[p]Hey Exanimates,

We've pretty much hit pause on roles, AI and this round of testing to focus fully on getting the big content update ready. We released a major patch in testing with some important changes, various additions to the current roles and dialogue, refinements to AI and lots and lots of fixes. As it tends to go with testing periods we fixed a lot of older issues as well as new, there's always a few highly specific and old issues that remain on the backlog for now, but everything seems to be in a really solid state and testers have been very thorough. Thank you.

We made big improvements to core AI and how NPCs perceive and respond to behaviour, following on the tricky issues we discussed last month, but a big change in this patch was to how emotions interact with roles and dialogue. This is a difficult problem because accounting for all the different emotions, how they can change or be meddled with by mind powers at any time, can easily create a disconnect with how characters behave and role based interactions and their effects. There were just too many conditions and outcomes to consider, and odd results can be quite immersion breaking or create problems with role logic. This pushed us to design a better system that could constantly monitor changes in emotions and dispositions to alter outcomes of ongoing role actions and influence, but the real problem was how to design and maintain role behaviours that could account for these complex conditions, especially when the emotion system is being constantly refined. Role design tools that are clever and intuitive to use were a big part of the solution and mitigating the complexity. Ultimately we succeeded in both a much more robust system while also making it easier to design more varied and appropriate responses.

At this point we feel like the role system is well and truly off the ground, and while we will continue to tweak it and add more roles and interactions based on these features, we're now focusing on finalising the new content and some features for the next major release. The new area, The Gardens, is very distinct both in terms of overall design and completely new assets. We're currently mostly polishing up various things to ensure consistent quality and visual harmony, but also animations and behaviours for some new encounters. As usual we're careful with avoiding spoilers when it comes to new content, so we won't give details. A lot has gone into features, tools and art to make all this work for some time now and we're committed to delivering a high quality final product.

While not yet usable by players, we're also introducing a new thaumaturgy domain and have been working on its effects and mechanics. Each domain comes with its unique challenges and this is no exception. The core systems for thaumaturgy and AI using it are now well established and in this case the unique visual effects are the main focus. As is hopefully apparent from the visual effects in the game so far, we're keen on things being more sophisticated and convincing than your typical sprites and particle systems, while also very mindful of the extreme performance impact that complex effects can have. We had very specific visuals in mind for this domain, and some optimistic theories about how they could be accomplished. From a rough, but promising prototype we ran into some tricky problems getting to a polished effect, but we solved them all and it's looking just like we hoped it would.

Best,
Bare Mettle[/p]