Greetings Fellow Avatars!
This week’s edition of Update of the Avatar is filled with more cool stuff:
[Chris Spears narrates a walk-thru of the Scene Jam IV Winners]
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
We have some great stuff for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:
[Lord British Narrates the Six Month Progress Video]
It’s been a little over three months since we released our 3 Month progress video, and we’re excited to share the progress we’ve made since then. We encourage you to set your playback quality to HD, switch to full-screen, and enjoy our six month progress video, narrated by Richard “Lord British” Garriott!
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Welcome to another edition of Update of the Avatar! Here’s what we have for you this week:
[Chris Spears narrates a walk-thru of the Scene Jam #3 Winners]
The Unity Scene Jam #1 challenge was to build an ancient lunar rift. The second scene challenge took a step forward in time to when people retreated underground and created the catacombs. For Scene Jam #3 we took another step forward in time to when people moved back to the surface and rebuilt villages and towns, so the challenge for Jam #3 was to build a village scene.
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Welcome to this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar! More cool stuff to share, including:
The Crafting Sigil displays the three rings of Crafting: Gathering, Refining and Production. Each ring contains five different skills. The innermost ring is the Gathering Ring and includes: Mining, Forestry, Agriculture, Field Dressing, and Foraging. The middle ring is the Refining Ring and includes: Smelting, Milling, Textiles, Tanning, and Butchery. The outermost ring is the Production Ring and includes Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Tailoring, Cooking, and Alchemy.
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!
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:
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!
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:
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
More cool stuff to share with you in this edition of Update of the Avatar, including the Sigil of Magic, progress on the crafting stations, results of our first 48-hour Unity Scene Jam, Founder Collector’s Coin, updated FAQ, and more!
Our first Unity Scene Jam was a great success! This scene challenge involved a design that included a “Lunar Rift” and the ruins around it. We asked for the Lunar Rift to be one up on a plateau or at least on top of a very steep hill (see challenge design description here). We received a total of 48 submissions, with some awesome talent participating!
It was tough to choose the winner from among the top entries, but after much deliberation, Richard, Starr, and Chris unanimously chose Richard Matey as the First Place winner of our first Shroud of the Avatar Unity Scene Jam! Chris Spears prepared this video walking you through Richard Matey’s sweet looking scene. So crank the quality up to HD, switch to full-screen, and enjoy!
As one of our First Place weekend winners, he will receive a Knight Level Pledge, signed game box, and SotA t-shirt! Congratulations Richard Matey!
Coming in at Second Place is the team of Charles Howell and Mark A. Barros. Check out this cool image from their scene:
And Third Place goes to Melchior Meijer:
We were so impressed with the top entries, that we decided to award pledge credits to the second and third place winners! Congratulations to Charles, Mark, and Melchior!
There are nine schools of magic in Shroud of the Avatar: the eight elemental schools of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Sun, Moon, Life, and Death with the ninth school of Chaos in the center of them all. Each school has a focus. Fire magic, for example, directly damages your enemies but also has a tendency to light them on fire, prolonging the damage dealt. Water magic on the other hand is about slowing your opponents with ice and healing your allies with soothing rains. The sigil represents how all the schools relate to each other and it will appear inked on parchment, carved into stone, sewn into cloth and minted into metal coins.
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
We continue our Parade of Homes with this edition of Update of the Avatar, showcasing the Founder Edelmann Village Home, as well as the Tower Village Home and Tower Town Home! We also included a video demonstrating our home decorating system, plus a few other tidbits and goodies!
For many of us, home decorating is central to our role-playing experience. It affords us the opportunity for self-expression, a display of status, showcasing the spoils of our adventures, or advertising our craft. The home decorating system in SotA continues to evolve both in power and ease of use. Mere words cannot do it justice, so Rick Holtrop choreographed this video demonstrating the latest progress in our home decorating system, narrated by Lord British. Enjoy!
As Starr Long explains in a recent MMORPG.com article, Crowdsourcing the World, we purchase assets from the Unity Asset Store, many of which we can use as is, but some we want to change up a bit. We have made it a policy to offer the modified versions back to the original creators for free which they can re-sell as their own.
The Dragonide by Protofactor is an example of a Unity Store asset that we modified and offered back to Protofactor. Here is an image of the original asset:
And here is the version after Geoff Mellon’s modifications:
Bren Wilson then put his magic on it and created this hammer attack animation:
Bob Cooksey (environment artist) modified his concept of the Founder Edelmann Village Home based on the results of the community Poll in our Dev+ forums. Here is the revised version, only available to Founders (included as a reward in the Edelmann level pledge). It is a single-story dwelling, comparable in size to the Founder Citizen Village Home:
Here is an interior view:
Here is a side-by-side view of the Shingle-Roof Village Home, Edelmann Village Home, and the Viking Village Home (available in the Add-On Store):
And this overhead view demonstrates how nicely the Edelmann house nestles within a village lot:
We’ll showcase the Benefactor Edelmann Village Home in an future update. It will be similar in scale to the Founder Edelmann Village Home, with variations in layout and external appearance.
NOTE: “Founders” are backers that pledged any amount by May 20, 2013,
and “Benefactors” are backers that pledged after May 20, 2013.
And for something really different, artists Bob Cooksey and Michael Hutch have crafted The Tower theme, shown here in both the village size and town size:
Here is a view of the entry-level floor of the Tower Town Home, showing the stairs leading up to the second floor, as well as the entrance leading down to the lower level floor (Tower Village Home entry-level floor is slightly smaller and does not include a lower level floor):
Here is a view of the second story room, showing the entrance to the outdoor deck:
And here is a view of the lower floor:
Here is a side-by-side view of the Tower Village Home, Viking Village Home, and the Shingle-Roof Village Home:
And here you can see how the Tower Village Home fits on a village lot:
For a limited time we’re offering a 50% discount on the Tower Homes! The Tower Village is available for $50 (regular $100) and the Tower Town is available for $75 (regular $150)!
Reserve your Tower Home at the Add-On Store!
• You will need a Village, Town, or City Level Property to place the Tower Village home in-game, and a Town or City Level Property to place the Tower Town home in-game.
• Citizen Level pledges and higher will still receive the home included in their rewards if they purchase the Tower Home as an add-on.
Grand Prize winner receives:
• Shroud of the Avatar Duke Pledge – $5300 value
• Unity Pro License – $1500 value
• Oculus Rift – $300 value
• UnityVS 1.2 License – $249 value
• Alienware Grab Bag (Backpack, mouse, keyboard, headset) – $350 value
Interested? We thought you might be! For all the details, head on over to the 48-Hour Scene Creation Challenge of the Avatar contest page! Better hurry, because the contest starts today, September 20th at 6PM CST (UTC-6)!
Congratulations to Tracy & Laura Hickman for reaching their $26,000 Kickstarter funding goal for their awesome board game!
Sojourner Tales is a story based strategy game where players will have to use their wits as they discover and collect the pieces of a mysterious puzzle and try to be the first to complete the epic adventure. And because of the innovative Ebook Story Modules and adaptable design, the tale is different every time you play! So if you love great board games like we do, be sure to check out the Hickman’s Kickstarter page and help them reach their stretch goals before funding closes on Oct 10, 2013.
In addition to the Tower Village and Tower Town Homes we just included in the Add-On Store, don’t forget about these other great specials that are still available:
Village Lot Property Deeds (25% off)
• Limited Quantity: 157 of 200 left
• Includes Shingle-Roof home (shown were), but at 20 x 30 meters will accommodate the spacious Knight Village Home and Viking Village Home!
Viking Village Home (50% off)
• A two-story dwelling, with a single large room downstairs and a wrap-around loft on the second floor!
Hello Everyone,
We just launched a new visual style for the website. We wanted a cleaner look than we had before but still felt in the world of Shroud which is why we chose the parchment over stone look you now see. More improvements to the website will be coming over the next few weeks. Enjoy!
Thanks,
Starr
Greetings Fellow Avatars!
Welcome to another edition of Update of the Avatar! We know it’s only been a couple days since the last update, but we have some cool stuff to share and are too excited to wait! As a continuation of our Parade of Homes we initiated with the Village Home Edition in Update #37, we are showcasing the Founder Knight Village Home, as well as the availability of a limited quantity of Village Lot Property Deeds in the Add-On Store! We also have the latest news about the Shroud of the Avatar Unity Scene Jam!
Here is our unique, upscale, Founder Knight Village home, only available to Founders (included as a reward in the Knight level pledge). A two-story dwelling, with a split-level roof deck:
