Beta progress

With the internal beta stages of development now in full swing we tracked Ole down to find out a little bit more about what is going on behind the scenes.

"Hi there again! The question most asked at the moment is obviously how we are getting along with the beta! The first answer that springs to mind is that it?s very busy but going very well! The team are now working in what we call ?strike teams? on the various areas of the game, roughly divided up across the games level ranges.

Each team has designers, world builders and QA members working hard to ensure the area of the game world they are responsible for is coming together. The quests are being tested and mobs placed out in the playfields, balance being considered and progression being mapped out.

Having ?teams within the team? as it were allows us to focus on specific areas in much more detail. It also ensures that each area gets that special ?hand crafted? feel that individual attention gives it. Each of the teams is deeply invested in making their area of the gameworld as good as it possibly can be!

The coders meanwhile are hard at work on the technology aspects, like the DX10 integration for Windows Vista, and optimising the graphical settings as well as working through the bugs and issues that our QA testing shows up.

Having people playing the game now is a great thing for our progress. When you are testing the areas you have been working on yourself, it?s often easy to miss something because you inherently know every little detail of what you wanted it to be. When someone else gets their hands on it however there is invariably something that wasn?t as obvious as you thought it was, or something you had forgotten!

Overall though it?s going very well, and the game world starts to look more like a living and thriving environment every time I load up a new version of the client. Still lots of work to be done of course but the lands of King Conan are really starting to take shape.

Another aspect of these first beta stages I wanted to touch on was about what we show from the game right now. Hopefully you will all have seen some of the coverage from the recent press events like GC in Leipzig, Dragoncon in Atlanta and the recent X06 showcase in Barcelona but we know that people are always anxious to see more!

Graphical elements though are part of the game that actually tend to come into the project all the way through as they take time to produce. This means that most of the playfields and areas still have some ?placeholder? elements that tend to get in the way of good screenshots

It can also be very tricky at this stage of the process though to produce the top quality images that we want as we work on balancing the game engines performance and settings. When changes are being committed to the system every day as happens during these beta stages there is usually something ?not quite right? that you want to tweak.

Beta is about starting to polish the technology and features and that means that on any given day there is usually something playing up! It might be some textures, models with incorrect textures or lighting or environmental effects that aren?t quite showing up in the game-engine as they should. They get resolved pretty quick, but then it?s something else the next day!

So whilst the temptation might be to just take some screenshots anyway and trust that people will accept that its work in progress, we know from experience that every little last detail is scrutinised and criticised as appropriate! That?s why we show things like concept art and renders more often then we do screens and video just now.

Trust me, we can?t wait to show you the game in all its glory! I was wandering around the streets of Tarantia today showing our CEO how the zone is shaping up and it really is something that has to be seen for sheer scale and splendour. Looking up at the sprawling towers of King Conan?s palace from the river docks really is a sight that I think will stick in the mind, and that?s just one of the playfields!

It would be a massive shame if the fact that the lighting wasn?t quite right or the sky was the wrong tint spoiled people?s impression of what is an amazing sight. That?s the kind of thing we want to avoid when it comes to showing off what we are doing with the game?s visuals.

We are crafting a world we are really proud of and look forward to letting you see it for yourselves! We know that many of you are following the game closely and have seen every image but we have to keep the quality up so that the impression we give first time visitors is the best possible as well. Don?t worry though, over the coming months though you will definitely start to see more in-game visuals and video, we are just making sure that the visuals are ready to show the game in all its glory before we release them."

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