Updates

Update of the Avatar #60 – 02/14/14: Valentine Poetry Contest, Lord Houseboat, BotA, Cabinet of Virtues, Tanning Knife, Pantheon, Events Page, and More!

Happy Valentine’s Day Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

  • Hearts of Britannia Valentine’s Poetry Reading!
  • Extra, Extra Early R3 Test Results
  • Founder Lord Waterfront Houseboat
  • Blade of the Avatar Novel: Chapter 9
  • Hearth of Britannia Cabinet of Virtues
  • Tanning Knife of Prosperity
  • The 6-More Pack of Prosperity
  • Stretch Goals: Lord British vs. Darkstarr
  • Last Week for the Pantheon Kickstarter Special Cross-Game Cloak
  • New Events Page
  • Only 52 Days Remain to Purchase/Upgrade/Gift Founder Pledges

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Hearts of Britannia Valentine’s Poetry Reading!

All the poetry submissions are in, and today, Valentine’s Day, the winners are being decided by Dame Lori, Sir Dom, Lord British, Firelotus, Stephen and Starr!

The winners will be announced and poems narrated by Holt on a special Live Hangout on February 15th. A Roast shall take place afterward where entertaining anonymous runner-ups are also narrated. The Hangout/Poetry Reading will begin at 7 pm CST, Saturday, February 15th. The hangout link will be announced 15-30 minutes ahead of time.

All winning entries will be bound into an in-game book which can be found in-game. The top winners of the Lord British and Darkstarr poems will receive the in-game Darkstarr or Lord British cloaks. We will also create a video of Richard, Starr, Gina, and Stephen reading the winning poems that were written to them.

MAY THE BEST POETS WIN LUV 4 ALL TIME!
Read more…


Calling All Developer+ Members: Extra, Extra Early R3 Test Friday the 14th!


As many of you already know, Release 3 is scheduled to launch next Thursday, February 20, at 10:30 am. The big new thing with R3 is multiplayer mode, which is a giant leap forward in technological complexity over single-player mode. We need some advance help to test our servers and are asking all our Developer (and above) members to help us out. Here’s the message Chris Spears posted on the Dev+ forum:

Hello Dev Plus people! We’re calling on you for another test before the test session! Actually, we might do two or three of these over the next week so don’t panic if you miss this one. We’ve been testing multiplayer on our internal servers and feel like we have things to a mostly stable state but we’re are a small lot and blind to our own flaws. We’ve tested the servers with 2 dozen people on single maps but we’re trying to sanity test how many people to enable per map for Release 3 next week.

We would like for the Dev Plus guys and gals to patch up and join us for “Lunch with SotA Bunch”. Friday, 2 – 3PM CST, we will open up the Live servers for 1 hour to do a limited load test. For tomorrow’s test we’ll cap the max players per map at 64 to see how well things work. We’ll be watching server load, data rates, and client performance during the test. If things go poorly, we should have data to fix the problem before the next test session. If things go better than expected, we’ll probably Turn the max per map up a bit and try again another day! Keep in mind, this build only has the most minimal of optimizations. Things will only get better and better with each build.

For those who haven’t installed it yet, you can get the client here: http://goo.gl/KVYzpF
And patch up early and often! We’ll probably release the latest patch around 2 hours before the test. We’ll try to get it out earlier but no matter how much planning we do, we always seem to come right down to the wire on releases.

Known issues for this build that we would love repro steps for:

  • Occasionally other players will be invisible to you
  • Sometimes dialogs will lose their borders
  • Sometimes you can get into a “locked” state while chatting where you can’t move

First people to post repro steps for any of those will get a gold star from me personally!

Oh, and since I know some of you will ask, yes, Richard will be in game and NO, you won’t be able to kill him…

Enjoy!

Chris “Dippy Dragon” Spears

[Join the conversation over in the forums]



Update of the Avatar #59 – 02/07/14: Star Citizen Artifact, BotA, Royal Founders, Website Upgrades, Pantheon Kickstarter, Tombstone, Tinkerer Certificate, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

  • Blade of the Avatar Novel: Chapter 8
  • Stretch Goals: Lord British vs. Darkstarr
  • Upcoming Duke and LoM Events
  • Star Citizen Vanduul Polearm
  • Royal Founders: Recognizing our Original Backers
  • Ancestor Tombstone
  • Developer Tinkerer Certificate
  • Pets at Founder Tier: Option to get all 3?
  • Knight’s Lighthouse Animation
  • Cubit Measure of Prosperity
  • Website Upgrades: Pledge Page & Campaign Statistics Page
  • Pantheon Kickstarter Special Cross-Game Cloak
  • “Hearts of Britannia” Valentine’s Poetry Competition!
  • Only 59 Days Remain to Purchase/Upgrade/Gift Founder Pledges

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Blade of the Avatar Novel: Chapter 8

The latest installment of the serialized SotA novel, Blade of the Avatar (BotA), written by Tracy Hickman & Richard Garriott, is now available for download! If you are an Early Founder, or you purchased BotA in the Add-On Store, then you will find a download link for the current installment of the novel on your personal SotA account page (log into SotA website and click on “Account” in the top-right corner).  If you are a Kickstarter backer you’ll need to have your Kickstarter account linked to the SotA website (click here for instructions to link your Kickstarter account).

Here is a brief excerpt of the latest installment (illustration by Denis Loubet):

Chapter 8: Hilt

Evard Dirae, Craftmaster of the Cabal of Obsidians, rode his horse through the last and grandest of the gates of the fortress at Hilt. The challenge which the guards tried to voice at his approach died on their lips, each falling silent at the passage of a sorcerer.

Evard kept his cold, pale green eyes forward as he passed into the upper courts of Hilt. He did not need to look back down over the multiple concourses that formed the fortress. He had taken them all in with mounting anger as he rode up the various switchbacks, passing through each gate with increasing disdain. Now, as he passed through the final gate, he felt entirely too familiar with the grand structure and, so far as he was concerned, the true reasons for its existence were all too evident.

What had once been a small mountain bowl nestled above a steep, stony canyon, was now an unfortunately crowded construction site. A grand tower keep, far more impressive than practical, was nearly complete toward the front of the bowl just behind the still incomplete defensive curtainwall. The five cascades from the surrounding peaks contributed to the deep glacier lake at the back of the bowl. This, in turn, emptied into the swift moving river that plunged through a gap in the curtainwall and down its restricting channel over the concourses below. In every other otherwise reasonably dry spot, buildings of various size and designs were evident in every conceivable state of incompleteness. Some were cleared ground only, whose foundations had barely been laid out. Others had their walls partially completed with stone pillars standing free, either in their intended place or on their side. A very few others appear to be nearly complete, only lacking in a few finishing details such as a roof or doorway. The shod hooves of Evard’s horse rattled against the newly laid cobblestone paths which wound between the structures.

Such a pointless waste, Evard thought. A monumental conceit that served no real purpose…

Read more…



Update of the Avatar #58 – 01/31/14: Release 2 Perspectives, Pantheon Cloak, Valentine Special, Lighthouse, Pets, Smelting Tongs, Stretch Goals, and Founder Pledge Gifts!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

  • Release 2 Perspectives
  • Pantheon & SotA Co-Backers Receive Special Cross-Game Cloak
  • “Hearts of Britannia” Valentine’s Poetry Competition!
  • Blade of the Avatar Novel: Chapter 7
  • Early Founder Knight Village Waterfront Lighthouse
  • Founder Tier Pets
  • Virtual Collector Iolo Lute
  • Early Founder Royal Artisan Iolo Crossbow
  • Smelting Tongs of Prosperity
  • Stretch Goals: Lord British vs. Darkstarr
  • Purchase, Transfer, or Gifting of Founder Pledges

Release 2 Perspectives

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Lord British shared his royal perspective on the Release 2 results in a post on the public forums:

Greetings Citizens,

We continue to be amazed by the outstanding community we have participating in Shroud of the Avatar! Many thousands of you joined us in the Release 2 test phase and the data we got back was invaluable. More importantly, we are learning each cycle how better to provide you the game you want. The boards have been humming with GREAT suggestions as has my twitter feed. Which, if you don’t follow, is simply @RichardGarriott. Please join me there too!

I was particularly fond of people joining my party so that we could group chat which, while a temp hack, foreshadowed what is coming soon in Release 3! While we still have TONS of work to do, I think / hope now that people can easily tell where we are heading and that the clarity should grow with each release. If you are seeing the rich world interaction detail like Ultima VII, the start of a deep virtue based story ala Ultima IV, and the diverse interrelated professions such as combat, crafting, gathering, and player created content, then you see where we are going.

The team in Austin is exceptionally happy that you continue to play and offer feedback of such quality. Every day at the office is a day of joy. We are working hard in your service!

Thank you,
Richard “Lord British” Garriott

Join the conversation with Lord British on the public forums!

Starr Long (Executive Producer) also shared his perspective on the forums:

Greetings Avatars,

Thank you all for helping us test Release 2. We feel even more strongly now that we are on the right path to make a great product with all of you. The tight feedback loop we are establishing is already making things better. With Release 2, we were able to respond to your feedback from Release 1 by adding features like jumping. We took this a step further and during Release 2, we released multiple patches to fix bugs and even add features (e.g. highlighting crafting icons on crafting tables and invert mouse look). This was a great test of the team and our patching abilities but also hopefully an indication of the kind of responsiveness we strive for.

Release 3 will be the first time we enable Open Multiplayer Mode and that will consume all of our resources to make happen. Even the simple act of enabling this requires us to solve a myriad of issues like seeing other players’ equipment/customization/animation, creating rule sets for how interactive items work (so two people can’t sit in the same chair for example), creating rules for spinning up instances when zones get full, propagating changes players make across all those instances (for when housing is re-enabled), etc. Making all those things work is why we won’t be adding new major systems until Release 4. However, as with Release 1, we really want to respond to feedback you are giving us about Release 2. Specifically we are adding these stretch goals to R3…

Read more…


Hangout of the Avatar ~ 1.30.14 ~ SotA Multiplayer

Please join us for our next Dev Hangout on Thursday, January 30th at 3pm CST. We’ll be chatting about the Multiplayer aspects of Shroud of the Avatar, led by Lord British himself. As always, I’ll have the exact link where you can watch 15 minutes prior to broadcast, and we will be featuring questions taken from our Dev+ backers, so if you are a Dev+ member, please head over to the Developer Digest to submit your questions for consideration.

For those of you who prefer written transcripts, Dame Lori has been kind enough to post a recap on the forums.  Enjoy!



Community Spotlight ~ SotAWiki.net

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This week’s Community Spotlight shines on SotAwiki.net.  This past weekend, many of you may have gotten familiar with this fantastic resource, as they have a growing library of crafting recipes, but I thought it would be fun to get to know SotaWiki founder Baron Violation a bit more as well!  Here is what he had to say during our interview. 

 

If you were an NPC in Shroud of the Avatar, how would describe yourself?

“The unnamed wondering guard! I would bring aid to those who go to adventure and become victims of thieves, murderers, and the like. I would be the one who protects the weak for the sake of doing what’s right. As any just player should I would take no credit for the work as it was the right thing to do not what I wanted to do. After a day’s work I would grumble from the exhaustion and be frustrated but my desire to help would overcome the feeling and each day and I would continue the work to protect and serve the next day.”  :)

What do you think sets your Fansite apart from the rest?

“My site is unique because I’m building the framework for the fans to make their own resource. Currently sotawiki has been visited by 31 countries and had contributions from over 15 players and we’re just at R2! We have wiki designers from three countries. My goal is to provide the most extensive library of SotA information and keep it free, without ads, and updated. Many people have a hard time facilitating the content but wiki sites in general have made this possible due to the contributions of the users.”

What are YOU most looking forward to in Shroud of the Avatar?

“Wow, what a hard question. There are many things that I am looking forward to and it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. If I had to pick the thing I felt was lacking from almost every other decent RPG that I’ve played over the last 10 years, I would say the ability to share my experience with my family. My wife, daughter, brother, and even my mother have all backed this game.  I look forward to being able to take my passion for my family and my passion for games and allowing them to mingle in a way that has never been possible due to the online content not being controllable. With the ability to filter online chat I am comfortable having my daughter play with me where I wouldn’t have been if there was simply “online only and everyone is mixed!”


Release 2 Access Extended an Extra Day

Thanks to all of you for the great feedback we’ve received on Release 2 since it launched Thursday morning. Based on that feedback, we’ve released 3 new versions during the weekend, and are now up to version 60. Outlined below are the Release 2 Patch Notes describing the various bug fixes and feature enhancements across all the platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).

As a special thank you to all our backers, we’re extending the Early Access period for an extra day! So, if you haven’t had a chance to play yet, please log in, patch to the latest version 60, and let us know what you think.

If you’d like some crafting hints, head over to sotawiki.net and check out their growing list of crafting recipes.

Hurry and join us in playing Shroud of the Avatar while Release 2 access is open! If you have not backed the game yet, you will need to register and login on www.shroudoftheavatar.com, select the “Pledge” button in the right side-bar, and purchase a pledge at the $45 Adventurer level or above.

(click here for more complete instructions on downloading and playing Release 2)

 

Release 2 Patch Notes

v55

  • Several fixes were implemented to reduce memory usage.  This should help reduce random crashes and make the game playable for people on 32bit operating systems.
  • NPCs will bark less often so that they are less spammy.
  • Some NPC conversation text updates.
  • Top right icon that brought up a bug submission form will now redirect to the Release 2 bug forums instead.
  • Admin and whisper messages should now pop up your chat window when received if it was not visible already.
  • You should no longer see a naked male avatar briefly after making a new character.

v57

  • Added option to invert mouse look
  • Added a sheen to items placed on the crafting table to make them easier to see.
  • Fixed missing textures in Kingsport waterfront castle

v60

  • Improve right-click rotate camera controls.  Should be more consistent and fix players for whom it was too slow.
  • Fixes for a few exceptions that were occurring.
  • Fix for inventory icons being offset incorrectly at high window resolutions.
  • Fix for inventory icons not fading properly on bag close
  • Fix for an inventory list visual glitch.
  • Fixes for some plot loading issues.