Prophesy of Pendor Version 3.0 Status Update

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We are in the next few minutes entering the final phase of bug hunting and system tweaking before release early next week.  I will make a big announcement when the final version is uploaded, no worries there. :smile:

In this version we have lots of updates and minor changes.

The Major changes are:

The MAP:  Smoothed out and not as rough as in Beta 10.

Banners:
Another is that ABYSS and I cranked out some new Banners. We have some nice eye candy.  I know I selected some existing banners from Open Source (Permission and credit given), and I also created a few.  The end result is maybe a dozen banners that I want to use personally.  Makes deciding a coat of arms a pain.

Heartbeat Quests:
The Heartbeat quests should be fully functional and working properly. I made some tweaks and patches some logic errors and the end result is great.  I think it all came home for me when during testing I selected a bone-headed option and the system generated an extreme negative result: my village hated me, it took a hit to productivity and it spawned a heretic coven right on top of my village.  Oh joy. 

LOD Resources:
We swapped out some textures and added a new wave of .LOD resources to help the strain on the game engine and some lower end graphics cards.  We do not have the resources to fully test this out and make all the adjustments that i would like to see.... however we did a very respectable job for a team of volunteers.  Thanks to Mad Vader, LittleMikey, Sysyphe, M0rdred, Abyss, Gerhart, Fawzia, Valorian Endymion, and noosers for helping to track down these graphics issues and being relentless in seeking to optimize the size and load of this offering.

Day before yesterday we passed a silent but significant milestone on the Development Server.  We passed 10,000 posts. 



Best,

Saxondragon
 
@HarryB - you are forgetting Fred and Donavan, both buddies, same as Rayne and Ediz.  As I said, it was a matter of endogamy, not who was male or female.

@Chiksika - Sara's not quite as bad as Lady Caroline!  :oops: I think I went a trifle overboard on Lady C, but Rosha liked her, so she stayed in.  She actually makes a pretty good lord, when you level her up, if you can stand her that long.
 
I have a little and easy question about banner : When i choose a banner, will it change all the other lord's banner ? I don't remember in 2.5 what was happening.
I am asking that because i hate to take a banner that belong to someone else already.. Also , if I decide to conquer them all, i want a banner that do not belong to any faction.

That leads me to another point. Based on the screenshot, the colour of the Pendor army are Black&white with a Gryphon as symbol ? Because i want a banner that match them :wink:

( Sorry about my english, it's not my 1st language as you surely have noticed. =) )
 
@HarryB - no, Sir Alistair hasn't been left out - in the FAQ he is in the last two combinations in the text part of the companion compositions and also in the bubble on the left midway.
 
saxondragon said:
We are in the next few minutes entering the final phase of bug hunting and system tweaking before release early next week.  I will make a big announcement when the final version is uploaded, no worries there. :smile:

In this version we have lots of updates and minor changes.

The Major changes are:

The MAP:  Smoothed out and not as rough as in Beta 10.

Banners:
Another is that ABYSS and I cranked out some new Banners. We have some nice eye candy.  I know I selected some existing banners from Open Source (Permission and credit given), and I also created a few.  The end result is maybe a dozen banners that I want to use personally.  Makes deciding a coat of arms a pain.

Heartbeat Quests:
The Heartbeat quests should be fully functional and working properly. I made some tweaks and patches some logic errors and the end result is great.  I think it all came home for me when during testing I selected a bone-headed option and the system generated an extreme negative result: my village hated me, it took a hit to productivity and it spawned a heretic coven right on top of my village.  Oh joy. 

LOD Resources:
We swapped out some textures and added a new wave of .LOD resources to help the strain on the game engine and some lower end graphics cards.  We do not have the resources to fully test this out and make all the adjustments that i would like to see.... however we did a very respectable job for a team of volunteers.  Thanks to Mad Vader, LittleMikey, Sysyphe, M0rdred, Abyss, Gerhart, Fawzia, Valorian Endymion, and noosers for helping to track down these graphics issues and being relentless in seeking to optimize the size and load of this offering.

Day before yesterday we passed a silent but significant milestone on the Development Server.  We passed 10,000 posts. 



Best,

Saxondragon

don't rush things now....we wouldn't want another beta 10
 
Selvhan said:
I have a little and easy question about banner : When i choose a banner, will it change all the other lord's banner ? I don't remember in 2.5 what was happening.
I am asking that because i hate to take a banner that belong to someone else already.. Also , if I decide to conquer them all, i want a banner that do not belong to any faction.

That leads me to another point. Based on the screenshot, the colour of the Pendor army are Black&white with a Gryphon as symbol ? Because i want a banner that match them :wink:

( Sorry about my english, it's not my 1st language as you surely have noticed. =) )

This is tricky to answer.  There are several banners at the end of the banners that are reserved for the player and selecting them will not impact anyone.  However saying that, selecting a banner at games beginning (which in Pop, 4 of the 5 starting options give this to you), any banner you select will merely swap that choice out with another for the intended Lord.  You will never see this in game.

There are plenty of Black/White/Gold banners to choose from.. I freely admit that I went a bit overboard with the concepts around Black/White and Red.  You will like the banner selection I am sure.

@ Tsunami 
We are done and tested, but waiting for the unexpected.  This is where I wanted to be with Beta10 but we did not hit the deadline and there were many last minute changes, issues, swap outs etc.  We have worked through those and are now looking for what we missed. 

We are making the assumption that we did miss something: likely up to several big things based upon statistical probability.  But, that is the nature of this work, the complexity and the distributed nature of the development team will lend itself to hidden issues and errors.

This next week we fix those errors and with any luck we should be ready to go.  Right now my biggest concern revolves around the load we put on the game engine itself.  This extra load is causing crashes with high settings during large battles and also is clearly not playing well with the 64 bit operating systems such as windows 7.  This last week we focused a great deal of effort to alleviate that load with LOD resources.  We may add more.. it depends upon the feedback we get.

Best regards,

Saxondragon
 
Fawzia dokhtar-i-Sanjar said:
@HarryB - no, Sir Alistair hasn't been left out - in the FAQ he is in the last two combinations in the text part of the companion compositions and also in the bubble on the left midway.

What I mean is that all the other companions have a link to their character descriptions down below the chart and he doesn't.
 
froggyluv said:
Also probably my favorite voice acting moment in-game "Jatu!"

Yeah, but nothing can compare to the drunken yell of Alaric's boys before battle! Instant favorite!
 
As long as there is at least one more banner available than lords around it isn´t much of a problem.

If not, you´ll have one lord without a banner like it has been in the past.
 
@ Sax : Good, can't wait to see them on my armour !

@ nooser : But can't the lord of a faction use the same banner ? For example, lord with lower rank and renown could use the same flag as their king. That could solve the problem, if there is one.

 
No, SD and Abyss added extra banners.  If you choose one belonging to a lord, he will simply have another.  There are enough now to go around for you and all the kings and lords.
 
And no. A banner was a sign of the specific family the lord belonged to. It is something similar to a business card saying something like:''I'm lord XYZ from the noble family QWE (fear me/worship me/give me all you money and women)''
 
Although I must say, for me personally, I spent most of my first game as a bannerless, lordless (godless, cut-throat, etc.) mercenary, and only picked my banner near the end.

Of course, being Welsh I had to choose the one that's four quadrants of alternating green and white, with the red gryphon/rampant lion kinda thing. Ancestral pride, rawr.  :smile:
 
Take up a hobby.
Herd kittens?
Practice your knife throwing skills?
Whatever floats your boat mate.

~Ãbyss
 
Read the conan books(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Robert_E._Howard#Novels) and get pumped up about fighting the snake cult and the red slavers.
 
And the highest flagpole belongs to the most prominent person. Just like today´s government wouldn´t consider anything under an Audi A6 approbiate for their minister or can you imagine your prime minister drive around in a Fiat Uno?

Each banner is unique and someone carrying the same banner as someone else would cause serious trouble and a trial of arms for the right to bear it or a quick kill to get rid of the imposter.
 
General Update:

Things are going well in this final phase so far.

We changed the backs of the tabbards to match the colors of the new banners..(a good thing).

We have found a few minor things, cosmetic mostly and have addressed those. 

Most of the focus has been on identifying the issues surrounding crashes on 64 bit systems (Windows7 and 64 bit Vista) during heavy use of the game engine. 

Overall i am pleased.

Best regards,

Saxondragon
 
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