DEVBLOG 02 – A Journey Begins
Welcome back to our second development update for Ex World Online: Obsidian! Yes, you read that right. We have the title down for our first release and we will talk a little bit about that in our Lore update in a minute. We decided to put our weekly updates on hold until there is more of an audience out there to engage with. For now, content yourselves with these monthly heaps of information. So, where does Ex World “ExW” stand since January 1st? Without further ado, let’s launch right into it!
• Ex World Online Obsidian Gameplay for Pre-Alpha
We have finished mapping out what type of character progression and gameplays we would want the players to experience and test out first. Development for questing, leveling and 5-man dungeons has already begun. In addition to that, we have complete our guild system, partying system, and other social mechanics that we will be posting more about in the upcoming Devblogs. The idea is to give players the ability to test out our guild wars and guild base mechanics at the very start of the game. Other updates that are on the menu for pre-alpha is arena matchmaking. We are currently developing a system for 5v5 fights with comprehensive queue knowledge for our ranked and titled fights between players.
Crafting will also play a big role in the game and that is one of the systems we would ideally like to get implemented right off the bat for testing as well. Currently, we have a few ideas for how we would want to implement life skilling in general, but for now, we are aiming towards a more old school RuneScape approach towards leveling up and crafting your life skills.
• Narrative and Lore
I’m very excited to announce that we have two seasoned writers heading our lore department. Much of the ExW lore has already been completed, that we were able to find a part of the lore we could transform into a Manga series. The 2D artists are thrilled at this concept and are eager to begin development on that front. The first expansion of ExW would be titled Obsidian after the fierce warrior race that played a key role in the decimation of Logan and his hold to Power. More of this can be read on our website under “What is Ex World”
• Unreal Engine 4.25
Unreal Engine is the best choice in order to fit our needs for developing an "MMORPG", as its tools take into consideration all type of optimizations in order to create huge maps, large number of players and Ai with complex systems.
• 2D Art
Our 2D department has been absolutely killing it this year with lots of our concept work done. We have produced all the concept characters for our playable races and classes. Have a look below at a couple of them. In addition to that we have begun mapping out how our starting towns would look for our environmental artist to get to work.
Engineering update
We have begun the rapid conversion of our combat system, much of which is being written from the ground up in C++ to cater to a very dynamic fighting style. I am proud to say that in only three weeks we were able to get so much done and just to share a little bit of what that is so far for our new Combat and Locomotion:
- We have set up the base data structures for the new combat system.
- Added fully replicated Attributes and Stats systems that imply also their modifiers and calculations.
- Created Data tables that would help designers and artists to prototype when needed without requesting help from the programmers.
- Status effects (Buffs and Debuffs) were implemented with all their effects and behaviors on the character's attributes.
- Implemented an optimised smoother base locomotion that will be extended later for each in game race and class.
In addition to that, spawning spells and projectiles is complete as well, now we are finalising the movements/directions of the projectiles and adding the effect application such as deal damage, drain mana, heal, increase energy, apply buffs or debuffs.
What else is being reworked is our NPC AI. If you took notice last month, we did say we were going to be reworking it and we have. Adding very unique behavioral tree patterns to Ais so that players have a dynamic interaction, whether it is with MOBs or NPCs. I think the players would have a lot of fun with this as it allows for strategy and coordination from a very early encounter.
The island01 which was titled has been completely transformed into one of our small islands called Nile Island, which is an instanced starting area the players would first log into before being let out into the open world. While the island01 was created with assets from the marketplace, this one has been transformed into our own work of art which is a massive step forward as we are trying to flush out all of the marketplace purchased assets with our own.
We have also filled a couple of 3D roles and are looking forward to sharing their progress come March on what they have done. In the meanwhile, between now and then hopefully you will see us on Twitch streaming some of the progress we are making and some of the stress testing we have been doing each couple of weeks!
Best regards,
Geneva - Community Manager
