Developer's Desk Summer 2015

It’s 2015 and almost (already!) summer. It seems like it was New Years just yesterday. We started off the year with the great content release “City Under Siege”. This was followed by many new Imperial Projects that provided machines around the world to help with crafting and construction. Along with those changes, we also introduced additional storage to many public and private structures. With any update, there’s countless other small fixes, features and changes that are included with the overall content release.

With these two design projects completed, the team began looking at the schedule for the remainder of the year. A decision was reached to focus on fixes for technology, art assets and content for the remaining months of 2015. While there might be a few small features introduced, and certainly changes that could be considered upgrades, the primary focus will be on fixes.

Already this year there have been some updates to the client that boosted overall performance, as well as some fixes to long-standing issues, such as the monster moonwalk problem during combat. Since the primary focus will be on technology and art, Velea will no longer be part of the team. Amon will be re-focusing on long term tech development. Thank you Velea for all your hard work and effort with Istaria over the years.

As part of our long term commitment to Istaria, we can start preparing for an eventual overall upgrade to the core Istaria technology. This covers aspects of both the client and server. While much of this work has longer time frames, we’ll also be able to release updates to textures and models incrementally, as well as many upgrades to the server technology. For example, earlier in the year, the developers did a review of all staff weapon textures and released a texture upgrade pack. Throughout 2015, the developers will be doing similar updates to shields, swords, world object and other art. While these are existing items, the updates will certainly make them look a lot better and provide a new feel in game.

As always, you can check out what’s coming “down the pipe” by watching the community site for updates to the test shard Blight, as well as the forums.

Take care and see you Istaria!

Istaria Development Team