A preview of new Xenos work!

I saw the pictures of the crystal clear waters and thought it would be great to see shipwrecks on the bottom.

Scottie, these screenshots are breathtaking.

 

Yes indeed! I've actually already started placing a few bits of rubble and shattered architecture under the surface in a few of the shallow areas... I'll see about adding more!

 

And here we are folks,...the final post for Xenos before it goes live in the next build! We're working feverishly on this (as you can tell by the hour of this post), and hope that you'll enjoy what we have to offer...

Everything I had yearned to include in the scene has now been placed somewhere on the map, and at this point all that is left for me to do is proliferate them to all the various places they may go, and finish some final touch-up details on the landscape painting and foliage placement as decoration across the map... You'll see examples of pretty much everything in the images of this last and largest post... We'll begin and end near the city center, where you can see the festive area of the Forum. Beyond it you can catch a peek at the newest addition to replace a building that I had been struggling to figure out how to handle... Instead I used a suggestion from the Mad Hatter pertaining to a wonderful asset available on the Unity Store, which ended up perfectly fitting the theme of the scene, and tied in wonderfully to elements of the fiction pertaining to the mysterious Titan Boreus.



We'll see that building up close at the end of the post, but for now, let's make use of the handy gondolas that I've placed at various locations throughout the scene... Initially, each will have two boats; one which will allow you to visit another gondola dock around the bay, and the second which will return to the one you just came from. Eventually, however, our plan is to have a single boat there which will take you to any of the locations on that scene map by merely choosing one from an entire list! Grand convenience!


On the way to catch the gondola you'll notice that merchants have finally arrived to set up their wares in market stalls that line the busy docks. Colorful awnings and goods of all kinds entice those who have newly arrived to the city from far, foreign shores! And speaking of merchants, the caravanserai has now been stocked with them as well, and offers a comfortable environment in which to sit and socialize while enjoying a sweet pastry or delicious fruit from the local orchards.




As far as orchards go, not far from the caravanserai and the tent city near the edge of Xenos can now be seen rich farmlands and tilled fields full of crops ready for harvest by the local plebeians. Nearby are fenced-in paddocks and grassy acres where cows and sheep wander placidly grazing. The great Elysian Plains stretch away toward the distant horizon. One can even find a shrine to a forgotten harvest goddess nestled in the middle of a wheat field on the way toward Hatter's Hill, evidence of the pantheistic ancient days before the Fall, thousands of years before the path of Virtues was established.



Much like the steep road leading up to the Elysian Heights neighborhood across the bay, the cobbled road to Hatter's Hill district is adorned by pillars topped with burning braziers to light the way in the shadows of the steep cliffs. Statues of long-dead legionnaires known as the Tagma Guard, warriors in service to the ancient royalty of Elysium before the Fall, watch over travelers as they climb the hill to the top. A brief respite on the way may be in order near a fountain fed by the same artesian wells that supply the Eastern Aqueduct with fresh water that services the Elysian Meadows neighborhood below.



Atop the Hill itself are a variety of interest points, much like the distant Elysian Heights and the West Bay area. Water features such as the old fountain seen above, small bathing ponds, and public wading pools are fairly numerous, many of which are decorated with statuary from the old kingdom. And of course, a variety of ruins of ancient Xenos can be discovered throughout the area, especially at the city's outskirts. The plateau of Hatter's Hill itself was once the seat of power for Xenos, established long before the Fall by twin brothers according to legend (one of whom betrayed the other to assume the throne as sole monarch, it is said), and whose massive statues still stand on either side of the great Elysium Gulf, which leads to the Bay of Storms. When the moon was shattered and fell from the sky, though no shards struck Elysium, the shores of Xenos were battered by vast waves and shaken by terrible earthquakes. The palaces of Xenos' ancient rulers were toppled in the cataclysm's fury, and what is left of them can still be found on the Hill to this day, long since looted and choked with shrubs and overgrowth.




Last but not least we return to the City Center district to see evidence of some of Xenos' newest architecture, the gleaming Hall of Boreus, erected well over a century ago during his stay here after the end of the Obsidian Empire, and housing (now that he has apparently vanished) an enormous statue carved in his likeness. Trimmed in beaten sheets of gold, and carved by the same masons who erected the graceful arches and pillars of the Lagoon of Pleasure (as well as several other features found throughout the city), this splendid shrine to the Titan of Truth stands as the perfect centerpiece to this thriving city of luck and pleasure. Perhaps a visit to this shrine will enhance the luck of those seeking their fortunes at the fabled Lottery.



I truly hope you have enjoyed this final tour of my work on Xenos before it goes live! As always, it has been an absolute pleasure sharing my progress with you... Wish me luck as I perform the final polishing touches!

Yours truly...

Scottie ^_^

 

All of this amazing work on de-cloning going on just puts me in awe! After seeing so much of the same artwork and scenes reused and rearranged the first couple years, this new work you all are doing is so refreshing and exciting!! Great Job to ALL of you!

 

Making of the new Xenos... Words can not express the excitement you brought to my home!!!
And this looks like nothing short of perfection, and I personally can't express our "Thank You" for pouring your heart and soul into this.
Don't deny there were many long night to complete this... and we cant wait to see it. Amazing story and work Scottie!!!

The gratitude for this will not be forgotten.

-Mad Hatter

 

This is amazing work Scottie. Thanks for sharing. As a resident of Xenos, can't wait to see your finished work!

 

The Persepolis archaeological feel is a really nice touch, IMHO. Its an underutilized theme in games I think.

 

I have taken a short run through the city and what I have seen is fantastic
well done in all respects Scottie and I do want to thank you for the two parks and the ferry at the end of the dirt road that is now all stone
Looks amazing
Thank you very much

 

We'll I've seen the rebuilt Xenos yesterday and OMG, it is the best looking NPC town in the game. I can't believe all the attention to detail. The roads in the city are amazing with the foliage on the borders. The city is completely changed. Don't know what to say except 'WOW' and 'great job Scottie'!!!

 

Thank you so much, one and all, for the kind comments!

For me, now,...there's still a lot of "behind the scenes" work I'm doing in the midst of all the bug fixes I'm working on... This is in response to all the great bugs you folks have logged in the mean-time... ^_^ And, oh yes, I will admit there's been a lot of late nights recently... It's all about the passion... I want to "believe" in what I'm making...

As far as "behind the scenes" stuff goes, yesterday I spent time doing my best (within my realm of knowledge) to improve the frame-rate by thinning out the sheer amount of grass remaining on the map from before I began touching it, while distributing a bit of it toward the obviously empty spots, and then taking the time to systematically set the "culling layers" for all objects in the scene I used for decoration... These settings support the LOD (level of detail) system that allows objects (and sometimes their component parts) to simplify their geometry and eventually "cull out" as the player gets far enough away from them... After doing this, toward the end of the day, I could see a "frames per second" increase of about 10 to 15 frames in most areas of the map (though it still feels a bit chunky in the more congested center of town)...I'll be doing more of this today, so hopefully we'll see some more improvement,...and the programmers have promised to give me their help in even more optimizations soon!

In addition, today I will be making a pass to appropriately paint the approaches to player's house lots... I kind of did that initial paint pass in a sort of "heavy-handed" way, throwing cobblestones and dirt WAY too far into the lot itself, so one of my goals today is to go back and reduce that to a less-intrusive amount (leaving the lots mostly grass with just the hint of a trail going into it) so as to leave more grassy area for the players to deco as they see fit to make it more "their own"...

I'm so very close to seeing this map as done as I originally intended to make it,...and then it can be formally passed on to both Design and Programming for final functional and optimization passes...

Thanks again for all your wonderful support throughout this process!!!

Scottie ^_^

 

I agree. This is one of my favorite places now.

I hope the framerate has improved though. On QA it was around 7 fps for me, which is pretty much unacceptable.

 

Great work! Thrilled to visit that place again.

 

I just visited Xenos - it was quite an eye popper. The whole scene has changed, and feels much more like a grand city now. Excellent work, everyone that worked on this should be proud.

 

It has improved a little, since I started optimizing,...but there will need to be some major (deeper into tech than I'm able to handle) optimizations on the programmer side of things before you'll see it improve as dramatically as you'd like, I'm betting...

And truly,...the blame lies squarely on my shoulders in this case, because it's merely the second outdoor map I've worked on (other than Nightshade Pass by Hilt, which didn't contain as much "concentration" of stuff due to not being a populated area...), and it's the very first city map I've been asked to complete... As a result, I know that I missed quite a few opportunities to build it more efficiently for the sake of frame-rate up front, which means we have to pull back a bit now (possibly at the expense of some of its beauty), to get the frame-rate up to a reasonable level... Hopefully it doesn't hurt my heart too much...

I just beg you all to be as patient as you can while that's in progress....

Thanks so much folks...

Scottie ^_^

 

Finally saw the new Xenos in-game and I am totally blown away. Haven't explored every nook and cranny yet but so far it's amazing work. Love the little touches, like paying your respects to the Deities -- would be cool to see something similar in the Hall of Boreus. The grand gate, rotunda, forum, and that lagoon! Great stuff. The deco of pillars, arches, statues, and ruins fills out the scene nicely as you explore and take in the visual history of the city.

Interestingly, I also like the places you can't really explore. Like the rock formations (these?) to the West or East that unfortunately exits the scene. Or even the half-buried ruins along the coast. The coastal waters along the east, just beyond the last house, looks like a great place to bury more secrets in that large bay that extends beyond the scene. Would love to see more of that, if only to entice and tease you since they are just out of your reach to explore even deeper still. My how this scene sparks the imagination of what once was.

I do hope that @Chris will continue to optimize the tech so that you don't have to scale anything back but perhaps even give you more creative freedom. I get around 20-50 fps, but mostly around 30 fps on average, but then my rig is on the high end.

I'd imagine there will be tons more NPCs, be they non-essential like Travelers or story-based ones you can converse with, and a ton more deco as you continue to polish out the scene. And speaking of deco, I wanted to steal every ornate vase I saw! And statues! And wall engravings!

I've resisted exploring the neighboring scene of Artifice, as I want to wait until the game is fully complete and polished to do the main quests, but like the pilgrims/residents of Xenos, the temptation now to visit has become even harder to resist. I think I need to buy a lottery ticket from the Elf here.