First let me preempt what I know is going to be the recurring comment from folks after reading this news:
Your pain has been acknowledged. We are absolutely dying to release more than anyone, believe me! ːamadeus_spookedː
At the moment we are (worryingly) still wrapping up on critical components of Crystal Hunt. This is not bugs or polish, this is more like actual main mechanisms of Crystal Hunt that prevent the game even being played through start to finish.
After these missing components get done, we will finally be able to switch to bugfix mode and the game should then be "playable", albeit buggy, so hopefully at this point we could get an idea of how bad is the QA period is going to be.
So that is what's going on in development. I would say it is best not to get caught up on release dates and let it happen when it happens.
The update is freaking huge and it's like a new game getting dropped on top of the game you know so well, so thanks for your patience on this -- let us cook!
Now, news time.
I wanted to throw a spotlight on environments in this news because it is going to be such a huge part of 1.0 with a lot of new content.
Environment team have been mostly focusing on a couple of major tasks on their road to 1.0; namely adding an entirely new Dungeon biome, improving the current sandbox maps to make them lore friendly (including the brand new Ruins revamp) and improving / optimizing graphics where possible.
Let's get into the new dungeon first, as this is a major component to the lore aspect of the new Crystal Hunt progression mode.
This is going to be a really fine balancing act, because we wanna show off lots of cool stuff but we are also dying to keep as much as we can a surprise so you guys can enjoy the experience for the first time in VR. ːlunar2019piginablanketː
I'm gonna try my best to walk this fine line!
The Dalgarians -- who they were and what were they all about. This will be a major hinge in the player's motivation while playing Crystal Hunt, as you explore the ancient Dalgarian ruins and gather lore to piece together a bigger picture of the world and events surrounding the Crystal Hunt.
I mentioned many times before that this will not be a hand-holding experience, and is aimed at a more self-motivated, "old-school" type of player who enjoys digging deep and piecing things together.
However I also mentioned that if you are not this type of player that is okay too, as it will be possible to enjoy the Crystal Hunt progression mode at face value and without reading a single bit of lore; you may simply enjoy the aspect of unlocking new skills, exploring ruins, fighting, etc.
When creating the Dalgarian dungeon biome, the environment and design team wanted to try something quite new for B&S by moving away from the familiar medieval style, which was mostly based on real world references - if you hadn't realized, Western Europe served as a huge inspiration for Eraden in architecture and design; medieval France, Celtic Ireland, etc.
This task was challenging for the team because they had to imagine an entirely new environment from scratch, without relying too directly on real world references. The team didn't want it to feel too familiar that you might associate it with any real world location.
There was indeed a lot testing, tweaking and refining in this process before the guys hit something that felt good.
The goals were to create a location that instilled feelings of discovery and exploration, so that entering a new room would be surprising, intriguing and impressive by its scale; something very awesome in VR!
In contrast, there was a desire to stay away from old tropes like the classic "RPG Dark ruins / Crypts" type dungeons, while still retaining the feeling of danger and slight spookiness from liminal spaces.
This was an ancient civilization that has been undisturbed until now, so we really wanted to capture that.
An effort was also made to incorporate environmental storytelling. While not overt lore exposition, the idea is that the rooms themselves could be open to interpretation for the player to infer what kind of ancient civilization this was.
For that reason, when it came to the room conception process, this would involve the key question: "what is this room's purpose?" The team wanted the archaeological remnants of the Dalgarians to be logical and lore fitting.
We always opted for quality over quantity in this process, though we ended you with a ton of rooms anyway, lol.
There are also miscellaneous and cosmetic changes coming to some of the Sandbox maps.
With the new lore of Blade & Sorcery being added in Crystal Hunt, we were out to make the world of Byeth feel more coherent as a fantasy world.
For this reason we wanted to revisit the sandbox maps and pull them into that lore to make them feel part of this world as opposed to them feeling like random disjointed maps.
The most noticeable of this effort is the appearance of Oron in the sky!
Did you know Byeth was a moon? ːsteamdanceː
We are always pushing, pushing, pushing PCVR to its limits to make the best looking VR game we can. To go with this, some maps have had improvements in textures, dressings and lighting, whilst still trying to keep everything performance friendly.
Canyon got a cosmetic makeover and looks absolutely gorgeous.
But it's not just Oron that makes an appearance in the sandbox maps. The Azure Star now makes an appearance too.
And who knows, maybe it will have a part to play in Crystal Hunt... ːtmntdonː
That's it for this news, folks. Hope you guys are excited!
