Developer Log - January 2024
As a team we are deeply in development and testing for Beta 3 content with a key focus on endgame dungeon experiences. While this means that we do not have an abundance of brand new features to showcase for you we still want to make sure you get updates on some of the more fun things that have been completed or worked on this month.
Cross Faction Conversation
Last month we outlined our aspirations for how Cross Faction interactions will work within a Let's Talk. Immediately following that we can comfortably say that feedback and opinions were accelerated. We decided that for literally the first time in Project Epoch and hopefully the last that we needed to get actionable information in the form of a Poll.
As a team this particular topic has been one that we've never fully been able to agree on the minute details and this feedback from the community helped spur on a second internal chat. With that in mind we will be updating the previous Let's Talk to ammend based on that feedback.
For those who just want a dead simple update.
What will be Cross Faction?
Everything except Battlegrounds and World Bosses.
We know this will annoy many, no decision on this topic can make everyone happy. Please take that into consideration in your decisions to create Guilds, Communities and even whether you want to play on Project Epoch at all.
Thank you to our community for being open and communicative on this topic and many others.
Knowledge Is Power
Over these months we've been actively designing and implementing the 16 Racial Knowledge chains that you will find across the world leading to you acquiring the ability to use another Races Racials. We're happy to say that we consider this work now done with all implemented and completable in game. This has been a great design, lore and logistical challenge to get across the line requiring new locales, quests, items, spells and more. With that in mind we decided that today we will show you one of these chains.
From the perspective of a Troll setting off an adventure that will take them through the day and night to complete as they uncover the Racial Knowledge of the Taurens.
Datamining Measures
While allowing you guys access to Project Epoch brings with it many advantages one of the key disadvantages is the capacity for you as the community to gather up as much information as possible through many means. We knew this going in however we are of course aware of the extent this has reached.
Through simple in game means during Beta 1 and Beta 2 it has been possible to query the server for information on an Item by its ID. We know this has lead to things like the World Boss Volchan's loot being "leaked" (though we had it enabled in Beta because we thought you would kill him again).
While we are in general perfectly fine with the community diving in and trying to pick apart and log information about Project Epoch we felt that this in particular was against the spirit of exploration. So, it was time to plug that hole.
The result that the server will give going forwards for undiscovered items.
Starting with Beta 3 and persisting into the Live environment we have implemented a very simple measure. An Item can not be queried by players until it has been organically "Discovered". This means that a player somewhere in the world must have at the very least seen an item in a Drop Window to be queryable by anyone else. There are some key exceptions to this in the form of Profession Crafts as well as Tier Token crafts which require being able to be able to inspect an Item before it is created.
M2 Mania
This month has been a very fun and interesting month for the modding community as a whole and by proxy the Project Epoch team. For those who aren't nerds like us you might not be aware of the 2 major Model formats used by WoW, these are .wmo and .m2.
WMO
WMO's are essentially "the things you can go in and need fancy collision". Houses, indoor instances, large walls, complex buildings etc. Generally static but can include .m2 models within them as animated doodads. A simple rule of thumb is if it breaks LoS it's probably a WMO.
Due to excellent work by the modding community and friends of Project Epoch such as Titi as well as a lot of using Epoch as an active development test case this nut has been mostly cracked for some time which is what has lead to the high quality indoor dungeons we have here such as Wailing Caverns, The Deadmines, Glittermurk Mines, Baradin Hold, Stonetalon Peaks and the eventual Uldum.
In the below example Baradin Hold itself is a WMO, the NPC's within it are M2's.
M2
M2's are essentially "every other model" such as Character Models, non-Humanoid NPC's or bespoke ones, small doodads in the world and lots more. With regard to the world the general rule of thumb is if it does not break LoS it's probably an M2.
For a long time editing M2's or creating new ones with new animations or retaining existing animations has been what some would call the dark arts. A mixture of archaic tools, manual file edits and more trouble along the way meant that it was the domain of very very knowledgeable modders and out of the scope of what we considered reasonable.
However that has changed thanks to the extremely dilligent work of many this barrier for entry has been drastically reduced and improvements included within WoW Blender Studio. We wanted to particularly shout out Lyswh and Titi for their efforts and upgrades that benefit the modding community as a whole.
Fun Stuff
The above new capabilities have spurred a burst of fun and creative experiments internally both with model edits and texture edits. And of course, plenty of fun bugs along the way.
For example; this unholy abomination.
Led to stunning new visuals for Kresh within the Wailing Caverns and Ghamoo-ra within Blackfathom Deeps. Utilising an adapted Cataclysm model with all new Textures.
Ever since we announced our carts feature many of you have noticed a glaring "issue". We used the Pandaria cart as a base due to lacking M2 tools and simply scuffed the textures to fit with Vanilla. While we do love this cart design we'd like to be able to tailor per race. While not a concrete feature yet these new M2 tools have allowed experiments to begin.
This of course has had numerous bugs occur along the journey but thanks to Supora for keen guidance as we wander down this path!
And finally for those Ogre lovers Intra has been experimenting with his biggest test to date in the form of getting the Beta version of the WoW Ogre model back in game for us to use. All in all a good learning project!
Item Visuals
Following the general drive of passion to fiddle with art given from the above. Over the course of this month we've also taken the opportunity to introduce a whole host of new item appearances to be used on loot within Baradin Hold. These includes recolors, texture edits, and finding an unused sword model in the game files!
Alongside the above were some recolours of 3 Dungeon Set 1 pieces to be used for an unnamed source. These include:
Red Beaststalker Armor
Green Wildheart Raiment
Blue Magister's Regalia
Risen Paladin Mounts
And finally; for a good while we have had placeholder visuals in place for the Undead Paladin's level 40 and level 60 mount variants through all betas. This is simply because we were hoping the day would come where M2 editing would be doable in house and it now is.
Our intent was to straddle the line between the living and the dead much in line with the Forsaken themselves.
At level 40 you will receive the Risen Warhorse.
And at level 60 you will receive the Risen Charger.
Closing Statement
For many on the team this has been a month of research, development and experimentation leading to visual focused features. However, we are hard at work polishing off the Beta 3 experience you'll get in the not too distant future and we value your patience while we grind away on key features.
