Crowfall 24/7 Testing (last chance for beta 2) and Update on Eternal Kingdom Building

Kyoji · Mar 10, 2017

First the EK System

FIRST LOOK: BUILDING EKS

Thursday March 9th, 2017

Hey Crows,

"MiracleMax" Lancaster here -- your friendly neighborhood associate producer -- delivering an update on world-building in Crowfall®.

Crowfall aims to tap the best elements of MMORPGs, action combat games and strategy games and blend them together into a cohesive play experience. In pre-alpha so far, we’ve invested a lot of time in the MMO and action components. In the last few months, we’ve shifted gears to include another major pillar of our vision: building kingdoms, cities and castles.

Building placement gets us one (big) step closer to the ultimate goal: player-run kingdoms that lend a feeling of persistence and permanence to our game universe. In our upcoming tests, players will be able to build their own strongholds to act as guild housing and serve as public markets to form the foundation of our player-driven economy.

Below, I’ll explain how our earliest public prototype of building placement will work.

BUILDING PLACEMENT

Before they are placed in the world, buildings in Crowfall exist as deeds that can be stored in your inventory or spirit bank. Eventually these will be crafted, but in their first appearance in playtesting, deeds will enter the game via a new interface that allows you to import (some of) your crowdfunding rewards.

IMPORTING DEEDS FROM YOUR WEB ACCOUNT

When players log into the lobby, individuals with the Pre-Alpha 1 backer reward will see a list of deed entitlements that they can claim. Once they accept, those deeds will be moved into their Spirit Banks.

A few notes:

As with all of our tests, we’ll include more test groups in this process in ‘waves’, starting with the Pre-Alpha 1 test group, then Pre-Alpha 2, then Alpha 1, etc. (This FAQ explains how to find out which test group you’re in if you aren’t sure.)

NOT ALL OF THE BUILDING KITS ARE IN THE GAME! We started with a relatively limited set of building parts for testing. Players will receive “packs” that contain some, but not all, of the parts and pieces that they will eventually receive.

Currently, the Fort (small, medium, large) and Keep (small, medium, large) packs will be available on login.

The “attachable pieces” (merlons on top of the walls, torches and banners, etc.) are not available yet. In some cases (such as merlons) we pre-attached these to the walls, but in most cases they will be coming later.

MOST IMPORTANT: Redeeming these items right now will NOT cause you to “lose” them later. At various times we will re-start the test, and whenever that happens we will RESET all of the rewards on your account so that you can import them again for the next round of testing. Feel free to test without fear of losing anything!

NOTE: Once you redeem a purchase in the lobby, that purchase will be marked as USED in the current test. You will NOT be able to gift that purchase to another account until the next test reset!

TRANSFERRING DEEDS FROM YOUR SPIRIT BANK

After purchased assets have been imported into the Spirit Bank, they can then be imported into any Kingdom. Note that because these are purchased items theycannot be imported into Campaign Worlds.

The process for importing these into a kingdom is the same as any other item. Simply open your Spirit Bank and drag the item(s) into your empty inventory slots. At this point, they are just normal game items. That means they can be traded, dropped, placed in containers and even lost on death, so be careful! (The test kingdoms are set to PvE so don’t go near any monsters and you won’t be in danger of losing them!)

Once the deeds have been transferred, players can right-click on them from the inventory to enter “Build Mode” and place their corresponding buildings.

BUILD MODE

Build Mode is basically a “placement mode” for the selected asset. I’m going to use the term “Building” for convenience, but this term refers not just to buildings like houses and great halls, but also to defensive structures like palisades, walls, towers, etc. When you enter build mode, the camera will zoom out and show a ghostly blue placement preview. (If for some reason the asset does not appear in your view, hit ENTER to re-center it.)

This “ghost item” can be moved around the world using the following controls:

Move (forward, left, back, right) - W,A,S,D

Rotate (counterclockwise or clockwise) - Q,E

Adjust Height (raise, lower) - R,T

Zoom Camera In/Out - Scroll Mouse Wheel

Place - Left Click

Exit / Cancel Placement - Escape (x2)

Enter/Return - Re-center the ghosted object to my current target location.

The color of the ghosted building will tell you if the current placement is valid (or not).

Red transparency = Invalid placement. Cannot use left-click to place the item here.

Blue transparency = Valid placement. Left click will place the item here.

Gold transparency = Valid placement. Left-click will place the item here, AND “socket” it to connected asset seamlessly.

Buildings cannot be placed across multiple parcels (parcel edges are illustrated by spectral green walls). If placed on top of a tree, rock or other terrain feature, that feature will be removed automatically prior to placement. Removing the building will cause those item(s) to reappear at the next respawn cycle.

Building placement will enforce collision rules with other buildings (meaning you can’t drop a wall through the middle of a house).

BUILDING SIZES AND PARCEL WEIGHT LIMITS

Each building has a “size” (small, medium, large, etc.).

Parcels have weight limits for any given size; a city can hold more “large” buildings than a hamlet. While in placement mode, you can see the number of allowed buildings of each size at the top of the screen. If a parcel already has too many buildings of that size (i.e. the parcel is at full capacity for buildings of that size), you will not be able to place any more buildings of that size in this parcel.

For testing purposes, we have set the weight limits very high for ALL building sizes in ALL parcels. This will be changed later.

OWNERSHIP

Buildings track ownership. The owner of the building is called the “Building Owner” (naturally). If you are the building owner, you can “pick up” a building by targeting it within short range and holding the G key to “Loot” it back into your inventory. It will appear once again in deed form.

Monarchs will eventually be able to eject buildings from the world, returning them to the building owner’s inventory.

SOCKETS

Many buildings feature connection points called sockets. Sockets are used to connect multiple assets seamlessly. For example, you can use sockets to build a castle wall out of multiple parts and not have to worry about gaps or seams where the various parts connect.

Sockets can be connected to other sockets that are of the same type. We tried to be pretty general here so that you can seamlessly connect parts of various sets. (For example, the palisade walls can connect directly to the thick stone walls of the keep, etc.).

To connect two buildings via sockets, you’ll need to snuggle the buildings right up next to each other until the socket objects overlap. This often requires you to adjust the height of the object you are trying to place (using the Adjust Height feature, e.g. the R and T keys). The color of the sockets will change to indicate their ability to snap (or not), using the same color codes described above.

Sockets also have types. Each socket has a “symbol” on it (simple shapes like a circle, triangle or square). Sockets will only connect if the symbols match, and even with matching symbols, only according to the following gender rules:

SOCKET GENDERS

In addition to having a type (symbol), each socket will be one of three genders:

MALE socket: This version of the socket has a shaped protrusion (such as a half-sphere). These can only be connected with a FEMALE socket with a matching cavity of the same shape.

FEMALE socket: This version of the socket has a shaped cavity (such as a half-sphere). These can only be connected with a MALE socket with a matching protrusion of the same shape.

NEUTRAL socket: This version of the socket has a flush version of the symbol (such as a flat circle carved on the face of the socket).These sockets can only be connected with other NEUTRAL sockets of the same type/shape.

During placement mode, when the game recognizes a valid connection (meaning that the two sockets are overlapping and fit the matching rules above), the building preview should turn gold to indicate that this placement is valid AND that the next object will seamlessly merge with the already-placed object.

If the sockets do not match, both sockets will turn red. If the placement is invalid, the building itself will be shaded red.

WRAP-UP

This is our first iteration of building placement in a public test environment. We think we have a solid foundation that will scale as the game becomes more complex, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.

In the near future, we will test the other major components of this system: private Eternal Kingdoms (with on-demand startup and shutdown) and parcel placement for monarchs via the Kingdom Builder tool. More information on these systems will be coming soon.

As always, we welcome feedback from you. Let us know what you think in the forums!

See you in-game,
Max Lancaster
Associate Producer, ArtCraft Entertainment
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Next up the 24/7 Testing and Limited Beta 2 Access

FOUNDERS’ UPDATE: 24/7 TEST PLANS

Wednesday March 8th, 2017

We’re finally making the transition on the web to logging in *only* with your email today. This means that your username will no longer work for web logins. Soon we’ll be making the same change to the CrowfallUpdate and client, too. This will make everyone’s accounts more secure. As an additional security measure, we recommend the use of two-factor authentication (2FA) as well.

In Crowfall® playtest news, we have recently sent testing invitations to backers with Contributor pledge packages and Beta 2 test group members (so far this includes the Contributor backers during Kickstarter through 3/17/15). By the end of March, anyone who’s purchased a Contributor package with Beta 2 test group access will be invited into testing (e.g. all early backers will then have access to testing).

On April 1st (no joke!), the current 2017 Contributor package will be replaced with a Patron pledge package costing $49 that includes Beta 3 test group access. These new Patron purchasers will not be in early access until we open Beta 3. (We believe Beta 3 will open within a few months, but as always, we cannot make any promises). If you want to get into the test at the Beta 2 test group level, be sure to grab a 2017 Contributor pledge package before they go away!

Last but not least, we plan to transition the game servers to 24x7 uptime within a couple of months. When that happens, we’ll also bring up a new "Testing Environment" that will be separate from the current game universe. The purpose of this Test Environment will be to give us a way to stage new changes for our testing audience (which is now over 15,000 invited players) without interrupting the 24x7 service.

For those of you who are familiar with live MMOs, this process should look familiar: the "Live" environment will have 24x7 availability and will typically host a more stable version of the game. The "test" environment will be up (and down) on a more sporadic basis, and this is where we will try the newest (and rawest) changes.

The Test Environment will follow the invite plan that we've had in place since our first Hunger Dome testing: Whenever significant new functionality comes online, we will wipe the environment and start by inviting our Pre-Alpha 1 test group, followed by the Pre-Alpha 2 test group, followed by the Alpha1 test group and so on. The goal will be to stage players into the functionality over time to ensure that it is playable and stable for an ever-increasing player load. Once the changes have been properly tested in the Test Environment, with an appropriate number of players, the changes will be migrated over to the "Live Environment” for the larger test audience (i.e. Pre-Alpha 1 test group all the way through Beta 2 test group).

Those of who are more development-minded will recognize this step for what it is: Another in a series of steps necessary to move us from being a pure "development shop" to being a "live MMO" company!

As always, thank you for supporting the development and vision of Crowfall, and we'll see you in game!

J. Todd Coleman and Gordon Walton
Co-Founders, ArtCraft Entertainment
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Crowfall 24/7 Testing (last chance for beta 2) and Update on Eternal Kingdom Building

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