The Friday dev streams are back! Come join us on our Twitch channel on Friday, and watch Joel and Jens Erik talk about Conan Exiles.
We'll be showing off thrall inventories, new building pieces, the new carousel UI and other stuff we can think of as the stream goes on.
Friday. October 13th (spooky!), at 5pm CEST, 11am EDT, 8am PDT. Twitch.tv/funcom. Come hang out. Talk at us. Hear us talk to you. Maybe we'll even answer a question or two?
The Friday dev streams are back! Come join us on our Twitch channel on Friday, and watch Joel and Jens Erik talk about Conan Exiles.
We'll be showing off thrall inventories, new building pieces, the new carousel UI and other stuff we can think of as the stream goes on.
Friday. October 13th (spooky!), at 5pm CEST, 11am EDT, 8am PDT. Twitch.tv/funcom. Come hang out. Talk at us. Hear us talk to you. Maybe we'll even answer a question or two?
Technically it's getting cold outside. Hope everyone's been enjoying the first week of October! It's getting colder by the day, the perfect time to curl up under a blanket, drink some hot chocolate, and play a video game.
For this week's community letter, we're trying something different: fewer words! And possibly some more gifs and pictures, depending on what I'm allowed to show.
Current state of PC
Work is well under way on the next PC update, which will add thrall inventories and new building pieces to the game. Entertainers, fighters and archers you break on your Wheel of Pain needs to be clothed and equipped before they can fight for you, so if you've always wanted to make a giant, uniformed army of thralls you will be able to do that. With this patch we're also updating the basic creature AI. Best case we'll be rolling out the patch in about two weeks.
Current state of Xbox
Last week we patched Xbox with the Big PC/Xbox Parity Update™. This moved a heap of changes, optimizations and improvements to the Xbox version of Conan Exiles, bringing it in line with the PC version. The full change log can be found here. Going forward we will continue to keep the two versions in sync. Keep in mind that there will always be a delay from PC to console, due to the certification process, but we are working on reducing the time it takes for the console versions to reach parity.
What the teams have been working on in the past week:
Every Friday, the entire development team meets up to discuss what they’ve been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. The development team is split into cross professional Scrum teams that each have their own focus and tasks to complete. You can find their names and descriptions in the first community letter.
Vanguard (Bugs and exploit fixes and gameplay updates)
In addition to the usual bug fixes the Vanguard team has started working on improving the new ragdoll setup that has been added to the combat system. Because knocking someone down with a giant hammer isn't the same when you can't send that person flying in a heap of limbs.
The Vanguard has also been fixing some usability issues in the Xbox version. Finally, there's a new addition to The Vanguard: a junior programmer named Marius. Welcome to the team!
Terraformers (New areas and content)
On the dungeon side of things the Terraformers have been concepting and experimenting with lava flow patterns and maps. We need that molten rock to look hella good. Here's a work in progress look at the latest version of the area surrounding the dungeon.
Beyond the virtual landscaping, work has begun on a cleaver item to help gather meat more easily.
The Berserkers (Combat and movement)
The Berserkers have finished up the auto-targeting and lock-on systems for the combat system prototypes. We saw some concerns about this following last week's community letter. We're currently only prototyping and testing new targeting systems. Nothing is being added until we have something that we think fits well with our desired combat paradigm.
Art team (Character designs, outfits, animations and effects)
The art team is cranking out new weapons, building pieces and creatures. There are also animations happening. It's better if we just show you what they've been working on.
PUPPY!!!
KITTY!!!
Tech and tools (Client and server stability and performance)
The tools guys are working on improving what kind of information we get in crash reports. Things like knowing the location of players when the client or server crashes, for example.
On the tech team side of things there's been crash fixes and optimization work, especially on the Xbox parity patch that was rolled out on Friday. Work continues this week on further bug and crash fixes.
Finally, the guys working at Coconut Lizard have managed to hack together a playable build of the PS4 version.
Wrapping up
Players have been asking for a status update on the new features, and we wanted to give you guys some information on that front. We are currently focused on polish and stability. We have a certain threshold of polish that we would like to reach before we start adding new features again, as we don't want to do things half assed. We'll provide more updates about features in the future.
Technically it's getting cold outside. Hope everyone's been enjoying the first week of October! It's getting colder by the day, the perfect time to curl up under a blanket, drink some hot chocolate, and play a video game.
For this week's community letter, we're trying something different: fewer words! And possibly some more gifs and pictures, depending on what I'm allowed to show.
Current state of PC
Work is well under way on the next PC update, which will add thrall inventories and new building pieces to the game. Entertainers, fighters and archers you break on your Wheel of Pain needs to be clothed and equipped before they can fight for you, so if you've always wanted to make a giant, uniformed army of thralls you will be able to do that. With this patch we're also updating the basic creature AI. Best case we'll be rolling out the patch in about two weeks.
Current state of Xbox
Last week we patched Xbox with the Big PC/Xbox Parity Update™. This moved a heap of changes, optimizations and improvements to the Xbox version of Conan Exiles, bringing it in line with the PC version. The full change log can be found here. Going forward we will continue to keep the two versions in sync. Keep in mind that there will always be a delay from PC to console, due to the certification process, but we are working on reducing the time it takes for the console versions to reach parity.
What the teams have been working on in the past week:
Every Friday, the entire development team meets up to discuss what they’ve been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. The development team is split into cross professional Scrum teams that each have their own focus and tasks to complete. You can find their names and descriptions in the first community letter.
Vanguard (Bugs and exploit fixes and gameplay updates)
In addition to the usual bug fixes the Vanguard team has started working on improving the new ragdoll setup that has been added to the combat system. Because knocking someone down with a giant hammer isn't the same when you can't send that person flying in a heap of limbs.
The Vanguard has also been fixing some usability issues in the Xbox version. Finally, there's a new addition to The Vanguard: a junior programmer named Marius. Welcome to the team!
Terraformers (New areas and content)
On the dungeon side of things the Terraformers have been concepting and experimenting with lava flow patterns and maps. We need that molten rock to look hella good. Here's a work in progress look at the latest version of the area surrounding the dungeon.
Beyond the virtual landscaping, work has begun on a cleaver item to help gather meat more easily.
The Berserkers (Combat and movement)
The Berserkers have finished up the auto-targeting and lock-on systems for the combat system prototypes. We saw some concerns about this following last week's community letter. We're currently only prototyping and testing new targeting systems. Nothing is being added until we have something that we think fits well with our desired combat paradigm.
Art team (Character designs, outfits, animations and effects)
The art team is cranking out new weapons, building pieces and creatures. There are also animations happening. It's better if we just show you what they've been working on.
PUPPY!!!
KITTY!!!
Tech and tools (Client and server stability and performance)
The tools guys are working on improving what kind of information we get in crash reports. Things like knowing the location of players when the client or server crashes, for example.
On the tech team side of things there's been crash fixes and optimization work, especially on the Xbox parity patch that was rolled out on Friday. Work continues this week on further bug and crash fixes.
Finally, the guys working at Coconut Lizard have managed to hack together a playable build of the PS4 version.
Wrapping up
Players have been asking for a status update on the new features, and we wanted to give you guys some information on that front. We are currently focused on polish and stability. We have a certain threshold of polish that we would like to reach before we start adding new features again, as we don't want to do things half assed. We'll provide more updates about features in the future.
Does eating an exotic feast meal, made up of spiced haunch, cooked eggs and dried berries, while drinking some nice highland wine sound tempting to you?
Needing food and water at regular intervals can be somewhat of a hassle in both real life and survival games. But just as in real life, where eating and drinking can be a source of great pleasure and fulfillment, eating and drinking has been made much more interesting, helpful and fun in Conan Exiles with the Frozen North expansion update.
You can now make a host of great dishes, made from all types of food, and also brew great wine or alcohol beverages. Read the rest over on our dev blog:
Does eating an exotic feast meal, made up of spiced haunch, cooked eggs and dried berries, while drinking some nice highland wine sound tempting to you?
Needing food and water at regular intervals can be somewhat of a hassle in both real life and survival games. But just as in real life, where eating and drinking can be a source of great pleasure and fulfillment, eating and drinking has been made much more interesting, helpful and fun in Conan Exiles with the Frozen North expansion update.
You can now make a host of great dishes, made from all types of food, and also brew great wine or alcohol beverages. Read the rest over on our dev blog:
Happy October! It's the month of spoops, pumkpin spiced lattes and complaining about Norwegian stores selling their Christmas candy and decorations too early.
We've been working out of our new offices for four weeks now and everyone has managed to settle into the new work space. The coders have solved their window blinds problem, we finally have a microwave oven in the kitchen, and now that the teams are sequestered in separate rooms you can't hear them scream in frustration when something crashes.
This week there's been progress on gameplay systems and the art team is filling in gaps. You'll find all the details below.
Current state of PC
Last week we released a hotfix for PC to take care of some lingering issues after the most recent update to the game. You can now repair Exceptional and Flawless items again (if you have the correct thrall and crafting station), and thrall recipes were also taken care of.
There's still work to be done, obviously.
Food spoils incredibly quickly and the desert heat can be devastating, even when you're standing in water. We're working on addressing these issues and will be doing additional hotfixes before we do the next major update. G-portal is also helping us improve server performance and stability.
Current state of Xbox
We patched Xbox with another stability patch last week and our current focus is the PC/Xbox One parity update. There are over 1400 changes, gameplay updates and bug fixes coming to the console version. This will update the sprint mechanics, improve controller support, update the repair system, and remove those pesky broken dancer thralls that sometimes crash the servers.
We're also rolling out the art optimizations we mentioned last week, which cuts down on the number of polygons used in our art assets. That should make the game run smoother and more stable.
Of course, this doesn't mean stability work on Xbox is finished, and there will be more updates and patches.
What the teams have been working on in the past week:
Every Friday, the entire development team meets up to discuss what they’ve been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. The development team is split into cross professional Scrum teams that each have their own focus and tasks to complete. You can find their names and descriptions in the first community letter.
Vanguard (Bugs and exploit fixes and gameplay updates)
Vanguard has been working on expanding the thrall system, and we've now added the ability to equip armor and weapons on certain types of thralls. it's a pretty rad feature, one we hope you'll like.
In addition to thrall inventories, the Vanguard has been continuing to work on the sickle, which will let you quickly harvest Plant Fiber. No more running around vegetated areas mashing the E key to collect Fiber, wearing out your finger in the process. The sickle is also the first part of a farming system, which is currently being designed.
Finally, to improve on the building system, Vanguard has done some optimization work to make building feel snappier. Personally, building is one of my favorite things in Conan Exiles, and I welcome any and all improvements we do to that feature.
Terraformers (New areas and content)
The greyboxing for the new dungeon is mostly finished, same goes for the new playfield. Visual effects have been added, making the two areas look vibrant and colorful, and I'm very excited to see our community's reaction to the new content.
We're now experimenting with how we're going to populate the two areas. The dungeon isn't in a particularly creature friendly place, so we'll need to consider that when we're placing creatures and NPCs for players to fight. Don't expect to see a lot of hyenas, for example.
The Berserkers (Combat and movement)
Combat prototyping is progressing nicely and the team has added new animations for the two-handed hammer and spears. On the band-end the Berserkers have been working on the combo system, experimenting with soft targeting and lock-on systems.
The point of all this combat prototyping is to create a more dynamic and better combat system. Improving combat is one of the things our community has been the most vocal about and our goal is still to have the best melee combat in the genre.
Featurama (New features and content)
Featurama has been helping the Vanguard expand the thrall system so you can equip thralls. They've also been working on the option to move thralls without returning them to your inventory first.
Art team (Character designs, outfits, animations and effects)
The art team wrapped up their optimization work last week and have now moved on to filling in missing content. In practice, this means they're creating assets for anything that's left to be added, everything from new weapons and outfits to new crafting stations, icons and visual effects.
It's not a small list of things, but certainly doable by artists as hard working as ours. I've already seen two new bows and crossbows near completion, and they're looking pretty awesome.
Tech, systems and coders (Client and server stability and performance)
The tools team has been working on a backend system to reduce the amount of downtime for the general dev team due to bad submissions.
Last week we also rolled out improved crash reporting for Xbox One, giving us lots of juicy data to look over when doing crash fixes on console. Work is also being done to figure out further ways we can improve the crash reporting tools, for both PC and console.
Most of the tech team are still focused on Xbox One, working on crash fixes and stabilization of the PC/Xbox parity patch. We've also begun looking into how we can take advantage of the Xbox One X.
This doesn't mean we're ignoring the issues with PC, as there's still work to be done there.
On the PS4 side of things, Coconut Lizard have reported that they can now reach character creation on the PlayStation 4 version of the game. That's not bad for two weeks' worth of work.
Wrapping up
Okay jens Erik, now for something funny and witty to wrap the whole thing up. Hmm... Oh no. They've already started reading! Think, damnit, think! Uhm...
Wise man says forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza!
Happy October! It's the month of spoops, pumkpin spiced lattes and complaining about Norwegian stores selling their Christmas candy and decorations too early.
We've been working out of our new offices for four weeks now and everyone has managed to settle into the new work space. The coders have solved their window blinds problem, we finally have a microwave oven in the kitchen, and now that the teams are sequestered in separate rooms you can't hear them scream in frustration when something crashes.
This week there's been progress on gameplay systems and the art team is filling in gaps. You'll find all the details below.
Current state of PC
Last week we released a hotfix for PC to take care of some lingering issues after the most recent update to the game. You can now repair Exceptional and Flawless items again (if you have the correct thrall and crafting station), and thrall recipes were also taken care of.
There's still work to be done, obviously.
Food spoils incredibly quickly and the desert heat can be devastating, even when you're standing in water. We're working on addressing these issues and will be doing additional hotfixes before we do the next major update. G-portal is also helping us improve server performance and stability.
Current state of Xbox
We patched Xbox with another stability patch last week and our current focus is the PC/Xbox One parity update. There are over 1400 changes, gameplay updates and bug fixes coming to the console version. This will update the sprint mechanics, improve controller support, update the repair system, and remove those pesky broken dancer thralls that sometimes crash the servers.
We're also rolling out the art optimizations we mentioned last week, which cuts down on the number of polygons used in our art assets. That should make the game run smoother and more stable.
Of course, this doesn't mean stability work on Xbox is finished, and there will be more updates and patches.
What the teams have been working on in the past week:
Every Friday, the entire development team meets up to discuss what they’ve been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. The development team is split into cross professional Scrum teams that each have their own focus and tasks to complete. You can find their names and descriptions in the first community letter.
Vanguard (Bugs and exploit fixes and gameplay updates)
Vanguard has been working on expanding the thrall system, and we've now added the ability to equip armor and weapons on certain types of thralls. it's a pretty rad feature, one we hope you'll like.
In addition to thrall inventories, the Vanguard has been continuing to work on the sickle, which will let you quickly harvest Plant Fiber. No more running around vegetated areas mashing the E key to collect Fiber, wearing out your finger in the process. The sickle is also the first part of a farming system, which is currently being designed.
Finally, to improve on the building system, Vanguard has done some optimization work to make building feel snappier. Personally, building is one of my favorite things in Conan Exiles, and I welcome any and all improvements we do to that feature.
Terraformers (New areas and content)
The greyboxing for the new dungeon is mostly finished, same goes for the new playfield. Visual effects have been added, making the two areas look vibrant and colorful, and I'm very excited to see our community's reaction to the new content.
We're now experimenting with how we're going to populate the two areas. The dungeon isn't in a particularly creature friendly place, so we'll need to consider that when we're placing creatures and NPCs for players to fight. Don't expect to see a lot of hyenas, for example.
The Berserkers (Combat and movement)
Combat prototyping is progressing nicely and the team has added new animations for the two-handed hammer and spears. On the band-end the Berserkers have been working on the combo system, experimenting with soft targeting and lock-on systems.
The point of all this combat prototyping is to create a more dynamic and better combat system. Improving combat is one of the things our community has been the most vocal about and our goal is still to have the best melee combat in the genre.
Featurama (New features and content)
Featurama has been helping the Vanguard expand the thrall system so you can equip thralls. They've also been working on the option to move thralls without returning them to your inventory first.
Art team (Character designs, outfits, animations and effects)
The art team wrapped up their optimization work last week and have now moved on to filling in missing content. In practice, this means they're creating assets for anything that's left to be added, everything from new weapons and outfits to new crafting stations, icons and visual effects.
It's not a small list of things, but certainly doable by artists as hard working as ours. I've already seen two new bows and crossbows near completion, and they're looking pretty awesome.
Tech, systems and coders (Client and server stability and performance)
The tools team has been working on a backend system to reduce the amount of downtime for the general dev team due to bad submissions.
Last week we also rolled out improved crash reporting for Xbox One, giving us lots of juicy data to look over when doing crash fixes on console. Work is also being done to figure out further ways we can improve the crash reporting tools, for both PC and console.
Most of the tech team are still focused on Xbox One, working on crash fixes and stabilization of the PC/Xbox parity patch. We've also begun looking into how we can take advantage of the Xbox One X.
This doesn't mean we're ignoring the issues with PC, as there's still work to be done there.
On the PS4 side of things, Coconut Lizard have reported that they can now reach character creation on the PlayStation 4 version of the game. That's not bad for two weeks' worth of work.
Wrapping up
Okay jens Erik, now for something funny and witty to wrap the whole thing up. Hmm... Oh no. They've already started reading! Think, damnit, think! Uhm...
Wise man says forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza!