Producer’s Letter – April 2020

Producer’s Letter – April 2020

A Note from Visionary Realms on COVID-19

Before we get into the bulk of this month’s Producer’s letter I want to take a moment to discuss something that has been affecting all of our lives these past few weeks: the spread of COVID-19.

At Visionary Realms, our business structure is such that many of our staff have already been working remotely for the past several years. With members from coast to coast in the US, Australia, Canada and Europe, we have infrastructure in place that is very supportive of working from home. We meet online weekly and daily for work sessions, meetings and planning calls to accommodate the physical distance between some of us, so we are already accustomed to operating in this manner. For this reason, slow-downs in production have been minimal. Development continues and we will also continue to update you regularly through streams and newsletters.

That being said, the health concerns, economy and social constraints we all face are very real for us, so we encourage our team members to keep safe and take the recommended precautions. The wellbeing of each of our team members and their families and loved ones is top priority.

We also send our personal thoughts and hopes to all of you out there who have been supporting this project for a long time, whether through pledges or just plain excitement that fuels us, or both. Thank you for your continued interest in Pantheon. Please keep yourself and your loved ones safe in these unprecedented times.

Catching Up on the Streams

If you haven’t been checking out our bi-weekly development streams, I highly encourage you to take a look. You can watch the development livestream every second Thursday at twitch.tv/visionaryrealms. The archives are always made available within 24 hours on our YouTube channel.

In case you missed it, in mid-February we visited CohhCarnage’s twitch channel once again to show off the work that has been done in Faerthale. This was a huge stream, packed with a first detailed look at Faerthale and its visual bar. We also showed a more detailed climbing system, the Codex, the Acclimation system, and even a brief look at Pantheon’s first end-game raid area. The archive of this overflowing stream can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z_udroswXc or viewed below.

We returned in March to show you some more goodies in the game. We debuted the new models for the Skar, Dark Myr and Archai. Watch below or follow the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ro5ZrrOniA

As promised in that stream, you can check out the higher rez versions by clicking on the images below.

Last week’s stream was another deep look into Pantheon’s mechanics as we dove into Shaman abilities. We hopped in game and demonstrated the Mastery system and how Boons, Banes and Oaths play off each other for some bonus effects. We plan more of these types of streams for other classes in the future but for now, check out the Shaman stream at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-VEt4ReDSk or watch it below.

What’s Been Happening This Week

Ross has been banging out new character animations like there’s no tomorrow. He finished off a few combat-idle stance variants, snuck in an emote animation and is now focusing on the monk animations.

Jared is focused on more UI work and has put together the beginnings of the character inventory and stats windows, replacing the placeholder windows. These newly designed windows show all the information you need, including a nice, intuitive interface for the Acclimation system.

Jimmy has been building a continent, it seems like. He’s put in a ton of work getting zones ready for Pre-Alpha 5 (and eventually Alpha), making insane progress in blocking out zones and placing assets. Some puzzle work is being done as areas need to be moved, resized or fitted into the zone layout. He’s got 4 zones on the go right now.

JN is busy writing the content for the PA5 zones and turning that writing into storylines and quests. Lots to keep our writer busy!

The entire programming team keeps their schedules full as they integrate new formulas, stats and systems into the main codebase, crushing bugs, fixing and scaling tools and ensuring new builds are able to be compiled routinely.

While all this is going on, Tim has been populating the PA5 zones with life and making sure the NPCs are acting in a respectful manner. Or at least acting as intended.

On Naming an NPC

If your pledge grants you the Name-An-NPC perk, you should have received an email this week with instructions on how to submit your name suggestions. If you are entitled to this reward and have not received this email please contact support at https://pantheonmmo.com/support/.

And that’s a glimpse into Pantheon development for this week. Keep an eye on the forums or social media pages for our latest news and upcoming streams. See you in the chat channel again soon! Until then, stay safe and Panthe-on.

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