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Update of the Avatar/Update 235

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Update of the Avatar #235, posted July 7th 2017

Update of the Avatar #235 – 2017.07.07: New Elves, Scene Polish, Shroud at RTX, Free Trial Live, Telethon Results, Your Questions Answered, New Flash Sale, Contest Winners, Community Events, and More![edit]

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

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

New Elves & Elven Outfits[edit]

As we have been working on the Paths of Truth and Courage we have been spending more time in areas with Elves. This has highlighted our need for more visual variations in the Elves, including the need for female elves. Fletcher has been hard at work creating both new outfits as well as female faces and bodies for the Elves. These new elves will appear in Release 44 starting in Bloodriver Outskirts and will propagate to other scenes over the next several releases.

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Fletcher “SkullMuncher34” Kinnear]

Hey all! So as you may have heard we’ve been working to expand the variations of enemies in the game. One notable inclusion is that of female elves to go alongside male ones. In addition to creating new female elf NPC’s this has also given us an opportunity to populate the game with more equipment. Female elven armours will soon be available in game as well. These include Female Elven Mage, Female Elven Archer, and Female Elven Fighter. I’ll be posting updates to this thread with screenshots and other media in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

Female Elven Fighter:

Upload elf fletcher.jpg   Upload-1 elf fletcher.jpg

Male Elven Fighter:

19551021 1573426376036145 1552512736 n elf fletcher.jpg   19265082 1573426372702812 45371716 n elf fletcher.jpg

Female Elven Archer:

18685644 1533439060034877 705345833 n elf fletcher.jpg   18789183 1534481576597292 1490315328 o-1024x883 elf fletcher.jpg
18745281 1534481573263959 1412307331 o-1024x915 elf fletcher.jpg

Female Elven Mage:

18835155 1539335332778583 305008614 n elf fletcher.jpg   18816313 1539336249445158 571431397 n elf fletcher.jpg

Female Elf NPC sculpt WIP:

Female-Elf-NPC-Sculpt-1.png

Boreas: The Titan of Truth[edit]

Each Titan has been getting unique visuals and for Release 44 the final Titan, Boreas, the Titan of Truth is getting his turn. His fate however was perhaps the darkest and saddest of all of them though. SPOILERS below.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post Update by Kevin “UglyFist” Wells]

I just wanted to put up some screenshots of what Boreas looks like during the making-of, like I did with Arabella. I will likey be making further edits to finish polish on Boreas before it’s over, but this is how he’s looking so far.

Like with Arabella, I have here a turnaround of the very first, low-poly, blocked-in model Here, poly-count is about 8000…

BoreasLoPoly.jpg

Then, I get all the pieces into ZBrush as fast as I can for the fun stuff…here he is with the high poly details.

Here, it’s at about 25 million polys…

BoreasHiPoly.jpg

I’ll bake textures from the high-poly to the low-poly mesh. Just like with Arabella, I tried to replicate the turnaround in-game – so this is Boreas, textured, rigged, and in-game…

BoreasInGame.jpg

As soon as I get him all wrapped up I will post him on Sketchfab as usual to show him off in 3D.

Also, the story of Boreas (and why he’s a dead guy) has become one of my favorite parts of the story. I’ll give away a few details soon, in future updates to this post.

Jaanaford Scene Polish[edit]

As we are focusing on the Path of Truth we are spending time to not only polish the story elements (dialogue, NPC names, quests, etc.) we are also updating visuals along the path as needed. For Release 44 this includes polishing the visuals for three of the towns you visit along the Path of Truth: Aerie, Vertas, and Jaanaford. Each of these towns is getting updated to include more color (especially blue, the color of Truth), more visuals related to Truth (books, libraries, statues of the Titan of Truth, etc.), and general polish (terrain, foliage, etc.).

[A Dev+ Forum Post by Chris “Sea Wolf” Wolf]

Hey folks. Today I’ll be sharing a few screenshots of some updates I have made to Jaanaford.

Improvements have been made to the terrain, especially along trails, to make it feel more realistic. All of the rocks in the scene have been replaced with ones of better quality.

Jaanaford1.jpg

Both the upper and lower waterfalls have been replaced with ones which closely resemble other waterfalls in other updated scenes.

Jaanaford2.jpg

The Town Center has a few new additional structures to reinforce Jaanaford’s ancient history as a place of learning.

Jaanaford3.jpg

The central bonfire now has a colonnade surrounding it, along with canvas tarps that provide shade.

Jaanaford4.jpg

The Reliquarium is a “new” addition to the town center. The townsfolk of Jaanaford have taken it upon themselves to restore this crumbling library to working order. Fans of the fantasy books should stop by here to check out the various oddities on display, or to catch up on some reading.

Jaanaford5.jpg

Many of the the bridges leading to the town center are built on the ruins of what was here before.

Jaanaford6.jpg

The Devotional now rests on a foundation which does it justice.

Jaanaford7.jpg

Chris Wolf
Level Designer

Shroud at RTX 2017 This Weekend![edit]

Banner rtx austin 2017-1.jpg

We are incredibly excited to announce that we are returning to Rooster Teeth Expo July 7 – 9! Come find us in Booth 323 at the Austin Convention Center where you can play the game, get a challenge coin, and meet various members of the development team including Richard “Lord British” Garriott, Starr “Darkstarr” Long, and others.

RTX shroud.jpg

We go back a long way with Rooster Teeth. Richard actually made the very first mention of Shroud of the Avatar on their show before the Kickstarter! We then attended RTX that same year (2013), right after Starr joined the team, where we gave a presentation and a live demo of a very early version of Release 1.

SotA RTX0.jpg

The next year (2014) we returned to the show and this time we had a corner booth on the show floor with crowds of people moving through our space every day.

Hope to see you this weekend!

SeedInvest Updates: New Perks, New Perk Levels, Perk Images[edit]

As you know, we’ve been running an equity crowdfunding campaign through SeedInvest. The campaign was started only a few weeks ago, and already we are seeing tremendous support.

We are excited to be updating you today on several new additions to the campaign! New perks were listed, images for the perks were added, entire new perk tiers for more investing options, as well as key campaign details for interested future investors.

Equity Banner.jpg

Due to regulations on how these campaigns work, we are not allowed to list equity crowdfunding campaign “Tombstone” details like the actual perks in this update. If you would like to see the new screenshots and details of the in-game gold item perks, please visit the SeedInvest website: https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b

Many of you have already made a reservation (thank you!), but some of you have yet to be converted to campaign investments.

Those of you who’ve made a reservation, please convert it to an investment!

To convert, head to the official SeedInvest website, log in to your account, and from there you will be able to complete your investment. You can also go to the mentioned linked to become an investor!

Thank you Avatars!
Lord British and the Portalarium Team

*Disclaimer: Portalarium is offering securities under Regulation CF and Rule 506(c) of Regulation D through SI Securities, LLC (“SI Securities”). The Company has filed a Form C with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its offering, a copy of which may be obtained here: https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b

Lord British’s Birthday Bash Telethon Results[edit]

Lb birthday bash telethon wide banner.jpg

Our Lord British’s Birthday Bash Telethon was a huge success and we achieved lots of our Stretch Goal Rewards! A heartfelt thank you from the entire Dev Team to all of you, our backers, that have contributed to the development funding of Shroud of the Avatar. Thursday’s Telethon was yet another example of your amazing support and contributions! The total as of 09:00 PM CDT, July 6th, was an amazing:

** $100,000 **

As promised, Telethon Funding Stretch Goal Rewards will be rewarded to any backers that pledged a minimum of $5 from the start of the telethon, until 09:00 PM CDT, July 6th (Spending Store Credit to make $5 minimum purchase does not apply). These rewards should show up on your account page within the next couple of weeks and will begin showing up in the game over the next few releases starting as soon as Release 45.

  • Achieved! $10,000: Silver Fireworks
  • Achieved! $25,000: /flowerwandtrick: make a magic wand turn into flower bouquet
  • Achieved! $35,000: Lord British Helmet with Silver Serpent: includes light source
  • Achieved! $50,000: Lord British Throne (chair with LB symbol on it)
  • Achieved! $65,000: Tuxedo with tails + 2 Magic Emotes:
  • /birdtrick: make a bird fly out of a top hat!
  • /endlessclothtrick: pull a long string of colored cloths from your mouth!
  • Achieved! $80,000: Lord British Version of Moondial
  • Bonus Achieved! $100,000: Magical Pet Broom

We had deep dives, answered questions, danced, sang, did shots, spun the Wheel of Fortune & Doom, had flash sales, and handed out tons of prizes!

Did you not get your question answered? Fret not! Starr “Darkstarr” Long (with help from the rest of the team) will answer all the questions that we did not have time to answer during the telethon and post them in the forums next week!

Summer Telethon 2017 Missed Questions Answered[edit]

Starr avatar.jpg

We had 60+ pages of questions after the Summer Telethon! Unfortunately we did not get them answered immediately, like we do normally, because Starr “Darkstarr” Long was still ill around the time of the telethon. However with assistance from the team we finally were able to get to those questions and we posted them to the forums on July 4th in celebration of Lord British’s birthday!

Here are the questions that we did not have time to get to. I tried my best to answer these (with help from the rest of the team) but some we just don’t have details yet to provide. I probably won’t have time to do any follow ups to these. The community did a great job assisting us this telethon to make sure we didn’t miss a single question. However this resulted in a record 50+ pages of questions! So please forgive both the brevity of some of my answers and the fact that it has taken us weeks to answer (not to mention I was sick during the telethon!).

Also please note I deleted a bunch of duplicated questions and also deleted any questions that we answered with the Q3 post or with the release of R43. I also deleted questions that were super open ended or were super vague.

Grimbone: When will we see more 2-Handed Bludgeon weapons and patterns in game? More variety as other weapons have?
We will definitely get more variety of weapons and patterns in the game over time. The plan is to make sure there is an equal representation across all weapon types.

TeddyMIT: Can we approve more restricted beasts that are not tamable and higher level to be tamable such as Ghost Corpions?
FXguy: Are there any new monsters in the works that we don’t know about yet?
We are definitely going to be adding more creatures to the game as well as expanding the number of creatures that can be tamed.

Grave Dragon: When are we going to see more love for Plate Armor customizations? More Plate armor patterns, different colored armor enamels and Plate Armor Artifacts?
Q3 priorities for Character Art team are Norgard clothing, which will be mostly light armor, then new creatures. This means any heavy armor work will likely be in Q4.

READ MORE…

Shroud in the News: Spanish AIAS Honorary Award, Gamereactor, The DeanBeat[edit]

It continues to be quite an exciting time for us and the press. The combination of our SeedInvest campaign, the launch of Release 43, our Q3 Schedule, Richard at Gamelab, and RTX has all generated quite a lot of attention. Here are a few of the best highlights:

Richards-gamelab-honor-medal.jpg

Spanish AIAS Honorary Award: While Richard was at the Gamelab show in Barcelona the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences bestowed upon him their Honorary Award for a lifetime of innovation in gaming. Richard also did a Q&A session as well as a Master Class in IP development during Gamelab (who posted pictures of the various events to Flickr).

Ivan Fernandez-Lobo, founder and chairman of Gamelab Barcelona and former president of the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, said in a statement, “The British-American designer and entrepreneur is truly a game-changer for the medium and a source of inspiration for anyone with a creative soul, even beyond the Industry limits.”

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Gamereactor-eu-magazine.jpg

Gamereactor: Bengt Lemne interviewed Richard Garriott during the Gamelab show in Barcelona for Gamereactor for an article titled: Lord British: Shroud of the Avatar is “all about virtue test”:

We sat down with Honor Award recipient Richard “Lord British” Garriott at Gamelab to talk about his long career, his new game Shroud of the Avatar, space adventures, and more. Garriott was invited to speak about “creating and owning IPs” at the event, and had this to say about the importance of IP to game developers.“To me, if you think about what makes games sell. And we’re all here to make games and we sell them or we don’t live to make the next game. That usually takes a combination of great mechanics, which I think all games need, compelling audio and visual, which is why somebody looks at the game in the first place, but in my mind the third pillar is intellectual property. And of those three it’s the only one that can be protected. It’s the only one that lasts.”

Lordbritish 2135553 650x.jpg

The DeanBeat: During Gamelab Dean Takahashi over at the DeanBeat interviewed several game leaders, including our very own Richard Garriott, on the topic of “Why making great games takes time”.

Venturebeat-logo.png
Richard Garriott, whose career of making games has spanned almost 40 years, also said in an onstage interview with me at Gamelab that making a great game takes time.The only game that he delivered on time in his career was Ultima 5, when he was working at Origin (later sold to Electronic Arts) with his brother Robert. They delivered that game on time because they were under the most pressure. Garriott had made a big bet on Apple’s hardware just when the IBM PC and its clones started to win market share. The team had to reset its focus on the PC, and the Garriotts had to take out big personal loans just to stretch their money out to finish the game. They had to finish it on time, or they were going to go out of business. And they made their deadlines.

Free Trial 4 starts Monday![edit]

Free-Trial.png

Welcome to the latest Free Trial Test period for Shroud of the Avatar!

This trial test (#4) runs from July 3rd thru the 26th, and is the longest test so far of the system so that we can gather even more data about uptake, drop-off, conversions, etc. These tests are invaluable for us in order to improve the New User Experience and the Free Trial System.

Free Trial access allows you to play the entire game in any of the Online modes with a few key differences in game play. You will be able to explore hundreds of scenes, talk with thousands of players, adventure through the opening quests, and gain experience and skills as you get used to the world of New Britannia!

Get started in New Britannia for free!

Weekend Flash Sale: RTX “Returning Home” [edit]

Flash returning home.jpg

In honor of us returning “home” to RTX this year (see above) we are putting all Lot Deeds, Homes, Basements and even Player Owned Town Upgrades on sale this weekend!

Here is a complete list of the sale items:

Player Owned Town Property

Basements

Homes

Visit the Addon Store and select a section’s tab to browse the items!

Comic-Con Panels with Richard Garriott and Starr Long[edit]

Attending San Diego Comic-Con this coming July 20-23? Richard Garriott and Starr Long will be there to meet you! Richard has two panels with one talking about his adventures in space. The other panel is with Starr Long about Shroud of the Avatar!

Comiccon logo.png

Explore/Create: Richard Garriott’s Adventures from Gaming Pioneer to Space Adventurer – Richard “Lord British” Garriott authored the famed “Ultima” series and coined the term “avatar”. In 2008, he became the first American second-generation astronaut when he flew to the ISS. Learn more from his new memoir “Explore/Create”.

Shroud of the Avatar: Richard “Lord British” Garriott (creative director) and Starr Long (exec. producer) will discuss their latest venture, Shroud of the Avatar, currently the second highest crowdfunded video game of all time. Learn how they have developed the game while honing cutting-edge crowdfunding techniques.

Panel times and location have not yet been announced. Keep watch for updates on the official Comic-Con website.

Rock Me Avatarus Contest Winners Announced[edit]

Contest rockme party.jpg

Congratulations to the following winners of this month’s contest! Over the last couple of weeks and leading up to Lord British’s Telethon event, the goal for the contest was to design a party scene. And we got some amazing submissions too! Check them out below:

£1st Place Winner: Datendrache

Datendrache winner contest.jpg

£2nd Place Winner: Phoenix Republic Guild

Grimace2 phoenixrepublic party contest.jpg

Credit to the group includes: Mal Hari, Damien Ragnarok, Ashley Starsapphire, Sher Shadowleaf, Stella Moon, Stryker Sparhawk, Grendal Rose, Kodeejs Trakais, Sassa Svanhild, Grimace, Justyne Kayse, Lady Addy, Calan Caitin

£3rd Place Winner: Minerva

Minerva party contest.jpg

And honorable mentions to Rudyard and Licemeat! See all submissions in this forum thread.

Community Livestream: Exploring Release 43[edit]

We had multiple developers on this Community Livestream to talk about Release 43 and all the content that went into the game for it. Have a look!

We have even more content coming in future releases, so stay tuned for the next livestream! For more videos and livestreams, be sure to subscribe to www.youtube.com/portalarium!

Upcoming Events Calendar[edit]

July 3-26, 2017 – Free Trial Test #4
July 7-9, 2017 – RTX 2017 – Booth #323
July 20-23, 2017 – Comic-Con Panels with Richard Garriott and Starr Long
July 27, 2017 – Release 44
Aug 10 – 14, 2017 – Syndcon (Austin)
Aug 31, 2017 – Release 45
Sept 1 – 4, 2017 – Dragon Con
Sept 22 – 23, 2017 – Ultima Online 20th Anniversary Party
Sept 28, 2017 – Release 46
Oct 13 – 15, 2017 – SotA Con 2017 (Austin)
Oct 26, 2017 – Release 47

Visit the official Community Calendar to see the great lineup of activities our amazing community has planned for this weekend! And be sure to check out this month’s Release Events thread in the SotA forums for additional events.

Community Event: Isla de Muerta Opening Day + Birthday Bash![edit]

Liz the wiz AulcW9g v2.jpg

“Saturday 8th July will see me (Liz) getting officially older, and as a result, I would like to invite you all to come to Isla de muerta (you can come by boat from Central Brittany, first pier the island boatman will know the way, or the Brittany Estates blacksmith just inside the gates always keeps a balloon there.)

Start time is Noon CT (6pm UK time), although I will likely be around quite a bit before. I shall also be streaming the event on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/lizkimber.

This event will also herald the official opening to visitors of the island. We have plenty of space for new residents with a ton of free land if you wish to book a spot!” – Liz_the_wiz

Community Resources – Players Helping Players[edit]

SotA NewPlayerWelcome Forum.jpg

The official SotA New Player Welcome Forum and the Player Created Resources Forum have the best player created resources for Shroud of the Avatar, whether it’s a Player Written Guide, a Video Walk-through, or a Wiki-type Website.

Visit the official Community Resources page for a complete listing of all things community.

Recommended Project to Back – SotA Con – Austin 2017[edit]

Sotacon east logo 2017.jpg

SotA Con – Austin 2017 is ground zero for interaction with the developers of Shroud of the Avatar where your ideas and input are on the front lines. Based in the beautiful city of Austin, Texas, Portalarium Inc. is the home of the Shroud of the Avatar development team that are quickly being recognized for ground breaking concepts throughout the industry.

One of the most notable concepts that Portalarium is known for, is the company’s willingness to embrace it’s following as peers and value their ideas for development goals. It is considered by many to be a bold step, that all are invited to be a part of in the industry.

Join us at SotA Con – Austin 2017 and take your place in history!

Backer Shipping Addresses[edit]

SotA ShippingAddress.png

In preparation for shipping backers’ physical pledge rewards later this year, we have added Shipping Address fields to your Account Profile page. To enter your shipping address, log in to the SotA website, select “Account” in top right corner, then select “Edit Profile” located in top left corner, beneath your Avatar image.

A reminder to be sure that support@portalarium.com is unblocked from your e-mail account!

External Links[edit]

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