Developer's Desk - Year End Review 2015

Wow - I’m pretty sure it was January just last month… how time flies. As this year draws to a close and another thrilling year comes forward, it’s time to look back over the list of accomplishments from this year. I must say, I have quite a sense of pride in what we've done, as well as tinglings for what's planned in 2016.

This year has been a bit different than other years, as we put a lot more emphasis on fixes and technical subsystems than content releases. On the gameplay side of things, the goal was to fix long-standing issues with content, quests and overall experience, as well as tweaks and fixes to the Istaria interface / client stability. Sometimes it’s better not to count what you do, and just do it - and do it we did! With quests alone, there have been hundreds of tweaks to dialog, grammar and quest flow to improve the overall experience and not break the fourth wall while playing. Add to that all the item and spell buffs, triggers, and event changes, and it’s made for a very busy year. As with any change, much care is devoted toward ensuring that we’re improving gameplay, rather than making changes for the sake of change, or nerf for the sake of ivory tower nerf.

An exciting new feature is the ability to change your character’s appearance. This requires an Appearance Change Token and allows one to completely remake their appearance. Dragons also have some new colors to choose from, allowing for a striking look never seen before.

While a relatively new feature, players will notice many of the NPC engaged in new casual movement and conversation. NPC have tasks and behaviors they perform in their communities, and this adds a lot to the liveliness of towns. More and more NPC will be updated in 2016, so keep an eye out as the citizens of towns have more things to do.

On the interface side of things, there have been lots of tweaks among the different windows to add sorting for various displays, improve the alignment of graphics and text, better integrate right click functionality with the notepad, as well as other mouse shortcuts. Tools are auto-equipped, depending on the resource being gathered. The inventory, vault, storage, formula and knowledge windows all support search, so you can find things quickly, instead of wearing out your mouse wheel. A small, but popular feature has been the auto-notes for the notepad, so that you can right click formulas and items when creating, and add lists of components required. Map search has been improved and provides more accurate results, as well as map labels being integrated into hotkey tokens so you can use “percent p” and “percent l” to tell your group mates your coordinates and the closest map feature. Knowing when to attack, and when to assist a friend is very important, so the target window has been updated to show the buff/debuff icons for monsters and players. To guarantee that the full barrage of spells are available, the spell book capacity was increased to 250.

Deeper into the internal plumbing, there have been many improvements to sound, effect and texture caching, so that when assets are needed, they are available and ready to be played more immediately. Staves and Epic Weapons all had their textures refreshed and upsized to show off the finer details of their construction. The ambient sounds system was given an overhaul and produces a more pleasant playing of various sounds while moving through different parts of the world. Gone is the persistent chirping of birds, and has been replaced with a more natural soundscape. During all this work, a number of obtuse crashes were fixed and different areas were streamlined to improve performance.

All over the world, many public machines and structures had storage added, to make the process of refining a bit more streamlined. And speaking of resources and crafting, many missing blighted resources were added, as well as crafting boons added to Dragons. Throughout the world, you’ll find NPC walking around, taking care of their business and more interactive when you approach for a quest or chat. More and more NPC will be added throughout 2016, so if your favorite NPC or vendor is a bit drab, just let us know and we’ll get to work on giving them some pizzazz.

And finally, what year wouldn’t be complete without some special friends? JJ180 went back to the design workshop and the Gnomes put in some serious time with his design. There are now three Combat Bots to help you out while fighting the Withered Aegis. Anarie in Bristugo has all the details and is accepting loyalty tokens for the new bots. Just in case that wasn’t enough for you, there’s some old and new shoulder pets available. Just talk to the Technicolor Cashiers (Purple, Red, Blue, Green and Orange) at the Winter Festival in New Koraelia. While participating in the Winter Festival, you’ll get some shiny Ornaments as loot, as well as the snowball formula and +50 sized Christmas stockings. Hold onto those Ornaments, as they can be used to purchase the new shoulder pets.

There’s plenty more planned for 2016 and that schedule is being ironed out right now. An exciting goal, that many will be interested in, is the upgrade of the graphics engine to use Unreal. That’s an epic project, but a number of important pieces are in place to make that happen. As always, the developers would like to express their great appreciation for all who support Istaria. Without you, there would be no Istaria, nor all the work that goes into updates each and every month. The entire team sends a most sincere and great Thank You for your support of Istaria.

It is our hope here at Virtrium that this past year was a joyously eventful one, and that your "Year in Review" is as pleasing as ours. And I personally plan to give my character a bit of a makeover. I’ve been thinking that blue hair would go well with green eyes. How about you?

For a comprehensive look at the updates completed throughout 2015, please visit our news section at community.istaria.com.

If you'd like to join us on the forums, please visit us here: http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ssion&p=308354

…and don’t forget, it’s “double experience” until the New Year.

Wishing you the best for 2016 and a Joyous New Year!

Istaria Development Team