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College of Arms & Custom Crests in Game Reward

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Apr 16, 2014.

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  1. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    Greetings Avatars:

    Founders receive the following pledge reward at the Virtual Collector Tier:

    Custom Crest In Game: Get your own Family Crest for display on your shield, tabard and house flag, made from a customized image uploaded by YOU! (Submitted Art subject to Developer Approval).​

    We are very excited to announce that we have a great tool in development from the College of Arms for all of you to create your Crest. As some of you are aware Lord British recently awarded the College of Arms a Royal Warrant and therefore they are our chosen curator of crests. Please treat them with the respect due their office.

    Using this tool is an extremely positive way for us to accomplish this goal. Here are just a few of the benefits:
    • Performance: Adding 4,000+ more textures to the game would exacerbate our texture memory size issues because we’re already fighting memory overheads. Those of you playing on 32-bit systems have already experienced memory issues. With the College of Arms solution, we can composite the image on the fly from a single image, no matter how many variations there are.
    • Support: As you all know we are trying to keep our budget focused on game content development so we are keeping cost like marketing and support very tight right now. If we were to support a completely open image submission process, we would have to hire staff to review each and every image to make sure it is appropriate.
    • Thematic & Cohesive: The College of Arms generator is loosely based on historically accurate models of heraldry and, in the end, we feel will create a much more cohesive world than if we left this completely open. From a fiction/lore standpoint the Avatars are from a different world, but in-universe these arms are being built for those outsiders by people who are native to New Britannia, meaning that a 'New Britannian style' will be common to them, again resulting in a cohesive look.
    • Community: As with other examples like the Bards of Poet’s Circle, doing works like this with the community makes the work we are creating a work created by all of us, not just the professional developers. In the end we feel this makes a better product.
    Please note that the tool is still very much in development but as soon as it is ready for official crest creation we will let you know. In the meantime, the members of the College of Arms will be happy to answer any questions you may have and can assist you with creating your arms here on the College of Arms sub forum. Please also note we will not accept any submissions that potentially infringe on copyrighted material.

    -Darkstarr
     
  2. Sir Bradley White

    Sir Bradley White Avatar

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    Nice little update. The College of Arms is doing excellent work, and props to them for all the hard work they are doing!

    And congrats on the Royal Warrant too! It is excellent to see such acknowledgment for community involvement.
     
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  3. Razimus

    Razimus Avatar

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    Cool thanks, yes the College of Arms are a great group of Heralds.
     
  4. TheMadHermit

    TheMadHermit Avatar

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    I've been meaning to make my crest. Looking forward to working with the College of Arms on this. They have done a great job with all their hard work. We are lucky to have them in our community.
     
  5. Violation Clauth

    Violation Clauth Avatar

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    HUZZAH!
     
  6. Golem Dragon

    Golem Dragon Avatar

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    Feel free to start a thread in the College of Arms subforum. If a custom charge is needed Ronan, O'Sullivan or I could take care of it for you. :)


    Personally, I would love to see you rocking a custom charge and have a sleek, simple, but elegant coat of arms to help make you stand out. I am a huge fan of simple but elegant because it makes one's coat of arms, their identification, special and memorable.
     
  7. Mercyful Fate

    Mercyful Fate Avatar

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    It's features like these that help bring a level of uniqueness not found in other MMOs. Many thanks to all involved in this process!
     
  8. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

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    The College of Arms is doing great work, and I'm personally excited to have a crest in game.

    Is there a 64-bit client that doesn't have the 2 GB process limit?
     
  9. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    COA! COA! College of Arms hooray!
     
  10. Myrcello

    Myrcello Avatar

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    Eye thinks they are awsome.
     
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  11. TheMadHermit

    TheMadHermit Avatar

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    Thanks @Golem-Dragon. I appreciate it.
     
  12. High Baron O`Sullivan

    High Baron O`Sullivan Avatar

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    is everything.
    Anyone needing help creating a CoA while the generator is still being developed feel free to contact me.
     
  13. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    Not tryin to lawyer you bro,... this is more of an FYI... This sentence seems to imply that crests will be made up of a set of "predefined images" hosted by the CoA that can be assembled on the fly. However, it seems that almost every shield has some kind of custom image like a boar, a walrus, roses, or daggers in a rose, just to mention a few.

    So I'm assuming not all arms can be built using a single set of images. There are lots of custom images already. In fact somebody is working on getting a greek Trojan head for my shield. So unless I read this wrong, you guys need to be ready for lots of custom images.

    *******************

    So if I have understood this correctly, and this is the case we (and the CoA) need to start developing our custom images from some set of modular images instead of having totally customized art. Then we can still have a customized image using a pre-defined set of smaller images.

    (I am aware there are colors, and patters that are already pre-defined by the CoA. I'm referring specifically to the custom symbols many of us have, like the walrus, broken moon, and trojan heads etc)
     
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  14. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    High Baron, O'Sullivan,

    Can you see if the charges (Rampant Lion and Celtic Trinity) are in the generator?

    These would be on the Coat of Arms for Myself (Greagoir) and the guild Celtic Order of Druids and Bards already in the gallery.

    Do you see any problems or any changes that may need to be done once you guys are ready to submit them all to the Devs?
     
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  15. Phredicon

    Phredicon Avatar

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    From my understanding, which isn't very high so trust accordingly, the CoA are the ones generating the 'custom images' in this scenario, and those images will go into the 'library' of images that will be used to create the Arms. They and/or the tool will pull the disperate parts together into a single image that the game will use as an art assest, instead of the Port team having to create every part as a separate art asset.
     
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  16. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    Imagine one image that is a grid of 4000 charges. And we're filling up the grid with some historical charges, and some that players submit, until the grid is full. And from that point on, you'll have to build from that set.
     
  17. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    They are in the list, and I expect there won't be any problems. If there are, we'll let you know.
     
  18. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Thank you Sir Frank! :)
     
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  19. Browncoat Jayson

    Browncoat Jayson Legend of the Hearth

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    Looking through the Charges, it looks like there are:

    * Lion Rampant

    * Simple Trinity
     
  20. Trenyc

    Trenyc Avatar

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    Which is a lot of unique charges. Many devices will reuse charges that are already in the database, which means there will be room for unique charges for quite awhile to come. From what I've seen, the College is doing a great job ensuring that those unique charges that are added to the database, too, contribute to the available selection in a significant way. The net result of this is that, even if the database does fill up (which it might not after all), there will still be so many charges to choose from it'll make your head hurt. Most games that offer player- or guild images like our coats of arms offer a number of charges (symbols) on the order of dozens. This is a super cool project that's been put together for this game, even if it does eventually have to be reasonably constrained due to practical limitations.
     
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