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Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:11 pm
by +Nyx
This thread will be where we will post periodic updates and information regarding the status of the facets.


This thread will be locked to keep it limited to only updates from the admin team.

If you have questions regarding Elysium or Touria, or any of the information in this thread, please first check the wiki:

Elysium Information Page

If you couldn't find the information you were after on the wiki, you may post it to either:

Elysium FAQ or the Touria FAQ.

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:15 pm
by +Nyx
As of July 6th:
+C, +V and I had a conference call last weekend and went over the current plan of attack for the remaining coding needed for the facets. We're going to meet again this week or next week to go over the plan in more depth, prioritize projects, and determine if anything should be shelved for after the facets are already opened.


During our meeting, +C laid out his plan to set him and +A a 3-month window to complete all of the facet coding on the finalized list. They intend to begin this facets coding binge in mid-August or early September. Their intention is to focus solely on facets coding, pausing here and there as needed for bug fixes or issues that crop up on the live shard. They may take a few brief breaks here and there if they're getting burned out, to code things that are more fun or interesting, but for the most part their intention is to work entirely on facets coding for 3 months straight. During the coding process, they will meet with me and/or +V before the start of each project, and then at least once a week during the coding of each individual project to cover any difficulties they're having or any changes that may need to be made.

The plan is for them to knock out the bulk of the coding, and then I will begin beta testing with players on each system after the 3-month period is over, and then they will revisit these projects to fix bugs, until every system is stable enough to go "live". I'd like to do as much beta testing on a separate test server as possible, but that is still up in the air.

After everything major is in, stable enough to start working with, and the major bugs zapped, then I will begin my portion - the actual creation of the facet. Populating the dungeons, making all of the quests, populating the towns, making the vendors, factions, artifacts, rewards, and everything that you guys will actually see and do.

At present, Elysium is empty but for a few design projects and things I have built. Until the coding side of things is done, I won't know how each system will end up working - a lot tends to change or be redesigned/rethought during the coding process and sometimes what we end up with is very, very different than what was originally envisioned. This is usually a good thing, but it means that any quests or towns/dungeons/etc I already made in Elysium might have to get redone, so for the most part I am saving my energies and plan to knock out the actual creation at the end, so that I can make everything once (instead of like poor +V, who has had to redo the bulk of Touria area 1 about 5 times now as new functionalities were added :lol: ).

As for things which have been previously mentioned to y'all, here's where we're at with them:
- Elysium crops are almost completely coded, they're just needing a few rounds of bug fixes
- Plant BODs are mostly coded, the points system for how the rewards are distributed needs to be coded and various bugs need to be zapped
- Cooking is partially coded, I believe that the recipes and ingredients are mostly coded and that the cooking system revamps have been started on to some extent.

Once we have our next meeting, and finalize "The List of Things that Must Be Coded", I will add another post here and update y'all. One of us will periodically post in this thread with updates and information.

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:37 pm
by +Nyx
As of July 19th:

Had another meeting with +C to revisit the coding plans and go over things that need to get done before they begin their big 3-month-coding-crunch. I presented my list of things I would like to have coded for the seasonal quests through the rest of the year and +C approved pretty much everything. I'll be working on prepping those items for him and +A, and then they'll get as many of those things coded as they can before they begin the Elysium coding.

Tentatively they are planning to begin the Big Elysium Coding Crunch at the end of August, somewhere around the 21st. This would have them (hopefully) finished before December, when everyone is already mostly AFK for RL holiday activities. The guys decided it would be best for their process if I ran beta-testing groups on the various systems they are coding while they are in their Big Elysium Coding Crunch, so that they can be making bug fixes and changes throughout. This means that once they finish the first system, I will immediately set up a beta group and get folks testing it for bugs and issues. They will fix them as they get reported, while also coding the next system. This way, we should be mostly done with solid, almost-bug-free (because there's no way to eliminate them *all* with only a small group of testers) systems that are ready to go live.

I also sent him my Elysium coding priorities list. They will work in order from top to bottom, with the things at the bottom of the list possibly being left off if they run out of time. Anything left off will be coded at a later date, probably after the facet has been opened for awhile, and will serve as an "expansion" on the existing facet content. The list I sent is as follows:

+Nyx's Elysium Coding Priorities:
Already in the works (just needs bug fixes/finishing):
- crops
- plant bods
- cooking/brewing

Priorities for upcoming:
- fishing
- taxidermy
- papercraft
- Pets/Bios
- t-maps

Larger systems:
Note: These affect the whole shard and will be sent to the staff group for discussion before coding begins, and aren't necessarily subject to the 3-month coding window. If +C & +A decide to code these before the window, after it, or in tandem with other things on the priorities list, it's their prerogative.

- hunger system
- item menu (like leveling menu) that shows all the restrictions/perks of an item as well as whether it was renamed, the original name, etc.
- for beta testing purposes: separate banks based on facet



Since their coding window will wrap up during the holiday season, and since +V and I will most likely be getting hitched in the first part of 2018, I may not be able to work on much of my end of Elysium development until April-ish. After the coding stuff is done I'll be working on Elysium whenever I can, of course, but with so much going on in RL in that time period it's unlikely I'll be able to get it to a place where it's ready for open beta until later in the spring. I would like to see it in open beta, if not ready to be opened "for real" by Summer 2018.

I/We will keep everyone posted as things progress, but that's where we are at now :)

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:48 pm
by +Nyx
Coding for Elysium began this week. Arden has knocked out a huge chunk of the cooking system - the ingredients and recipes are pretty much done. +C has been working on optimizing the invisible bits of the shard to better handle all the new updates that are coming. I'll be working on my portion of the plant bods so that they may finish those out.

I'll try to make at least one update post each week, if there's anything of note to mention :)

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2017 9:23 am
by +Colibri
Btw development for this was in a way active thru the entire year, things like the wax machines, crop improvements and craft overhaul, even title system in the [ach menu - not technically part of elysium, but having those components done and already tested makes the development of actual elysium things much faster.

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2017 12:55 pm
by +Nyx
+C has been working diligently on updating the new buff system to be compatible with future buff updates and additions.
+A has been working on various Elysium goodies and is close to finishing crops, plant bods, and cooking.
I've been working on outlines for the crops, plant bods, and cooking stuff and have started outlining the elysium fishing system.

Our goal is to get crops, plant bods, and cooking finished and ready for beta by the 15th. Once they're ready, I'll set up a beta group and get folks testing those. They'll fix the inevitable bugs we find as we go along, while working on the next project which is fishing. After the buffs are running smoothly, then +C plans to work on other necessary "invisible" updates for Elysium such as some tweaks to quest books and region controllers. I'll know more after our meeting tomorrow and will try to remember to update again at that point.

So far things have been trucking along at a much faster pace than I originally expected which has been wonderful. I believe that at this pace, there should be no trouble in finishing the full Elysium coding list within the 3-month window allotted to it.

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 3:20 pm
by +Colibri
Overall we now have 3 weeks behind us of 15 weeks that we allotted, that's 20%. The stuff that was half-finished seems to be pretty much complete, looks like early next week we're going to start letting beta testers in. Some things take longer than planned, like something that i was planned to do in 2 days last week, but took whole week. But also looking at the overall progress, and how fluid it's been so far, I think we're quite on track.

Btw sorry to everyone waiting with help requests (for the more complex stuff), I hope to take some time this week and get to some of these issues reported. Me and +Arden aren't paying much attention to the tickets, but i see +Nyx is, and +Requiem is doing his share as well to not make unanswered tickets pile up too much.

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 1:23 pm
by +Nyx
I keep forgetting to update this, my bad!

The past several weeks have been incredibly productive. We had roughly a week's pause in terms of Elysium development where +A coded a bunch of the new Halloween rewards that I needed, which was much appreciated and that vat of candy animation can't be beat!

+A is currently working on the new fishing system and getting it ready to be partially implemented into the old lands. This will add new types of fish and special fishing locations to all of the old maps. The rest of the system will be implemented in Elysium to add special fish, fishing locations, and so on. I am working on designing all the rewards and loot tables for fishing chests and so on, and am hoping to get that finished up in the next week or so.

I have also begun the multi-system beta test. This beta is covering cooking, crops, hybrid plants, and plant BODs. So far we've had a bit of a rocky start, but thing are moving along and I'm confident we'll be getting some really excellent data and feedback, and ironing out all those bugs and kinks in the system as we progress through this beta.

Sometime in November, probably toward the beginning or middle of the month, we will be wrapping up the big coding binge and the guys will go back to working on their own projects, pausing to bug fix and make small changes/additions to the Elysium stuff that we are beta testing and which were coded during these past couple months. The holidays are coming up, so that's going to mean that we'll all be busy with vacations and family visits and the like. I'll also have to work heavily on updating the winter events and their reward pools to bring them in line with all the other seasonal revamps I did this year. Then comes the new year, and my wedding will be imminent. I'll be working on the facet here and there as I get time and motivation, but I don't expect to be able to begin a heavy Elysium development period until after +V and I return from our honeymoon in April. With any luck, we could potentially see an opening date before the end of the summer next year. Coding-wise, we plan to pick back up roughly a month before Elysium is ready to actually open, in order to knock out all of the last minute stuff that we can in preparation for opening day. Even after this coding period, there is still quite a lot to do - for example all of the artifact weapons and armor, mobs, and such I'll eventually make will need to be coded in - but we have a much better system in place now than we did originally so I expect it to be much easier for things to be added in the future.

Re: Elysium & Touria Progress Updates

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:22 am
by +Colibri
I've just merged all of October's and half of November's development into our main code, which goes live to the server. This way, if there's any bugs in the existing code, we get to see them and fix in time, so we don't have a whole bunch of issues later.

The code upgrades were mostly to the fishing, which is now pretty much written from scratch and you can already use the new way of fishing. More in this topic: http://www.uoex.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=68677#p68677

Many thanks to the beta testers who made this transition much smoother. We'll still likely see a few issues with existing systems (like crops, which got a lot of bugfixes over the last few weeks), but with all the input from testers we'll likely have 1-2 if any, instead of the dozens that we already fixed.

In the next few weeks we'll focus on a few minor systems that still remain, also to the remaining reported bugs, and trying to tie up as many loose ends together so that this will be a functional whole.