The developers of City State Entertainment (CSE) and their upcoming game Camelot Unchained (RvR-MMORPG) have had a turbulent year, which they concluded with a multi-hour livestream at the end of the year. This consists of two parts, a gameplay presentation and an extensive introduction of the crafting system. We will present the latter in a separate report.
A turbulent year comes to an end
After Mark Jacobs and his team were quite confident about the development of Camelot Unchained at the beginning of the year during the presentation of the first pre-alpha gameplay, they faced a major setback a few months later. After the guys at CSE had unsuccessfully tried to fill key positions in the team for several months, the planned Beta #1 phase in July had to be postponed. However, it should begin by the end of March 2016 at the latest.
This caused some discontent among the backers, some of whom even requested their money back and received refunds from Mark Jacobs. Meanwhile, the relevant positions have been filled, and the financing of the game is back “on track” despite the small financial setback, mainly due to the presentation of the rather unusual classes. Thanks to many new and some old backers, the long-awaited stealth stretch goal was unlocked with reaching 3,650,000 euros.
New Biome and Alpha Gameplay
One of the highlights of the livestream was that there was new alpha gameplay on display again, which, based on the viewers’ reactions, seemed to be well received. Over 600 players and bots, including myself, gathered at a spot in the middle of the test island and engaged in a massive battle. The performance was quite good, as you can see in the video, considering that the system is not yet optimized and not just on the developers’ computers. Even my older rig (CPU: i5 3570k / GPU: 7950 ghz edt. / RAM: 8 GB DDR3 / SSD) achieved 45 to 55 FPS outside and at the edges of the battles and still 20 to 24 FPS in the midst of heavy action.
Mark Jacobs and his team also expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the live test:
The bots consume more resources than the average player. They are not just simple NPCs, but separate versions of the PC client that we run for testing. They also consume more bandwidth than normal players because they perform more actions per minute, as they never pause between actions. After completing the planned optimizations, we should be able to depict around 1000 players smoothly and without issues. In one of the pretests, we already managed to have 3000 backers and bots together in a small area before our physics system eventually begged for mercy.
In addition to the large battle, the livestream also showcased the first new biome, a dense pine forest. All assets are created by the designers themselves, as Camelot Unchained, unlike other games such as Shroud of the Avatar, cannot rely on pre-made tree, bush, or grass models from a ready-made engine (Unity, Unreal, etc.), but started from scratch with its own engine. According to the designers, this is still in the early stages and will improve significantly throughout the beta.
For more information and the mentioned class introductions, you can find them on our news overview for Camelot Unchained.
