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H1Z1's audio is a key part of its immersion
When done right, you hardly ever consciously acknowledge a game's sound, but when it's missing or done poorly, it can jar a player out of desired immersion. In a dev diary posted today, H1Z1 Technical Architect Greg Spence talks about the sound of the game and demonstrates a few tests. "So much goes into making these sounds seem realistic beyond just choosing an audio file to play," Spence explains. "Taking into account your surroundings, whether you are inside or outside, what type of ground you are on, time of day, and even weather can play a big part in the final thing you hear." Spence discusses sound effects, environment sounds, and, of course, music. You can check out the audio test videos after the break!
The Tattered Notebook: More on flying mounts, public quests, and prestige homes
SOE has been slowly getting new information out about Destiny of Velious. As part of an ongoing promotion to showcase the upcoming expansion, Senior Producer Dave "SmokeJumper" Georgeson and Greg "Rothgar" Spence took part in the second installment of the Destiny of Velious webcast. They took the opportunity to elaborate on topics from the first show and also revealed some exciting new features. In this week's Tattered Notebook, we'll look at the highlights of last Friday's webcast. Read on to hear more about flying mounts, prestige housing, and public quests.
EQII devs brave class mechanics panel
Interesting tidbits continue to flood the web regarding last week's SOE Fan Faire in Las Vegas, with the latest coming courtesy of EQ2Wire. The Norrathian newshounds have posted a series of video captures from the EQII Mechanics panel, featuring (from left, above) developers Rich Waters, Greg "Rothgar" Spence, Paul "Frizznik" Carrico, and Mike "Xelgad" Ganz. The panel is divided into a series of six 10-minute clips, all of them informative if you're an EQII regular and concerned with any aspect of class and balance mechanics. The dev team fields a number of questions from the audience, including queries on ranger and other assorted class fixes, as well as a clarification of a Dave "Smokejumper" Georgeson forum post that some players incorrectly interpreted as foreshadowing major changes. "We're just trying to be more transparent in our design for the classes, not trying to redesign the classes at all," Spence explains. Most questions are answered with a necessarily vague "we'll look into it" and/or "soon," but the videos are nonetheless worth watching to get a glimpse at what your average developer deals with when subjected to a room full of min/max players. It's not quite an inquisition, but there is a palpable combative energy (and a few hecklers) present.
EverQuest II due for a major UI overhaul
The UI is simultaneously one of the most transparent and important parts of a game. EverQuest II doesn't have a bad one by any means, but the designers apparently aren't content with the current setup. They're already promising major changes to hit the test server in just over a week -- to coincide with game update 57 -- and among the many mechanical changes going along with the update will be a major UI overhaul. A post earlier today by lead programmer Greg "Rothgar" Spence confirmed that the team is re-skinning the default interface, as well as modifying several windows alongside it. While he's scant on providing exact details, he promises that players will get a chance to experience everything on the test servers very shortly. Although there are some concerns in the the thread regarding what the changes might mean for existing custom UIs, most seem cautiously optimistic. EverQuest II players should be ready for the test server in just over a week, with the patch likely not too far in the future past that. [via Zam]
Everquest II lets you become an in-game author
In terms of in-game originality, EverQuest II should probably win a prize. They're implementing a new feature in GU52 which will let players pen their own stories and distribute the books to other players. Think Lulu but with an EQII twist. Granted we're not talking War and Peace here but for anyone who has dabbled in fantasy fiction or would love nothing more than to pen tales of their character's exploits then this is definitely a feature for you.Rothgar (aka dev Greg Spence) has put up a post explaining how the whole thing works - as well as sharing the first page of his masterpiece, Death of a Dragon. Essentially the process is simple: nip to your local crafter and buy a blank book. Once you start writing, that book becomes tied to you the author. According to Rothgar, there's no limit to pages but there is to words. For example, this screenshot shows 16% of the book has been used up which probably means around four pages of text.
Be heard this week with EQII and PotBS IRC chats
Stratics is going to play host to some more "House of Commons" IRC chats later in the week, for both EverQuest II and Pirates of the Burning Sea, giving fans a chance to pose some questions to the teams behind these two games. On Wednesday the 18th at 5PM PDT/8PM EDT, the PotBS chat will take place, and will feature producer Joe Ludwig, lead game designer Kevin Maginn, lead world designer Cory Herndon, community relations director Troy Hewitt and community specialist Tom Atkinson-Edwards. Full details on how to join in on this chat can be found here.The EQII chat will take place a day later, on Thursday the 19th at the same time slot of 5PM PDT/8PM EDT. Representing the game in the chat will be Josh Kriegshauser and Greg Spence from EQII Engineering; Kyle Vallee, designer of "Runneye: The Gathering"; Nathan McCall, designer of the Void Storm quest series; and Tiffany Spence and Aaron Bisnett from the community relations team. You can find out how to join this chat at this page, and don't forget that we here at Massively will be speaking to the EQII team this week as well, so you can also drop any questions you might have in today's Daily Grind for us to bring to them.
