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3 Months and 12 days in Summary

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Strategies, Guides & Help
Forum Name: General Questions
Forum Description: If your gameplay question isn't answered in the help files, please post it here.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=3431
Printed Date: 16 Apr 2022 at 22:42
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Topic: 3 Months and 12 days in Summary
Posted By: Createure
Subject: 3 Months and 12 days in Summary
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 12:11
In a bored moment I decided to review all the updates/announcements we've had so far this year. I'll make 2 posts - the first for a list+categorization of what we've had and a second with a few thoughts of mine.

In a rather harsh and slap-dash manner I've thrown most of the updates into 1 or more of 4 categories.

Useability - stuff like login/browser/facebook issues etc. - improved in-game interfaces
Housekeeping - downtime notifications, clearing inactive accounts, patching small glitches
Cosmetic - patches/improvements to graphical/visual stuff only
Game Content - Additions to the game content

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/announcements_forum2.html" rel="nofollow - From The Announcements
09 Apr 2012 at 12:32 - useability

03 Apr 2012 at 22:38 - housekeeping
03 Apr 2012 at 14:30 - cosmetic
26 Mar 2012 at 00:53 - tourney results
22 Mar 2012 at 00:26 - tourney end/useability
07 Mar 2012 at 02:07 - combat algorithm tweaks <-----Game Content?
29 Feb 2012 at 23:08 - useability/housekeeping
27 Feb 2012 at 23:58 - cosmetic
26 Feb 2012 at 21:09 - housekeeping
26 Feb 2012 at 13:18 - housekeeping
25 Feb 2012 at 15:12 - housekeeping
24 Feb 2012 at 21:22 - housekeeping
23 Feb 2012 at 22:33 - housekeeping/tourney 5 launch <-----Game Content?
21 Feb 2012 at 10:53 - housekeeping/useability
18 Feb 2012 at 20:38 - cosmetic/useability/housekeeping
14 Feb 2012 at 09:50 - cosmetic/housekeeping
06 Feb 2012 at 19:10 - housekeeping
22 Jan 2012 at 07:45 - housekeeping
10 Jan 2012 at 01:49 - housekeeping

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/news_forum1.html" rel="nofollow - From The News
26 Mar 2012 at 16:27 - elemental giveaway
22 Feb 2012 at 02:38 - anniversary prestige handout
22 Feb 2012 at 16:01 - dev live chat
20 Feb 2012 at 15:52 - dev live chat
05 Feb 2012 at 15:38 - housekeeping

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/from-the-herald_forum35.html" rel="nofollow - From The Herald
17 Jan 2012 at 19:29- last day of 4th tourney <-----Game Content



Replies:
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 12:40
Firstly I'd like to say that I'm not trying to imply our dev team has been idle in any way - the sheer volume of updates+tweaks speaks for itself - Illy needs regular attention like that in my opinion.

I'm not gonna lie - my biggest impression of the year so is a marked LACK of any new game content... I've highlighted in bold my "Top 4 Events of the Last 3 Months 12 Days":

So... what have we actually had in terms of new game content?

 - On the 17th Jan we had the end of the 5th tournament which brought us the final tier of undead units, the Dracolichs, as well as our first ever taste of mercenaries and an exciting end to an exciting tournament. Without a doubt some interesting New Content for the community - though at the moment just a one-off treat, not something any of us can really sink our teeth in to.

 - On the 23rd of Feb we had the 5th Tournament launch. Tournaments are great - but aside from a few different locations there was nothing essentially 'new' about this content.

 - On the 7th of March we had some changes to the combat algorithms - I'd call these changes content because they have caused small but still significant and lasting differences to the in-game player experience for everyone in terms of 'how you play the game'. At the same time though you could argue that these changes were just housekeeping (glitch patching).

So we have 1 genuine piece of new game content and 2 more questionable ones in 3 and a half months - and the genuine content we had only last for a few hours and was essentially a delayed feature of content released before 2012.

If I take a look at the "From the News" section I would say there is only 1 item there from 2012 which had me or anyone I know genuinely excited - of course the SC Live Chat - still not content but without a doubt something many members of the community that I know look forwards to and enjoy.

There are a few things I haven't addressed - such as the elemental giveaway, the prestige handout etc. - honestly I wouldn't say either of these were 'bad' (certainly nobody is complaining at free prestige - that is truly generous of the devs since you could argue it delays when people might next spend money and affects their own cash-flow) but honestly I do think stuff like that is just a filler - it has no real or lasting effect on anyone's in game experience.

So here's some questions:

 - "Do you guys miss the days when Illy used to have significant additions to in game content couple weeks or month at least?" [even just small ones like lores+histories? new NPCs? a new quest or two perhaps (even just some random new T1/T2 quests?) or EVEN new undecipherable strangeness in the Herald's "In Other News"?]

 - "Do you guys anticipate that some real and substancial in-game content is coming our way soon... given the marked lack of notable changes throughout the year?"

 - "Although SC&TC have long-shunned any kind of temptation regarding release dates do we think we can pester them into giving some kind of vague teaser at least just to keep us all interested?"

Let me know your thoughts.


Posted By: Crozno
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 13:22
I am wondering if the DEVS are experiencing growing pains and too many things going on at the same time.  They dug themselves a hole by saying they expected all type of content to be ready last year and it hasn't materialized, so now they won't give dates.  I feel they swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.  The community, in general, wants to know new stuff is coming, but they don't need to know all of it ... just something ... where "soon" would be 1-3 months.

They also did not "play up" enough the infrastructure changes made with the way the game content is served.  To the user it appears as nothing new except to fix performance issues, but by talking about it and making it visible shows concern for playability.

Also wonder if they are not leveraging the community enough to help to test.  There are some very talented people that may be willing to make the effort.

I truly enjoy this game and would like to see it evolve.


Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 13:44
*sigh* Miss-clicked the X and lost everything I typed...You're lucky I found this thread so interesting because normally I would have just walked away from the computer at this point. 

"Do you guys miss the days when Illy used to have significant additions to in game content couple weeks or month at least?"

Absolutely. I've noticed a decline in updates for quite some time now. Maybe I've been spoiled by larger MMO companies that put out updates once every week or something but I don't think it's too much to ask for an update every month. As you said, even small things like extra quests or the occasional new batches of NPCs (still waiting on those muskrats SC) would be nice.

"Do you guys anticipate that some real and substancial in-game content is coming our way soon... given the marked lack of notable changes throughout the year?"

I'd like to say that I think there will be something big coming soon but they have been so inconsistent with their updates for so long now I really can't say. It could be that the lack of game content hints that something big like AI factions is on the brink of it's release but it very well could be that Illyriad is understaffed and they're no where near it's release. Their refusal to give estimates on release dates make it hard to predict. 

"Although SC&TC have long-shunned any kind of temptation regarding release dates do we think we can pester them into giving some kind of vague teaser at least just to keep us all interested?"

I can understand why they don't, as it obviously ruins the surprise of waking up one morning and finding that AI factions are out. As well as the wave of disappointment shown when they don't make a release date. While I think they should just remind everyone that it's just an estimate and then ignore people who don't understand what that means, I can understand why they wouldn't want to deal with the "You promised! I'm quitting this game if you don't release it right NOW! Arrrg!" comments. That said, I kind of doubt we'll ever get anything more than a Soon TM and if we do, it'll probably be ruined by those who don't understand the definition of estimate. 

As an unrelated side note this is by far the most work I've put into a post in a while now. Especially considering I had to do this twice. -.- So thank you for putting in the work (or maybe just being bored) and posting this. I thought it was a really interesting post. =)



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Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 13:55

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.


Aye it does seem like perhaps the Illy boat has struck the doldrums of the development ocean for the moment. A cool teaser wind to fill our empty sails of curiosity would certainly not go amiss.



Posted By: Salararius
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 16:01
This game is a great start but for me it will not last as is.  It has missing elements that the developers have stated they will address.  I think we all like how they have begun but nobody would be asking for more if there were not something they felt was missing.  So the questions are:

1)  When will they address the missing elements?
2)  What are they doing today?

The answer to the first question is what everyone really wants to know but it's also the one that nobody has an answer to.  Developers can't tell you what sort of problems they may encounter (both with what they are trying to add and with the technology already "completed").  They are not building lego toys.  There is no instruction manual so it's impossible to say how long something may take.

The answer to the second question they can provide hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month at their whim.

Here is my concern, in one interview one of the devs (someone the company put forth to talk to the customers) was asked the question: "If you had unlimited funds, what would you do with the game and where would you take it?".  The answer (and I may be paraphrasing here) was that if he had unlimited funds he wouldn't be working on the game, he would retire to an island someplace.  Which then begs the question, are they working on the game or is the money flow sufficient?  There have been many companies that felt they had "enough success" and stopped innovating and stopped developing.  It would be very premature to think this is one of those companies, but if it becomes one then these questions from customers will be looked back on as initial indicators.

Communication is the key.

This would not be the first game I started/continued playing with the belief in "something better" (because something better was announced) just to find out that what I have is all I'll get.



Posted By: GM Luna
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 16:09
Originally posted by Salararius Salararius wrote:


Here is my concern, in one interview one of the devs (someone the company put forth to talk to the customers) was asked the question: "If you had unlimited funds, what would you do with the game and where would you take it?".  The answer (and I may be paraphrasing here) was that if he had unlimited funds he wouldn't be working on the game, he would retire to an island someplace.  Which then begs the question, are they working on the game or is the money flow sufficient?  There have been many companies that felt they had "enough success" and stopped innovating and stopped developing.  It would be very premature to think this is one of those companies, but if it becomes one then these questions from customers will be looked back on as initial indicators.

This is a great thread Creature, thanks for making it. I want to give a few more people time to respond before I hop in too much. 

But I want to swiftly and decidedly correct this because I think taken out of context, it sets up a really bad impression. The response you are mentioning was very much a joke and in no way whatsoever reflects that development on Illy has somehow stalled or stopped. That could not be further from the truth. 

As you were. :)

I'll be back later with a more detailed response. 

Luna


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GM Luna | Illyriad Community Manager | community@illyriad.co.uk



Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 16:18
Well... I wouldn't say that SC was "someone the company put forth to talk to the customers"... he founded Illy and owns it (alongside TC I guess). He not just the guy liaising with the community - he's part of what decides exactly how Illy grows.

I don't believe Illy or it's devs will align themselves to you worst expectation at all... mostly because we've seen and listened to SC&co. doing their thing, and we've joked about with them on the forums and we know that they are genuinely a few people with a passion for what they are doing.

I mean - who quits their job to take a total step-in-the-dark gamble on designing a computer game?

On that note I'd say SCs 'Island Comment' (at which I too raised an eyebrow on hearing) should be taken for what it is... just part of genuine sense of humor that we've often seen that proves to us that SC and the other devs are genuinely nice guys and not money-making robots.

edit: Luna got there before me. Big smile


Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 17:25
Illy IS the "island" for GM Stormcrow and GM ThunderCat.  With the amount of time and funding they've poured into Illy, the could easily be living on that island right now.  I think that speaks for itself.  As you get to know them better (not that I claim to know them well), you will see that, although there are occasional headaches, they are having a blast making the game and are quite nearly as passionate as some of us rabid fans.

I think they welcome the concerns people will post here.

I am not all that technically educated, but I think that a lot of effort in the past few months has been to address "growing pains" in the scalability of the game.  This includes the transition to the new server, some changes in the way the chat system works (that are invisible to the user with the exception of having less lag) and some other significant changes to the architecture of the game that makes it work for a LOT more concurrent users than there were at this time last year.

I think you missed the episode with the Beating Heart of Corruption in your list of events or changes.  I think this represents a significant step forward in coding, since the system is now responding individually to each player by sending particular types and numbers of units when we "poked" it.  Seems likely to me that this is another step toward faction AI.

I've only been playing for ten months since a bit after UI2 was introduced, and I don't believe I've experienced a period in which new content releases were more or less frequent.  The major changes I've seen since joining Illy were the (new) new map release last July, introduction of Exodus in September, release of the tier 2 buildings, the undead tournament and "roving" NPCs in December/January and the recent action at the HOC.

Honestly, I'm reasonably satisfied with the rate at which changes have been introduced lately.  It seems like there was a LONG "dry spell" last year prior to Exodus being released but that things have picked up since then.  But my gaming style tends to be laid back and slow-paced, and I fully empathize with those who wish stuff would happen a bit faster.  I also have not anywhere near maxed my cities, so there's still lots to do for me on that end, which is not true for people with more mature accounts.

I also think that periods in between major content releases allow time for interesting developments in the politics/diplomacy side of the game, which is another of the parts that interests me.


Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 18:06
I won't deny there were plenty of important changes and content changes/additions/improvements last year. This thread is specifically aimed at reviewing 'the year so far' and looking to the near future.

Also I'd rather not start talking about the HoC here or things are likely to get derailed fast. HoC is not new content though, it has been around since before the Second tourney I believe. Frankly SC and TC (and any good game designer) is not going to release 'Dead Content'... it was not inert for all this time and then suddenly started beating this year because it got updated... it started because we did the right things to make it do so. (Thanks to SunStorm for that one I guess).


Posted By: Silverlake
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 18:30
I appreciate this post and the thoughtful remarks.... I have enjoyed my nine months of game play, but I too have been somewhat disappointed by the lack of new "bells & whistles" (that have been discussed for months) but more so by the recent lack of communication from the development team.  I write this as a loyal customer who wants to see great things come of this sandbox.


Posted By: LordBliss
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 18:50
Illy needs a regular diet of new content.  Unlike other games, our community is not comprised wholly of bullies who plunder and destroy every new account.  PvP action is not the norm, and even if it were, there are some significant logistical issues and some rather severe outcomes that are at play.  So, to me, the tournaments and mysteries and such take the place of the standard "you logged off and i destroyed your account sucka!"

The diet has been rather lean. 

I do have the idea though that there is content ready to go, we just haven't managed to unlock it.  I can almost picture the GMs watching us and groaning as we fail to see what to them must be obvious.  I have no basis for that, just a feeling.





Posted By: norsegodofmischief
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 18:58
One thing I miss here that I would think could be implemented without too much cost would be the ability to PM (Private Message) or PC (Private Chat) another player whether or not they are in your alliance when you see them in the GC or AC chatpane. 
Another thing I would suggest is for players to check the various game review sites where gamers can post reviews and do just that - post accurate and informational reviews that will help attract the kind of players the game is best suited for.  :)
 


Posted By: Subatoi
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 19:06
Some of us remember the old UI, be happy with that you have I guess, though I do agree that even a "AI's to be released between "2012-9999" would be nice to have..


Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 19:43
What about those muskrats? The only one you'll be disappointing when you fail to release them on time is me right? Unless someone else is anticipating the muskrats more than the AI factions...

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Posted By: Subatoi
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 20:14
What exactly are muskrats?


Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2012 at 21:06
They're like the meaning of life...only better. 

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Posted By: Captain Ganoes Paran
Date Posted: 13 Apr 2012 at 10:46
i'm sure the Devs are working on new content (new magik ,Trade v2 ) and are eager to release
it as much as we are ( if not more ) but they have to make sure everything will work as planned 
and they have to look and fix petitions too, give them some time :) 


Posted By: Prometheuz
Date Posted: 13 Apr 2012 at 11:34
I can recall Faldrin and one or two others raising concerns similar to those outlined by Creat at the head of this thread, in the past. Like most players in Illy,  I have my own shopping list of developments that I would like to see prioritised in Illy. Chief among them is pathfinding; next comes resource values and sov for oceans and waterways.

Generally speaking I feel that "game content"   has seemed to slip down the list of priorities of late.  However, I seem to recall the devs pointing out that we should not always be reliant upon them to lead the community on developmental initiatives - this is a fair point to make. This game is a "sandbox" as the devs, in general and SC specifically, constantly reminds us.

 This game, now, has so many mechanics available that is in fact a simple matter for alliances to utilise them and promote their own tournaments, quests etc .Whilst the tournaments have been well received in Illy we should not become dependent on the devs for game play or game contents. We ALL need to make our contributions.

Nonetheless I feel that more frequent updates with game content would be  an improvement and once again I would plug "pathfinding" to be at the top of the list.

Edit: typo's



Posted By: GM Luna
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2012 at 19:33
As promised, my more thought out response to this post. Still, I'll cut to the chase. :)

First I'd like to say that it is important not to downplay the work that goes into keeping the game up and running smoothly (that you've listed as housekeeping) and to create new tournaments. While they may not be as shiny as other updates, they are important and take development time. If I could will new tournaments into being with simply the power of my mind I would (and they'd be awesome btw). ;)

But, a more regular schedule of content releases is something the entire team very much wants and is working toward providing for you all. A more regular schedule of communications about development is something that I very much want and am working with the team to try and provide. (Aka, pay closer attention to the dev blog.)

That said, a lot of the "in development" items that have been already presented to the community like factions, magic, trade v2 and pathfinding are all (to put it in super technical terms) huge undertakings. And while the team has grown, it is still quite small compared to many other games that I'm sure most of you have played. But I can say this, (in between answering support petitions and other unglamorous things) they are working on some really amazing stuff for you, that I think you'll love. And when we say we've got some new things coming your way soon™ we actually mean it. 

Illy is a small company with very big goals. Goals that are absolutely do-able and will be great, but the trade off is just a little patience. So thanks for hanging in there with us!

Luna


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GM Luna | Illyriad Community Manager | community@illyriad.co.uk



Posted By: abstractdream
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2012 at 21:43
Just wanted to say PATHFINDING!

and btw, patience is what Illy is all about.


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Bonfyr Verboo


Posted By: LadyLuvs
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2012 at 13:53
Blah one more place to go to find info?  I thought that is what this forum was for.  Now it has branched out to blogs?  Post it here so we don't have to go there to read it.

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LadyLuvs
Raven, Murder of Crows Alliance


Posted By: Albatross
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2012 at 14:28
There's probably a bit of pathfinding to do in the roadmap. I'm sure it's All Under Control



Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2012 at 19:28
Thanks for the reply Luna.

Personally I'm happy to wait and be patient for good, polished content when it comes - whatever it may be.

But I am happy you are mentioning about the dev blog. Imo that thing should get more regular useage... I guess my main point from the OP was that even though we all know that the dev team is working hard - it has just undeniably seemed very quiet from the player perspective over the last ~3 months. If we had some regular dev blog stuff to muse on even then it would  certainly help to keep us all a little more enthusiastic about what might be coming.

Back in the day when Illy was still in it's teething stages it seemed like SC+TC were regularly chatting away in GC giving us all teasers about future content and fixing bugs/glitches in real time which pretty much made everyone feel very 'in the loop'. I can absolutely understand that an approach like that is pretty much unfeasable now that Illy has grown, both in terms of community size, dev team size, the ambitiousness of future stuff etc. (altho we still love to see it when they do hop in and wave their arms around) -  having more regular dev-blog stuff would be cool.

Still I see SC already posted a 'development' tidbit in the last day in the 'development blog' and I've already noticed an increase in chatter and general intrigue about this in AC and GC and elsewhere... guess that already allays much of my 'complaint' if you can call it that. ^^


Posted By: Albatross
Date Posted: 17 Apr 2012 at 22:36
It's going to be increasingly likely that, as a company gets bigger, it might be looking for external funding, and then have VC or shareholders. Approaching these phases, it is no longer acceptable to share your future plans. Releases have to be very specific, and you don't reveal your IP and R&D to competitors; you go public when it's ready and available to consume as a unique offering that attracts customers. Further, if you make releases about ideas that later fail to emerge, it could be viewed as deception (from an advertising, or even an investment perspective). I hope that provides another perspective for those thirsty for knowledge :o)


Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 01:03
Originally posted by LadyLuvs LadyLuvs wrote:

Blah one more place to go to find info?  I thought that is what this forum was for.  Now it has branched out to blogs?  Post it here so we don't have to go there to read it.

I agree with this, I don't see the need for an external blog but if you really have to, post on the forums with the link directly to the thread when you've posted a new blog. 


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Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 01:18
I think it might be effective to have a "from the dev blog" section in the forum.  Maybe this seems like duplicate work and everyone should be interacting at the blog site ... but your dedicated players are already here at the forum and it would be easier for US if the information appeared here as well.


Posted By: GM ThunderCat
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 02:33
You can get notices to updates to the blog using the xml feed, twitter and other social media. Anything that effects the players directly we post to the forum; related items that we publish on the blog we generally post to the blog but put a link in the forums. We also update the news items on the http://www.illyriad.co.uk" rel="nofollow - www.illyriad.co.uk site.
Originally posted by Brids17 Brids17 wrote:

Originally posted by LadyLuvs LadyLuvs wrote:

Blah one more place to go to find info?  I thought that is what this forum was for.  Now it has branched out to blogs?  Post it here so we don't have to go there to read it.

I agree with this, I don't see the need for an external blog but if you really have to, post on the forums with the link directly to the thread when you've posted a new blog. 
 
Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

I think it might be effective to have a "from the dev blog" section in the forum.  Maybe this seems like duplicate work and everyone should be interacting at the blog site ... but your dedicated players are already here at the forum and it would be easier for US if the information appeared here as well.
Readers of the blog aren't always interested in the type of thing in the forum, and readers of the forum aren't always interested in the content of the blog. For example and excerpt from a blog post:
Originally posted by Ben Adams on the Illyriad Blog Ben Adams on the Illyriad Blog wrote:

It took a while to divine the file format; which we load via XMLHttpRequest into an arraybuffer. The files have 128 bytes of header which we ignore, followed by the 256×4 byte palette which we load into a lookup table texture RGBA. The rest we load into a Luminance texture. Both textures need to use NearestFilter sampling and not use mipmapping to be interpreted sensibly.

We have created our own compressed texture loaders – the colour texture loader looks a little like this:

Illyriad.TextureCompColorLoader = function (path, width, height, uniforms) {
  var texture = new THREE.DataTexture(0, 1, 1, THREE.LuminanceFormat,
                    (new THREE.UVMapping()), THREE.RepeatWrapping, THREE.RepeatWrapping,
                      THREE.NearestFilter, THREE.NearestFilter);
 
  var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
  request.open("GET", path, true);
  request.responseType = "arraybuffer";
 
  // Decode asynchronously
  request.onload = function () {
    if (request.status == 200) {
      var imageDataLength = request.response.byteLength - width * height;
      uniforms.tColorLUT.texture = new THREE.DataTexture(
                                      new Uint8Array(request.response, 128, 256 * 4),
                                      256, 1, THREE.RGBAFormat, (new THREE.UVMapping()),
                                      THREE.ClampToEdgeWrapping, THREE.ClampToEdgeWrapping,
                                      THREE.NearestFilter, THREE.NearestFilter);
      uniforms.tColorLUT.texture.needsUpdate = true;
      texture.image = { data: new Uint8Array(request.response, imageDataLength),
                        width: width, height: height };
      texture.needsUpdate = true;
    }
  }
  request.send();
  return texture;
}

When we first did the decompression in the pixel shader, it was very blocky as we had turned off filtering to read the correct values from the texture. To get around this we had to add our own bilinearSample function to do the blending for us. In this function it uses the diffuse texture with the colour look up table and using the texture size and texture pixel interval samples the surrounding pixels. The other gotcha is that the lookup texture is in BGRA format so the colours need to be swizzeled.
Some players may be interested in this, but not all. Developers who are interested in this may not be interested what's going on in game.

However, all channels we publish to are available to all.


Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 04:48
Maybe highlight blog posts that relate to game content in the News/Announcements section?  I'm not trying to make more work for you folks, but at the same time in playing Illy I already deal with the game itself, the wiki, the forum, offline multi-player chat (to facilitate semi-private chat with people not in my alliance) and several player blogs.  I'm just saying, give me a break and consider posting things you think might be of interest to players in the forum.  It would be very user-friendly to do so.  You of course are under no obligation to do it, it would just be nice.

And I don't use twitter, facebook or other social media, and I'm not planning to start just to get my Illy news.  I prefer to limit my internet interactions to those I find to be meaningful.


Posted By: LordBliss
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 05:17
how about an illy youtube channel?

could have actors portray scenes from the factions histories, and then, when it gets to the point of gratuitous nudity (like game of thrones) instead of the nudity, cut to one of you gm's reading illyriad news updates.  


Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 05:18
Some notice on the forum that there is a new dev blog and a link to it would be good...

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"This is a bad idea and we shouldn't do it." - endorsement by HM

"a little name-calling is a positive thing." - Rill


Posted By: abstractdream
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 06:16
This:
Originally posted by LordBliss LordBliss wrote:

how about an illy youtube channel?

could have actors portray scenes from the factions histories, and then, when it gets to the point of gratuitous nudity (like game of thrones) instead of the nudity, cut to one of you gm's reading illyriad news updates.  


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Bonfyr Verboo


Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 06:51
Originally posted by LordBliss LordBliss wrote:

how about an illy youtube channel?

could have actors portray scenes from the factions histories, and then, when it gets to the point of gratuitous nudity (like game of thrones) instead of the nudity, cut to one of you gm's reading illyriad news updates.  

In order to reduce costs, the videos can be produced by players.  GM Luna could set up a competition and give away free prestige and Illy T-Shirts.

/me is looking forward to a dramatization of what REALLY happens when you send a diplomatic unit to meet Audrey.


Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2012 at 11:41
@me is struggling to tell how serious that suggestion was meant to be Cry


Posted By: LadyLuvs
Date Posted: 19 Apr 2012 at 04:26
Thunderkitty, I see your point how those of us not in programming would be puzzled at what all that means.  Your point is duly noted.  I just think if it has something to do with us as a community and deals directly with Announcements for the game you still do some sort of announcement in the Announcement section; ie thread with a link to your blog or something here in our Forum where those that play the game and assist you with troubleshooting when you implement the new programming to the game are. 

We have so many resources now outside the game, that keeping track of more that are growing is very time consuming.  My Dean of Education started gathering how many links we have for all the guides and information that are posted and used for everyone.  The list is extremely long with some very wonderful and distinguished people that spent a lot of time working on those items about a game those that have been here thru the beginning and the growing pains.  We can't write or assist enough with it.

To the Devs:
Thank you for making this game so awesome and we look forward to the updates to come, just make it easy for us to find the info in the mountain of info already available.


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LadyLuvs
Raven, Murder of Crows Alliance


Posted By: Faldrin
Date Posted: 19 Apr 2012 at 05:53
Its all about balance the expectations. When you keep saying a lot of stuff is just about to happen and then nothing happens, people (or at least I) get disappointed. I would like to note that you do not get disappointed unless you care ;-)

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Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 19 Apr 2012 at 15:39

Guys, I think Illy has more content than any of the games out there, even in it's current state. If everything including the factions and pathfinding is introduced today, how long will we keep playing the game before getting bored again?

Content updates are certainly exciting, but we should not be disappointed that they are not as frequent as we like them to be. It is up to us to find enough fun to keep coming back to Illy everyday, even if there are no updates for an year.







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