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Hotfix
Inquisitors staff piece:
- Extremely rare chance while training within the fort when the pylon is active
- Rare chance while training within the praetorium, where chance increases relative to the level of the hotspot you're excavating
- Praetorium chance is increased if the pylon is active
- The base drop chance of receiving a staff piece from the praetorium has been decreased from what it was prior to the hotfix
Spear of Annihilation tip:
- The drop chance has been decreased
Other
Archaeology has a whole is still being monitored.
- Eldritch issues are being looked at.
- A job has been put in to swap certain artefacts in Velucia's Bandos 2 & 3 collections.
- The Goblin generals' order is intended and will remain as is.
- Adding chronotes to your currency pouch is still being looked into.
Intro - Deciding on a Skill
- Skill's History: January 2018 -> March 30th, 2020.
- Originally tasked to have it launched in summer 2019.
- The skill was chosen through a validation process, what's best for the game: business, community, devs.
- Before we just came up with cool ideas and got them approved.
Validation process
- Asked for skill ideas with the following criteria:
- Runescapey, interesting, fun, fit into the world
- Narrowed ideas down to a shortlist of 6 skills:
- Archaeology, Sailing, Spellcrafting, Animal Training, Merchanting, Necromancy.
- Pitched each skill as to how they would fit into RS to get raw reactions from different people with different backgrounds.
Deciding on the skill
Top 5/6 skills occurred during the summer months of 2018.
- Necromancy came out on top however it was too similar to Summoning, Prayer, and Magic.
- We also weren't looking to make an Elite skill.
- Narrowed it down between Archaeology and Sailing and made playable demos.
- Archaeology was a dry word from are marketing team since it sounded like a boring skill.
- We really fought for it by describing in a fantastical/magical sense.
- Not digging a hole in the ground, but dig sites in hell or in the sky.
Demos and Development
Images are pulled from an internal group chat which is why they aren't cropped the best.
Playable Demo
- Demo was patched together in 2 weeks.
- It was meant for Runefest but never made it and was used in playtests instead.
- Moved away from making the area look like a dig site and more towards moving into something more fantastical.
Demo Dig site - Vault of Heroditus? (Kharid-et)
Made a short playable demo of all the aspects of a dig site in order to get feedback and showcase the idea.
Small selection of materials and 3 artefacts.
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Mysteries (Lost Areas)
- Helped introduced the concept of research, relics, and exploraiton.
- Figure how how to get into the Vault by using an object. (Made the final cut).
- Use simple puzzles so players know what to do next.
Big doors were important to us for some reason and they made it in.
The relic is found by solving a three column puzzle to form a pathway to reach it.
Core Loop - Cleaning items
- When you discover items they are dirty and you had to clean them before using them.
- It didn't make the final design due to the excessive amount of items you'd need to clean.
Jmod Focus
While Ryan was putting interfaces together Rowley was designing content on dig sites (mysteries).
- Used random generation concepts to create lost areas and to help design dig sites
- Bonus doors would require certain artefacts, similar to DG.
- Map icons placeholders:
- Fishing - normal room | Clothes - bonus room | S and E represent start and end
- Test squares which include everything for reference: excavation, NCPs, items, etc.
- These are only on test servers.
- These items are dropped and you can see what they would look like if they were on the ground.
- Spears have different states (damaged, augmented) so that's why there are numerous ones.
Design Progress
- Created early on in early 2019 as we knew what we wanted.
- Interface is progressing even if things look like they are removed.
- Testing different interface interactions or icon apperances.
- Added different collection logs as a way of testing the system out.
- This is for into the design and is similar to release with placeholder icons.
- Initially you could only have 1 relic of each size (Small/Medium/Large) but it was restrictive.
- Arch journal background placeholder.
- 6 Dig sites = 5 current ones + 1 Dragonkin one.
- Languages - Concept where you gain language xp/progress as you do research.
- Upon reaching a certain level you could unlock certain things and read books/
- Removed this concept as it basically put a barrier to those who enjoy lore.
- Original Design - 3 Different benches to restore an Artefact - Prepare, Assembly, Finish.
- Didn't do this as it was unecessary.
Environments
General
- NPC placeholders are useful for checking map-heights, etc.
- Discussed level design later on:
- Where will players move the camera to, where will their eyes be drawn to?
- What looks like paths and locations they can/can't go to. (Frustrating if it looks like they can but can't).
- It's hard to visualize what the end product will be.
- Original Dig site before the graphical rework.
- The throne room entrance was changed as it caused confusion with people being led to it during the tutroial.
Kharid-et - Initial layout was larger and had shortcuts which were removed as they felt unnecessary.
Infernal Source - Infernal Source internal part was to look like an eye of Dagon from above.
Everlight - Originally was going to be known as Farlight
- Workshop was temporarily in the NE part of area until it could be put on another level.
- It was supposed to be a wide open area where if you flew far enough out you'd find it.
- Lava surfing animaiton was used for flying until we got proper animations.
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Flying area map heights are important since you can't see them.
- If they are too high/camera is low you'd click on them when you weren't' flying screwing up your movement.
