Hello mates, Baron here with news from the Warpfrog front; progress is going great on the next in the series of Byeth releases, U1.3 The Khar-Tib Update. ːpraisesunː
And with that good news, I have some goodies to show you. But before we get into that, a little backdrop on Khar-Tib:
Khar-Tib is a sprawling landmass of blistering desert, east of Eraden and across the Khemenet Sea. The Kharese are a decentralized nation, comprised of clusters of clans.
In the deep lore, the tribes of Khar-Tib are historically governed by local strongmen types, typically those with deep ancestral roots and ties to their particular clan. However, a new power is rapidly-rising; a powerful warlord is uniting the disjointed clans under one banner, creating a new existential threat to Eraden's position as a superpower nation of Byeth.
When it came to designing Khar-Tib, the aesthetics of the update were loosely inspired by an amalgamation of Arabic cultures.
Now, let's get into the preview:
As with all Byeth updates, Khar-Tib comes with a bunch of new faction themed weapons. The weapon design for Khar-Tib was particularly fun and interesting because it is tied in heavily with the background lore.
Despite the scarcity of certain materials in the desert, the Kharese are a resourceful people who utilize materials in their weapon-making that are available exclusively to them.
Kharese blacksmiths fuse dense bones of sand-dwelling creatures into their unusual weaponry, as you can see on this khopesh inspired blade.
Next, bringing a little variety to axes, we have a first entry of its kind to Blade & Sorcery, with a labrys inspired double sided axe.
Something really cool about this axe is that not only can it be imbued... but be imbued on both sides individually.
And the last preview for today, keeping in the spirit of unusual weapons, we have a war scythe.
It was a lot of a fun for the art team to design these weapons, because it allowed the guys to create an aesthetic that was something completely different and unusual.
Introducing Khar-Tib's featured weapon, the crossbow!
This crossbow is a little unusual in that it is one-handed, and has an automatic draw feature. Small and versatile, it is a good close combat offhand weapon.
It comes with a limited amount of bolts, but as it runs out it can also be reloaded via a toploader. Similar to the bow, you can also retrieve bolts as the bolts are physical.
We did a lot of bouncing around on designs and in the end what the guys were looking for was something that could fill a niche that was not already occupied by the bow or Sentari firearm.
When it comes to the automatic crossbow, the benefits are its steady rate of fire, quick ease of use, and preset number of preloaded bolts that can fire before needing a reload.
But the drawbacks are it is more complex to reload than a bow when you do run out of bolts, and the small size of the crossbow makes it less powerful than some of the larger longbows (about on par with a T1 bow).
You can hold the crossbow with both hands, but the option for a single handed wield was to further differentiate its role from the bow. This way, a player could use a crossbow and sword together for example, or even dual wield crossbows!
And now for some armour that has no right to go this hard!
The design team cooked here with this new Khar-Tib armour. Check out this concept art:
The Kharese reinforce their armour with the carapaces of sand creatures, making it sturdy and giving it it's unique look.
In the next news I should have some in-game renders, including the Khar-Tib enemy wearing them.
Our third Byeth map brings you the blazing hot lands of Khar-Tib! It will be available in both sandbox and Crystal Hunt.
The map is deceptively big for an arena map, with some verticality to it which may not be too obvious at first glance.
There are a lot of fun nooks and crannies to explore, as well as some parkour challenges.
Something else of interest is there are also fun interactive elements in the map, like this Ballista!
That's not all, but I won't give too much away right now. This is just a little taster to tide you over until the next news, when we will deep dive into the map.
But while we are on the topic of maps.... Guess who's back!
Requested by players many times was a daytime version of Town Square. Town Square had received a cosmetic overhaul in 1.0 which converted it into a nighttime map, but we greatly underestimated the warm sentiment people had towards the mood of the day version!
So, back by popular request, players can now choose a daytime or nighttime version of the map from the mapboard.
Re-adding this map required remaking the lightning for it, as unfortunately there is no easy way for us to day/night toggle. It wasn't too bad to do though, it just required actually allocating manpower from the team to do it.
However, given the amount of times we have read community members wishing for a daytime version, we felt it was a worthwhile endeavor for the enviro team.
Just to clarify, this is Town Square daytime version and not the old, old "Market" map (which was also daytime).
The subtle difference was the old Market map was the pre-1.0 version of the map, which had a slightly different layout, mainly being it did not have the corner house in the well area. It also did not have the final set dressing polish or lighting that Town Square has.
That's it for now, guys!
The team are heavily in bugfix mode right now, so I will let the guys cook a little more and next time I should be able to show you everything remaining in the update.
There are plenty more goodies to show. ːwftogrinː
Cheers!