July’s Producer’s Letter

Greetings once again, Pantheon fans.

As you may or may not be aware, Pantheon is aiming toward 24/7 testing. The first candidate client will be released to our Pre-Alpha pledges in September. Once any initial hiccups are addressed, the servers will be switched over to full time availability. This will allow us to gather more data points in terms of peak activity, population, popularity of content areas and so on in a constant stream of data. It also helps us fortify our networking code, server load, and measure demand. These are all data points we need before we increase the player base and invite more players in.

Doing so requires some thought into replayability since our data shows that we tend to lose players part way through our 24-hour monthly sessions. This is largely due to limited content availability. As such, we are introducing a new play mode to our testers. The goal of the play mode is to offer a form of progression that is engaging enough to keep people playing, while content is being built and added. This play mode is not a replacement for the full Pantheon, but instead offers a way to consume existing content in smaller doses while more gets added. We will share the details of this mode of play once the Pre-Alpha testers get in to try it out and offer feedback in September. This endeavor has taken about 5% of our overall efforts while the remaining 95% have been focused on building content.

As you’ll see in the list below, we’ve been heavily focused on art and have gotten through a hefty helping of it over this past month. We have been trying a new approach to art in an effort to speed it along and make it more sustainable for a team of our size. We recently introduced this new approach to our testers and you can expect to see it rolling out here in the very near future.

Roadmap to Alpha

Below is the list of items that we accomplished over the past month. As a reminder for our regular readers, this bullet-point format is temporary as we build out a newly formatted roadmap for September.

• A new tree style has been completed – the Butternut tree.
• The new in-house rats have been completed and are burrowing their way into Thronefast as we speak.
• The new in-house bats have also started their migration to Terminus.
• We have 6 variations of the new in-house spider completed.
• Snakes and Giant Cobras have been concepted and are ready for modelling.
• Concept work has started on in-house foxes.
• New grass is now in-game.
• The Biome tool has undergone improvements.
• We have added new locomotion animations for player models.
• The Storm Griffin has been animated.
• New robe and monk armor sets have been completed for male and female.
• Updated plate armor sets are almost complete.
• Caves are undergoing conversion, primarily with updated textures.
• Major work has been done on corpse looting interface.
• We are actively working on an improved quest system alongside enhancements to our Merchants and how reputation with Merchants will expand what they have for sale.
• The Gadai camp is getting upgraded with new art.

Be sure to check back next month for more updates on art and 24/7 play mode! If you would like to help support Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, you may find out how on our official website.