November Monthly Wrap Up

[Calsa]

November Monthly Wrap Up

First off let me apologies for leaving everyone in the dark so long, I go to school full time and hold down a steady job and was dealing with the end of the quarter crunch time. However, now that school is out for winter break their should once again be a steady stream of info trickling out of the development team. In fact we have decided to implement a few new community enhancements to improve the flow of information between us the developers, and you the community.

Formation of the Concepts Department
Since the last update we have decided to implement a new department here at RenWerX Studios to make sure that the best of the best ideas get toughly discussed and then implemented into the game. The Concept Department will be in charge of combining all the best Ideas of the community as well as things talked about behind the scenes into one cohesive development document. Before we implemented this department we would sporadically update our many documents scattered all over the place such as design.renwerx.com both our public and private forums and the ascension-game.com guide. This however was problematic as having things in more than one place and making it so anyone could update them however they saw fit lead to a lot of confusion and even some feature creep.

The Concept Department remedies this by acting as idea janitors and gatekeepers. They themselves will not add there own Ideas unless agreed upon by others but instead give final approval of Community and Developer Ideas and work out the final mechanics of those Ideas. They will then add them to the design document in an easy to understand and universal mannor. Heading up the concept department will be our very own PyroGunx, and his team will include N()VA, and Teratos. We are very fortunate to have their help and welcome them with arms wide open.

Developer Blogs on the Way
In other news, Novanix is putting the finishing touches on the new Dev Blog System for RenWerX Studios. The Dev blogs will take the place of weekly updates and will allow a lot more interaction between the development team and the community. All RenWerX Staff will have the opportunity to make a development blog and update it whenever they want. They can post updates, ideas, pictures and other game related things when they feel inclined.

RenWerX Wiki Launched
Earlier this month we launched the Ascension Wiki. The Ascension Wiki will remain private until the games release at which time it will be open for the public to view and use. It will contain all the whitepapers, tutorials and how to's, documentation, links to tools, and more content on the inter workings of the game then you can shake a disk launcher at. Our goal is to use it as a modification and how-to Bible of the game populated with the answers to any and all questions on the inner workings of the game.

Storyline Update
A long overdue storyline update is sitting in our new timeline and storyline section of the http://www.ascension-game.com site. This month we feature the introduction of two more of the five factions involved in the game the Banished and the Apostate factions.

Apostate Backstory

Banished BackStory



New Media

We added a bit of new media this month in the form of some shots from another WIP map namded Iceflow and a nice new shot of the Anar Tempera Spawn Room.

FloodGates

IceFlow Bridge

Anar Spawn Room



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Official News Post

[PB*Tech]

Woot! All very awesome.......thanks!

[whoever]

Woohoo!! Finally an update! Love the idea of the dev's blogging. Get to know actaully somebody is doing something. And also, I cant seem to find the Wiki Ascension site, can somebody post it? The Floodgates and Iceblow bridge kinda look T2-ish, dont know if thats good or bad. But oh well, hopefully it'll become more realistic?

[Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Calsa

Earlier this month we launched the Ascension Wiki. The Ascension Wiki will remain private until the games release at which time it will be open for the public to view and use.

^

[Danderson]

The terrain textures look a little pixelated, I hope they're not final. Other than that, it all looks great. I especially like the fighter.

[Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Danderson

The terrain textures look a little pixelated, I hope they're not final. Other than that, it all looks great. I especially like the fighter.

I think it's a safe bet that textures will be redone i nthe future. Look at the bases, you can tell exactly where the border of the texture tiles are on a wall.


On a related note, part of the reason depth perception was so poor in T2 is the low res, blurry texturing of the terrain. Resolution doesn't even matter as much, the important thing is being able to tell how far away you are from the ground by how much the engine blurs the texture. You can't do that if it looks like an oil painting in the shower by default.

[Himura]

that iceflow map looks sweet, and i love the interior for Anar Tempera Spawn Room beautiful work

[Danderson]

Judging by the fact that there is a background story, I'm guessing there's a campaign, and not just a few training missions. If so, what faction will we be playing as? Or will it be a little of everything and then we have to fight some common enemy (ie Bioderms let loose of genetic research lab)?

[teratos]

There is no campaign planned at this time. I'm guessing that MP release will have a lot to do with whether or not there is any development of a campaign.

We have talked about training missions a little, but the idea needs to be flushed out. Time-wise, don't expect to see them anytime soon.

[Viracer]

I can make a campaign (primarily because i have something that can be used as a campaign ready)