Great pictures, so excited to see more more more. But at the same time, if this is as far as the world creation part of the process is, based on these screenshots, the chargen might have a beta or alpha or whatever this year but a playable world is unlikely even for 2019 for the MWM team.

Love it. The island is great, but I also love the textures!

It looks very pretty.

I keep forgetting that this is gonna look so much nicer than the old game!

Cinnder wrote:

I keep forgetting that this is gonna look so much nicer than the old game!

Yeah, seriously. I still build characters in Icon, and I've gotten used to the graphical levels available toCoH again, so I find it hard to distance that from my mind when looking at CoT stuff. But this? This is a whole other level than what I'd been expecting, though that's mostly my fault.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

The game content associated with the island is post-launch. The island's surface, however, works very well for test purposes and as a location for Chargen users to log into and chat with each other (which not incidentally also serves testing and development purposes, after a fashion). The problem with the city is it's open world - it's hard to show off any one part that's sufficiently done when so much around it isn't. A lot of work has been done, but it tends to look good from very specific angles. We'll get there.

This is great to hear! A lot of us were really hoping for a sort of test room where we could do whatever while the character creator had just come out, so this is great news for those of us that had been hoping for it. Hopefully, we don't get too many people all at once and thus can't see anything we're doing :P

Shadow Elusive wrote:

The game content associated with the island is post-launch. The island's surface, however, works very well for test purposes and as a location for Chargen users to log into and chat with each other (which not incidentally also serves testing and development purposes, after a fashion). The problem with the city is it's open world - it's hard to show off any one part that's sufficiently done when so much around it isn't. A lot of work has been done, but it tends to look good from very specific angles. We'll get there.

This makes sense, from more than 1 standpoint. Players get somewhere to login during the chargen release and run around without spoiling the initial launch playable districts; the CoT dev team get to use this area to monitor all the player logins, interactions, player to player chat, etc, and all the behind the scenes stuff that they need for testing. Also, the amount of work for all these 'bonuses' should be minuscule since it's basically an empty canvas (just terrain, no 'content') compared to the launch districts.
I will say, however, that I won't be surprised if this turns into an optional starting area since this is where the first ever hangout, login spot will be. Choose to escape from prison or help keep convicts from escaping...kind of similar to the bank heist; steal or try to stop the thieves. Since the terrain will already be done...it might not be that hard to transfer a lot of the logic from the bank heist, and all the npc's and baddies, into the prison. They also wouldn't need to have the whole island completed with content...they could just have the prison done and be the only 'open' location on the island. When the 'breakout' is done, you take a helicopter to the starting zone in the city, keeping you from even exploring the island. Really they would only need to make the prison, which may or may not already be under way in some form.

avelworldcreator wrote:

Foradain wrote:

Dark Cleric wrote:

Great pictures, so excited to see more more more. But at the same time, if this is as far as the world creation part of the process is, based on these screenshots, the chargen might have a beta or alpha or whatever this year but a playable world is unlikely even for 2019 for the MWM team.

I'd like to point out that this is "as far as the world creation part of the process is" [i]for a post-launch district.[/i] At least Lockharde Island isn't on any of the Launch-Day districts I recall seeing. One presumes that the districts that are scheduled to be ready at launch are somewhat more advanced. ^_^

That isn't the correct spelling of that island. I'll have to look it up.

According to the update that is the correct spelling of the island.

I would like to see Anthem and the other Icons at the various locations.

A little to much of the landscape and not enough of the cityscape but it is pretty :)

Silent Sillo wrote:

Can't be the only one thinking this... That looks like Statesman

Man, it's a silhouette wearing a red cape. It could be Superman or Thor for all we know. I really doubt they'd plop Statesman down in official art either way.

I really like the different variations of the helmet, I really hope this type of customization extends into a lot of other costume pieces.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

The helmet is a demonstration of a level of control we're applying to pretty much every piece that has enough variation to hold it, barring any technical barriers.

Wow, awesome news, looking forward to seeing them!

what I would like to see (and may have to wait for) is an impressive monitor room for our Iconic heroes base. Kinda like this:
[img]https://s33.postimg.cc/q6mkcuomn/plans_and_operations_handbook_cover_by_phil_cho-dbqwdnw.png[/img]

The iconic base needs to be impressive. (and I want to be able to get missions there).

Oh, and one more thing. Anthem needs a snappy answer for when heroes ask her out. its a simple program that responds to "want to go out on a date?" The program kicks in and responds with one of 20 snappy answers that mean, "No." Collect em all!

This keeps getting better. Good job guys. I hope I can try out the chargen before years end. But I'm glad that your making great progress

This isn’t the actual update for the month though right?

It’s not even an update...

Yeah, I'm confused. I received a KS update email but it just links to this update from 2 weeks ago. And if you look on the KS page, the update from 2 weeks ago is now dated with today's date even though it's the exact same content from 2 weeks ago.

EDIT: Man, I sure said '2 weeks ago' a lot.

LMAO! I forgot about that scene.

Zerohour wrote:

Seems a little half assed to me. Busy or not just throw together something saying “ya hey guys we are still working on the chargen but we are getting there. Here’s a screenshot”. Recycling old info and calling it an update seems lazy

I've never been one to suggest the MWM Devs waste too much time and effort to produce huge "news updates" with millions of vids/pics, etc. But really one would think that they should be at a point in their development cycle where they could easily toss out a random screenshot or two per week and call that an "update".

They wouldn't even need to spend much time writing up a fancy "press release" or anything as formal as that. Frankly with the way this forum is if they literally just threw out a single pic per week we'd probably slobber all over it with dozens of posts and it would easily keep us placated until the next pic. ;)

That is interesting...I didn't realize their KS updated yesterday with the exact same update. That is confusing. I think they are far enough along in their development that they should have oodles of stuff they could throw out...and maybe be better at communicating with the community.

Thanks for the response, Avel! However, this is the same artwork and associated captions that we saw in the update two weeks ago. It even links to the same comments thread.

Aye, if MWM is too busy at the moment for an update, just let us know and we'll be cool with that. It's just confusing when something comes across as if it's meant to be new but is actually the same as an old update.

Having done the sorting through thousands of lines of code thing in the past, I don't envy you. At least it's not in LISP!

In Champions Online, on some pieces when you pick a color you can also pick a brightness level, from not lit at all to dim to very bright. I have a flame-shooting power armor guy lit up like a Christmas tree. I imagine CoT can do something similar.

warcabbit wrote:

So, uhm. I've been working too many 20 hour days, I guess.
My apologies for the duplicate KS - at some point late yesterday, I became convinced it was Thursday, put up the most recent post I could find on Kickstarter and then apparently fell asleep. Woke up on the floor at 2:30 AM.
I don't seem to have done anything ELSE especially stupid while in a sleep-deprived state, so I'll just have to apologize and carry on.

And no, I'm not using hyperbole. Over the last few weeks I've been getting 4 to 3 hours of sleep a night trying to keep things moving.
I gotta stop doing that.

I appreciate your dedication but I think I'd feel weird playing this game knowing that it killed its Project Lead in the process. Don't do that. ;)

We all drop the ball every now and again. 3-4 hours a night isn’t enough sleep man, trust me you gotta get more rest or you’re gonna burn out... fatigue is a killer!

I think it’s safe to say no one wants you to burnout! Please take a break through the fourth!

You got this!

Yikes, dude -- take care of yourself first. An MMO isn't like a normal game where you can take time off after release. While we appreciate your dedication, we can wait a little longer for CoT if it means you get a decent amount of sleep.

Unless you have managed a software release cycle, you just can't know how things will shake out and where bottlenecks will crop up. When Doctor Tyche mentioned a few months ago that they were integrating big chunks of their components together for the first time, my expectations for when the Character Creator would release pushed back a bit.

I have done the four hour sleep cycle thing for an extended period before and it is not fun, especially when you are hazy during commute to/from work. It gets bad when you start timing when you go to sleep so you can get in to work at the latest time possible while avoiding most of the bad traffic. It isn't worth it. Please take care of yourselves.

As far as updates go, it is my opinion that MWM creates a stickied thread in the ANNOUNCEMENTS forum that gives the general public an idea of what is going on (in terms of updates). On the rough two week cycle, give a little teaser blurb saying that there will be a KS announcement a day or so ahead of schedule or a little blurb saying something to the effect of "we're hard at work integrating X so there will be no update this week" type of thing. It will keep the general hysteria to a minimum and if someone asks this type of question again, someone can just point them to the stickied thread.

A friend of mine works for a certain rodent (who has a spokespixie with a name similar to that of one of my gadgeteers) as an animator. When a release date is coming up, suddenly she has no free time...

But just as I expect her to get sleep rather than come to our games, so I expect Warcabbit to get in enough cabbit-naps for mental and physical health! There is no hard release date on CoT, and most of the people on these fora will understand if the devs put their health before the game.