David: Hey there, BlueByte fans!
Welcome to a new episode of BlueByte Backstage! This time, it's all about The Settlers Online
and what we are going to talk about is going to be great, awesome,
I would say, it's the extravaganza of awesomeness.
Stefan: It's the community's dreams 'coming true.
The level cap raise, the island expansion, new epic raids, new military units, new production lines.
David: That's crazy.
This show is packed with great topics, as you just heard
and I would say: Let's check them out right now.
Stefan: Let's go.
David: Thanks Stefan.
I am now here with the artists for TSO and there is a new feature in the game.
It's called „The Epic Raids“ and the epic raids bring a new setting to the game:
Arabian Nights In order to display that setting in all it's
glory, the artists like Ruslan here got creative. Let's see what you did.
Ruslan: Okay
As you know bedouins love to live in tents, so that's why we created a lot of them as
you can see. The camels and stuff.
As you can see we also created some dangerous plant animals that you have to fight in the epic raids.
There is a cave, some canon towers, a ship
and a lot of oriental buildings.
Now I will show you how one of these buildings is created.
That's where we start with a concept.
You decide which one you want to use. Then you head over to 3ds Max.
That's the base mesh we used. In the end you render it as a help for your
painting job which you do in PhotoShop. Let's see how it looks in the end.
And that's the finished product. With a lot of details painted on top of the
3D model we created in 3ds max.
David: That looks pretty sweet. Thank you.
I'm off to the next station. No need to push me, I know my way around.
… Fun time with game design.
Hey Alex! Alex: Hey!
David: There is a new feature in the game, level cap raise.
That means you can play your account until level 75
and to make sure that you have lot's of stuff
to do, you guys had some ideas, right?
Alex: Yeah, a lot of ideas and everything starts
with our noble Ludwig. It's a new NPC and he guides the player through the new content.
We have more than 100 quests guiding the player
through the new production chains, through the new buildings, we have more than
30 of them. And we thought about the old buildings and
gave them a level 6 upgrade. And it's more than 60 buildings over all.
That's not everything. We have more than 20 achievements.
We have 3 short stories and of course we have new items, new buffs
and last but not least we have new tasks for our specialists
like discovering new resources, discovering new lands and searching for treasures.
David: That's a lot of stuff, right?
Sounds like a lot of fun. Thank you very much Alex.
I'm off to the next section. See you later.
… Curse you physics.
Hi Bob! I'm here with Bob from game design and we
want to talk about the island extension in the game.
There is lot's of stuff to do but maybe you have some ideas, some pro tips
for players how to proceed and how to be very successfull on those new territories.
Bob: Yes I'm going to talk to you about the new
island that we are going to be unlocking. Most of people who already reached level 50
have forgotten this but before, on your main island you also had
to explore your sectors and fight the bandits inside them in order
for you to claim them yourself. So we are going to be doing the same thing
with these except these are a little bit different because
the bandits are a lot more fearsome, a lot stronger
and you need special deeds to claim the sectors after you beat them.
These sector deeds can be purchased on the shop with magic beanstalks
and also there are special islands that don't have any bandits
and can be purchased with island deeds which are in the shop for gems.
So, you got plenty of extra space, you got a lot of challenges to go through,
you've got a new army to be taking care of these bandits
and we are going to talk a little bit more about that later.
David: Cool, thank you!
I'm off to the next section. Please don't throw stuff at me.
… Hey!
Denis: Hey.
David: Thanks Bob.
Hi Denis. The new feature package also includes new
production chains and new military units, right?
Denis: Yes. We already mentioned that we got new
raids coming, new epic raids and as epic as they are, they are also hard
and we figured: Okay, we need to supply the players with more units
and these units of course also have new production chains.
So let's have a look.
So here we have the production chains for one of the new basic units, the knights.
And this is a good production chain to show here
because it has many new buildings that can be placed on the home zone.
It starts with this homestead where wool is produced.
Then we go on to the weaver where the wool is spun into cloth.
This cloth is then made into saddlecloth by the saddlecloth weaver
and finally it is combined with platinum into battle horses.
These battle horses can be used for knights but there is also a little addition
because what is unique about the new units is that we have both,
basic units and units that combine different weapons.
So for example we have these battle horses and we also have platinum swords which I used
for the swordsmen but there are also mounted swordsmen that
use both, the platinum swords and the battle horses
and of course these are more powerful than eighter of the two base units.
David: Thanks Denis.
So this wraps up another episode. As I told you before it's lot's of stuff that's
coming and let us know what you think. Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, the forum.
We will be listening and...
Stefan: That's it for today
David: Alright, if you say so.