Supporter newsletter 10

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #10, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Diamond Supporters!

It has been three months since Open Beta has started. In the very first Month I received many emails from new Diamond Supporters. I am currently making sure I have all the emails recorded, and a plan in place to contact and get underway with unique design. If you haven’t heard from Rory or myself, you should soon. Feel free to contact us yourself if you are wondering why you haven’t had a reply yet.

0.10.7b

Today, 0.10.7b has been deployed.

We were only able to squeeze one Diamond item in this patch, an Amulet from Tertium Quid. The other item had a few issues with its unique mods and had to be delayed. This isn’t that strange. If an item does something new or unusual in the game, it needs to be tested as thoroughly as any other system. It needs to be tested in all circumstances and any issues need to be resolved.

One thing I thought I would discuss about unique items is the 2D art. At the moment, most of the 2D icon art for unique items is made by Filippo Valsecchi, our in-house concept artist. The workflow depends on what is being made, but it can start with both the classic pencil and paper, or using a 3D sculpt in zbrush. Either way, the last step is photoshop, where colour and texture are finalised. To be efficient, larger versions of the Icon art are also used as concept art for when the item gets modelled. The high resolution versions can also be used as promotional material, like the large art on the race reward page on our website.

To give you an idea of the quality and size of art that is first produced, here is a full size image of the Amulet in the 0.10.7B patch. This was a 17MB tiff file (2048 by 2048 pixels). This turns into the much smaller icon (78 by 78 pixels) used in game. http://i.imgur.com/hmMYLns.jpg

0.10.8

0.10.8 will include a Unique Ring from TakenNotGranted, and also being worked on are items from MonopolyLegend, Kohrock, Zahndethus and several others.

Insider Info

This week, I have some tile/environmental art from the Gardens area that is part of Act 3X: http://i.imgur.com/N93FIjO.jpg