Updates

Unity Scene Jam #2 Winners!

October 17, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XR3usio65FU

Sorry for not getting these posted sooner but the machine we were using to build all the levels for viewing decided it was time to go to computer Heaven. New machine built, levels all downloaded and tested. The Scene Jam #2 challenge was to help us create the catacombs!

Tons of great ideas and some awesome execution on the part of the participants. There were a number of scenes that came in that were nearly to a quality bar that would let us just add creatures and drop them in the game which is truly amazing for a 48 hour jam. Next week we will do a hangout to go over some of the levels that weren’t in the top 3.

This was the first time we used the scoring system and it worked great. The top three scoring maps were 93, 90, and 88…all so very close! And the winners are:

Pen of the Avatar ~ 10.15.13

October 15, 2013

Update of the Avatar #43 – 10/10/13: Combat Sigil, Story Sneak Peek, Basements, Druid Home, Bonus Rewards, & More!

October 10, 2013

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

We have some amazing stuff to share in this edition of Update of the Avatar! We’re revealing the awesome looking Combat Sigil, we’ve added player housing basements (and included them as bonus rewards in the Citizen level pledges and up), we have more to show on the Druid Home, as well as a long-awaited sneak peek at a snippet of the story that Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott have been secretly crafting!

Combat Sigil

Followers of the martial path use this mighty combat sigil as their symbol. The sigil shows the eight schools of combat that a warrior can follow. There are four armor schools: Light Armor (Cloth & Leather), Medium Armor (Chain & Scale), Heavy Armor (Plate), and Shields. There are four weapon schools: Blades (Swords & Axes), Polearms (Halberds & Spears), Bludgeons (Hammers & Clubs), and Ranged (Bows & Crossbows).

Stephen Daniele (lead concept artist) provided these different treatments of the combat sigil:

Pen of the Avatar ~ 10.8.13

October 8, 2013

Sojourner Avatars: A Hangout with Richard Garriott (Lord British) and the Hickmans

October 7, 2013

Shroud of the Avatar is excited to announce a very special offer to celebrate the final 24 hours of Tracy and Laura Hickman’s Sojourner Tales Kickstarter (and to show how determined we are to get to the $55,00 Stretch goal)! We are going to award each and every Shroud of the Avatar Adventurer* backer who also pledges to Sojourner Tales at the $20 and above level a UNIQUE Sojourner themed in-game item.
*Adventurer Tier is $40 for Founders, $45 for Benefactors.

Have you already backed Tracy Hickman’s Kickstarter? If not, you only have a few more days to do so! Please help him reach the $55,000 stretch goal… a special trilogy of adventures penned by Tracy Hickman and Richard Garroitt! We all here at Shroud of the Avatar can’t wait to play it!

The Second 48 Hour Scene Jam is ON!

October 5, 2013

The second Challenge Of The Avatar: 48 Hour Scene Jam is going on right now!

You can get all the details here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=30078

Also, the very professional and totally free of shenanigans video of Starr and Chris announcing the ground rules can be found here:

Keep up with your fellow scene jammers in the Shroud of the Avatar Developer Depot here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/challenge-of-the-avatar-10-4-13.3500/

Go forth and create catacombs of wonder!

Update of the Avatar #42 – 10/04/13: Founder Lord Home, Benefactor Edelmann Home, Avatar Outfits, & Scene Jam #2

October 4, 2013

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

This edition of Update of the Avatar continues our Parade of Homes, showcasing the Founder Lord Town Home and Benefactor Edelmann Village Home. Also have some new female avatar outfits to share, and news about this weekend’s 48-hour Unity Scene Jam #2!

Founder Lord Town Home

Artists Bob Cooksey and Michael Hutchison came up with a dignified design for our Founder Lord Town home! Only available to Founders (included as a reward in the Lord level pledge). An extremely spacious two-story dwelling, with an open-air roof deck suitable for crafting or entertaining:

Pen of the Avatar 10.1.13

October 1, 2013

Happy October First!

Stephen Daniele and I are back for another episode of Pen of the Avatar today at 1 pm CST!

Community Spotlight ~ The Bear Tavern

September 30, 2013

Do you have a cool Shroud of the Avatar Project you would like highlighted in our Community Spotlight? Then what are you waiting for!?! Contact me, Firelotus, at community@portalarium.com and let’s chat! Speaking of cool Shroud of the Avatar projects, I had a chance to talk with Vallas, the head of the Bear Tavern project and he told me about the cool things they are doing to prepare for Shroud of the Avatar. If you would like to know more, then keep reading!

“The Bear Tavern is a project which focuses heavily on the social aspect of Shroud of the Avatar. The intent is to create an open, active community which provides everyone the opportunity to socialize with fellow players. SOTA promises to provide an amazing social online environment, and so we were interested to see how far we can encourage it. Not only that, our intent is to create almost neutral ground, to help provide some fairly unusual player experiences.

During initial discussions on how such a community could be put together, the obvious choice was to create an inn or tavern where the player-base could pitch up whenever they wanted. Taverns tend to be a prominent location in many stories within a fantasy setting, so it seemed a good choice for a in-game meeting place for players from a variety of backgrounds.

Read more…