Journal Abridged – The Weight and Measure of a Lifetime

A bookcase hiding a hidden room from Chronicles of Elyria.
~ victoriarachel ~ 1 Comment

A new Developer Journal for a new year. This one is a bit different as it really tries to get to the heart of some of the misconceptions about the game. Namely the business model. Often people hear the term perma-death and their mind immediately links it with games that have a hardcore mode, one death and you are out. That is not the case here. There are different types of death, and you may have to spirit walk many times before you actually reach that final curtain. But how many times? Well that all depends, however, we now know what on and how much of a difference it makes.

If you want to read the Developer Journal in full it can be found on the Chronicles of Elyria website, or you can read on for the Journal Abridged. Just a quick note that there is a fair amount of maths in the original, so if you want to see all the working I suggest heading there as I have just cut to the chase! Continue reading →

Character Ideas

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With new information thin on the ground, I have been spending time reading and rereading old information we have. Not only is it intriguing seeing the occasional subtle shift in design over the last six months of the games development, but it is also inspiring. There are so many concepts that they hope to put into this game and they all fuel my desire to make character concepts. The combinations, the possibilities, the background stories and future paths. It is what has kept me (somewhat) sane over the festive period without more Chronicles of Elyria news to chew on.

I am not the only one who has character ideas either. In one of the past Q&A answer sessions we actually found out that Caspian himself has ideas of the character type he would like to play.

I’m going to be Robin Hood. Rob from the rich and steal for the poor. In order to do that, I’m need to have a certain level of survival skills associate with that. I also need the ability to stay out in the woods for a long period of time. I also need the ability to fight so I need some combat skills in there as well. When I’m resting I’m going to play my lute, because I’m a musical bardish kind of character in addition to a being a warrior / champion / survival character.

This shows the variation we can expect, and highlights that a single profession might not be the best bet in this game. Rounded characters with a purpose and a story are likely to be the ones that keep you logging in and keep you having fun.

So here are a few more to get your creative juices going from the list of many characters I have been considering. Continue reading →

Echo – Development Management

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A lot of us at this stage of a games life are not just interested in what is being developed but also how they are developing it. Especially if the company are asking for our backing it is good to know their approach to delivering the final product. So it is interesting to see Soulbound Studios talking about their management and development system.

 We prove out a concept and then move onto proving out the next difficult concept, rather than rabbit-holing all the details of a single system this early in development.

If how the games development affects what we get to see and the decisions they make is something that interests you then you can find out more over at this thread.

Echo’s are a new idea I am trying out for content you need to know about, but don’t really need me waffling on about! Please let me know is this is something you find useful. Either in the comments below or over on twitter @ElyriaEcho.

Journal Discussed – Player Housing

The architecture tool from Chronicles of Elyria.
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Player housing has been the topic of the last two developers journals, and if you have haven’t caught up Part 1 is all about the concept, design and construction, Part 2 is all about digging a giant hole underneath it, using it to hide things, and also kill people. So quite different takes on the same concept! Today we are doing a bit if a different Journal Discussed as I am going to run down the top five reasons housing has got be excited.

Let’s kick this off with the most important thing I think we have learnt from the Developers Journal:

1. Housing isn’t just about houses

While throughout both developer journals most of the focus was on player housing, this can be used for any building. A public forge, a guild hall, a library, a great mansion, the fort at an outpost, it is all about player buildings. I understand why the developers have used housing, it is familiar, but I think they might have shot themselves in the foot because this is so much more!

Everything else on this list is great, it is all really good stuff, but it is important to realise these tools and concepts apply to so much more than your home. If you can not be bothered to read on, then just remember that. Continue reading →

Journal Abridged – Player Housing, Player-Created Dungeons

A vault in a dungeon in Chronicles of Elyria.
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This series takes the Developers Journals and gives you all the information with none of the explanation. This part two of the player housing journals, so I promise to do a round up Journal Discussed of the system as a whole at some point this week. I mean it this time.

What a system it is though! Housing is deep. Not just with the multiple uses we saw last time, but also physically deep as we found out today that tunnels, basements, and underground vaults are all a possibility. The images in this Developer Journal are gorgeous so please don’t miss out and do head over to MMORPG.com to have a look at some point. But for now… let’s go! Continue reading →

Echo – Public Access Plan

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Alpha? Beta? Gamma? Delta? What is the plan for testing and releasing Chronicles of Elyria to us the, ever patient, public? Well Caspian has let us know with a great breakdown over on the official forums. We can expect:

  1. Offline Demo
  2. Closed Alpha
  3. Open Alpha
  4. Beta
  5. Early Access

For some actual descriptions of those stages, who will be invited, what sort of non-disclosure agreements might be in place. Head over to the thread here.

Echo’s are a new idea I am trying out for content you need to know about, but don’t really need me waffling on about! Please let me know is this is something you find useful. Either in the comments below or over on twitter @ElyriaEcho.

Journal Abridged – Player Housing, Architecture & Construction

An inn hallway in Chronicles of Elyria.
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This series takes the Developers Journals and gives you all the facts and none of the fluff. Just straight up, no messing. If you want discussion then the Journal Discussed which will hit later this week is what you are waiting for.

“Home is where the heart is” however, if you have read the latest two page Developer Journal over at MMORPG.com you will also know that home is so much more than that. Oh and you will also know how to build one! Did I mention it was two pages this time? Better crack on!
Continue reading →

Journal Discussed – Technology and Research Part 2

An indoor sceen including a clock in Chronicles of Elyria.
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Patents. They are a familiar concept in our world, with large court battles between the biggest technology firms. Could that work in a computer game? In a world where technology progresses, and players are the ones progressing it, patents could well make sense. However, combine that unusual idea with the cruel word count in the Developer Journal and it leads to a difficult concept to get your head around. The idea to day is to gather up all the other information we have found out and hopefully understand patent a little bit better. But first if you haven’t caught up on the Technology and Research Developer Journal yet then you can check out the Journal Abridged, or if you want to know a bit more about technology in Elyria part 1 of this Journal Discussed will help you out.

Firstly let’s look at the basics. Patents are a law created by an individual or group that protects a technology they have discovered from being crafted or processed by others in the Kingdom without breaking that law. It is in effect for three weeks after being issued unless an extension is granted, often at a cost, which lasts an additional three weeks. Sounds simple enough but let’s break that down a bit! Continue reading →

Journal Discussed – Technology and Research Part 1

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Dynamic worlds are becoming something more Developers are striving for. To me the reason for it is clear. A changing world is simply a more interesting place to be long term. However, the way different developers approach adding that feeling of change can be very different. Often it is quite limited and does eventually loop back around on itself, more interesting than a static world but still not catering to the player who wants to stay in that game for the next year or more. Chronicles of Elyria seems to be piling on the layers when it comes to dynamic gameplay.

We know about dynamic characters with aging and dying. We know about the dynamic story with the main story lasting ten years. We know about the dynamic world, with seasons, weather and more. Now we also know about the technology of the world. And to be honest out of all those systems this is the one that captures me. This week’s design journal talks about what Soulbound Studios mean when they say technology and how that can be researched by players leading to the introduction into the game of whole new items. If you haven’t read it yet I suggest jumping over to the Journal Abridged and then jumping straight back as we have had a lot of really interesting information from the developers since that went live! There is in fact so much more information I have had to split this into two parts. So today we are talking about what sort of technology we can expect and on Sunday we are going to be looking into the patent system.

Let’s start on the wider view. We know that technology is going to advance over time. However, where are we starting from? Perhaps more interestingly, where are we going to end up? During the weekly Q&A, hosted over at DM21 Gaming, Caspian responded to those two questions. Continue reading →

Chat Log – Player Created Content

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Personality and individuality matter in an MMO. This is a world where people either feel they are being represented by their character, or they want that character to have their own personality. Either way people want that character to look good, to stand out, to be that little bit different. To me character customisation is important for that reason. However, that is only part of a jigsaw. On top of that character you wear clothing, that needs to be customisable too. Then their home, let’s make that customisable too. Basically everything should be! But what sort of control will we have over that customisation?

One thing we learnt from the question and answer session this week was related to user driven content. How much could we as players add to the world, and in that way customise our characters and the world around them. Richard, one of the community members, asked if players would be able to create works of art to tell the tales of the world? We actually got a really interesting response which you can hear in the Q&A video hosted by DM21 Gaming. Continue reading →