Supporter newsletter 9

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #9, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Diamond Supporters!

First I’d like to make a correction to something I said last week. I attributed Pillar of the Caged God to the wrong supporter, it was made by QixunZ26.

0.10.7

0.10.7 was released on Friday last week. It contained four unique items, two made by Diamond Supporters.

Acton’s Nightmare is a unique map was made by IronCageSkirt. It is an item with a very top down design. By top down design, I mean the story and theme is the starting point for the design. All the mechanical elements are developed to support these creative ideas, rather than having the story/theme elements being changed to support mechanical elements.

As Acton’s Nightmare is based on a being in a music box, Andrew, our in house sound engineer, wrote and recorded the music box music used in this map.

Both top down and bottom up design can work well. We have items made from lore or idea first, and mechanics made to fit, and ones which are designed to fill a specific mechanical niche first and the art and flavour text built later. It is not always easy to work out which is which when looking through the unique item list. I think the variedness of the items benefit from multiple ways of making them.

Thief’s Torment was designed by Davros70. Davros70 wanted the item be be based on a base type that did not exist in the game, an all resists ring. After some discussion, we decided this did fill a good space in the game, so the Prismatic Ring was added to the game.

We had intended to put Davros70’s ring in shortly after Open Beta, but the next delay was getting the mod to allow only one ring to be worn. This had a few complications. It is quite a bit more complicated than the existing item which disabled a slot, as (1) we already have the tech for disabling the second weapon slot, and (2) the ring can be placed in either of two slots, and needs to disable the other. This led to the issue not finding enough time in the schedule to have attention devoted to it and it ended up with a few delays.

0.10.8

We have our production schedule for unique items a little askew at the moment. While we have been getting unique items in, there has been a lot of focus on getting them finished and out the door, and a not enough focus on getting the design process for new ones underway.

I have a pile of information sent through from supporters to make sure our unique pipeline is restored and underway. Luckily we now also have Rory working hard on unique items as well. We do have Mark having a well deserved holiday very soon. As our primary programmer for the special mods we need for unique items, this will also have an impact on our schedule. We hope to have a good pipeline sorted out this week, and you won’t notice any drop in unique items coming out!

0.10.8 should include an Amulet from Tertium_Quid, and we should have more worked out soon!

Insider Info

This week, as I’ve already mentioned Andrew above as doing the music for the Acton’s Nightmare map, I thought I’d profile Andrew Reid.

Andrew started at GGG at the very beginning of 2012 as our resident audio engineer and sound designer.

Andrew very quickly proved his worth, and basically took over the whole process from very beginning to very end, and has done everything from voice work to mastering the soundtrack, and has had a hand in pretty much every sound you hear in the game. His job is to create and mix all the audio that goes into the game. This involves making ambient sound for the game levels, sound effects for monsters and skills, working with voice acted dialogue and now even occasionally writing music.

Before GGG Andrew worked as a full time DJ until starting a job for IOS audiobook developer Booktrack. This is his first job in the gaming industry. Andrew studied at SAE for a diploma in audio engineering.

Here you can see Andrew at work: http://i.imgur.com/fzuVI3k.jpg