t slow down the target, but it damages depending on the covered distance.

Weights

A weight is a weight. Every weight has about 2 pounds. You won’t go far with it. Unlike debuffs requiring the air, this spell will allow players who have a lot of stamina to slow down the other players by adding them the weight in the bags!

III Animations with one-handed sword

It’s been a long route to show you the new animations in the third person with the new model of the man, wearing the new armour. Well, we are almost ready to show the new modular system. The new animations in the third person will be prettier thanks to it.

A stance without shield became lighter and the movements became less uptight. A character without shield will receive a bonus to the swordplay.

Hit 03-09

Hit 10-04

Thrust

Hit 04-10

IV Conclusion

Our team has small changes - the new CM (Alexander, as @Ловен on the forum) joined our team. Many of you have already known him.

Follow the news, join Alpha (who hasn’t had a chance), thanks for the support and feedback, see you later!

Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum.

P.S. Our ROG team is leaving to buff with lager and other beverages ;)

Weekly report #2

I Level design

Mining and processing of resources

We obviate the need to spend thousands of hours clicking LMB next to the rock and watching the character fill his supplies with sparks flying from the pick.

However, you still should spend much time in mining locations.

A list of types of locations and resources has already been approved, but recently we made two important decisions:

We rewarded the counties with some resources in varying degrees with an obvious surplus and deficit to stimulate the trade and movement of resources between the counties;
We increased the number of locations with resources in 4 times (now the number will be about 16) to minimize the risk of holding of all respawns by one zerg.

Locations look like this:

This farmer was clearly a lieutenant in the closest military unit. Training dummies discarded by himself keep hated birds away from his favourite vegetable patches.

II 3D models

Hunter

Hunter will have 2 ways of development: light armour and bow, and medium armour with crossbow. A suitable variant can be to use high tiers of light armour with low tiers of medium armour and vice versa.

Today we will show first two tiers of light armour for hunter. As always a part of items - his “prof. items”, and the other part has no professional requirements.

III VFX portals

The teleport system is significant factor in development of the scale and structure of the realm. Players need the teleport tokens to use the portals. Some of them will be available, but some of them will be very hard to get. We already told about teleport system in our previous article.

Now it’s time to show VFX of portals:

Little, round with red glow - castle portal, located… “Inside the castles!” -prompting captain. Only legal castle owners can use it.
Triangular and big, - city/village portal;
Mossy and moldy - abandoned portal.

IV Animations

4.1. Stickman

Our old and favourite friend from the previous report got his own animations. He’s ready to show it:

It’s his basic stance. He’s just standing.

He’s looking around.

He’s taking part in the competition in power walking of summer 1072. Unfortunately, he will never be able to run.

He’s hitting. No one knows why he’s bouncing, because he’s not pocket-size.

He’s hiding with fear if you show him the fire.

4.2. First-person animations

Work does not terminate on the first-person animations.

Sword + shield. Hit from the block. This is unique attack that will be available only for gladiator (It’s buff. Gladiator can use it almost constantly on the high levels).

Sword and free hand. Hit 08-02. Left hand! By the way, it will have its own advantages. Some of them are essential.

One-handed sword and free left hand. Hit 02-08. Some of advantages: reducing the cooldown time of 25%, unique attack with RMB. We are not sure in the need for the shield!

V UI

This week we were working on the equipment screen. At the moment, taking into account available mechanics, there will be additional 21 slots (Don’t pay attention to the icons - they are temporary).

Moreover we work on the compass: now it shows not only points of the compass but also the selected objects of the realm, marked places and group members.

But the happiest news for us: showed interfaces has already been implemented in the game. And soon it will be “alive”!

VI Conclusion

About essential for the alpha: audit is to develop, game client is lighter now - 15 gb (within the realm). But mobs, models of armour and weapons will add about 5 gb.

Little announcement of next report: active work is being conducted under the mobs. Probably we will show someone of named and huge mobs (bosses), and also other mobs: forest dwarf or niphon (it depends on who will be ready).

Thank you for your interest, watch the news, see you in a week!

Don’t forget to share your opinion and thoughts on our forum and Facebook.

Weekly report #1

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 #1 (originally released 09/14/18)

Friends! We start the new series of reports on the work done. Reports will be less in size than devblogs, but we are going to publish it more often. There will be one usual devblog for every four reports.

Let’s start with little joys: 11/09/2018 the number of messages on our forum exceeds 10 thousand. We rejoice at this messages even more than at notional users, that appeared in large numbers because of free keys.

I Animations

We already showed you new upgraded animations in the third person. Now we’re working on the similar set of animations the first-person. Some of this are (number in the titles is the direction of stroke on the dial, where the thrust starts and where goes):

Greatsword. Thrust "09-03"

Greatsword. Thrust "01-07"

Greatsword. Thrust "03-09"

Stabbing

II Stickman

Let us introduce him – stickman. He isn’t the strongest mob, and to be honest - even weak. His habitat you can find everywhere. The stickman holds no danger but he is valuable because of the loot. Usually loot includes firewood for preparing of powder, that everybody needs. Now you can see the situation about demand on this loot clear, isn’t it? By the way, we weren’t fully sincere about the weakness of the mob. You can occasionally meet a very strong one, that even cup raid won’t handle it. You can unexpectedly meet him in the suburbs, after looting his weaker brothers.

III Updated UI

Also work continues on the UI. Now we’re working on the character screen.

The apparent simplicity (because of the refusal from abundance of characteristics and indicators) seeks to adapt UI to the original system of character development. We already told about this system: “attributes - in the morning, level - in the night!”.

Except the main information about levels of the character, HP and MP, energy, satiety, karma and profession, huge blocks are devoted to attributes, its minimum/gained/necessary quantity, opportunity to block the gaining of attributes and experience as a whole.

In addition, we made the table showing not only the whole quantity but also different attributes - personal and item attributes. It simplifies the control of builds.

IV Models of houses

We already showed the Tulglas city, where you can meet the buildings of different and original styles. Now we decide to show them in detail - moreover, now we’re working on the refinement of materials, the distance of detailing and quality of shadows of this buildings.

V Conclusion

In conclusion we need to answer at least the one of three eternal questions: “What to do?”, “whose fault is it?”, “When the alpha would be open?”. We choose the last one.

Shortly: we expect alpha in October.

In detail:

1. We finished the audit of the world, here’s the first 30 gb of client. We are not satisfied with such alpha situation, that’s why we are thinking about excluding something;
2. We’re working on the integration of the new model of character, animations and new items into one capable entity;
3. We’re working on the new battle system (blocking, special AOE hitting, timings, etc.);
4. After this we are going to work on the graphic optimization, adding new sound effects, etc.;
5. Updating AI mobs, adding new mobs and animations.

These 5 points are the reasonable minimum, that we want to perform in the alpha.

Yes, we increased not only the content but also quality requirements. It’s connected to our desire to please our test participants and to leave delightful aftertaste, brightening up the awaiting.

Look forward to your comments on the forum or Facebook page!