#postedbybrad

Hey MASSIVE CHALICE backers!

Come join us at 4PM Pacific (23:00 GMT) THIS FRIDAY, August 15th at http://twitch.tv/doublefine where we’ll be playing the latest build of MASSIVE CHALICE! We’ve been hard at work adding lots of small polish items gearing up for our PAX build and the game is looking really sweet!

We’ve also added a new batch of backer-created bloodlines into the game! Maybe your design will show up on our stream? :D!

State of the Game

We’ve had some requests for a written roundup of features that are flying into the game. We know that some of you guys are super busy and might not have time to watch all of our video content so here goes! Please give us some feedback about this if you can. Thanks!

PAX Demo

We’re jamming on a really cool PAX demo! In some ways we like making builds for conventions because they really force us to make decisions and the game comes together super quickly during these times!

Our demo will take place a couple generations into MASSIVE CHALICE so your heroes will have a few more abilities and be a little more experienced than they would be if you started a new game. The hero Bloodlines will also be made straight from the backer-created bloodlines. So, if you have a chance to play the demo then maybe you’ll find yours!

Main Menu

We’re starting to dig into the wrapping for the entire experience. Derek took a stab at what our main menu could be like. This was a quick test for PAX but we think it’s working so well that it will probably become our final title screen!

Violas!

One of the pieces of music that we requested from Finishing Move (Trifon and White, the amazing composers that are doing our music!) was an “indoor” version of the main strategy music. They had one of their friends who happens to be a great viola player record a rad rendition of the main theme. Brian took that music and matched it to the standard theme, then worked some magic to allow the music to crossfade between the two tracks in-game!

The end result is that the epic piano of the far-out strategy layer fades smoothly into an intimate viola as you zoom down into the Capital or one of your Keeps. Super rad!

Attack Markers

When the Cadence attacks on the Strategy Map we want to have some sweet visuals to show you which region they’re attacking. Geoff just made a cool 3D object based off of one of Derek’s concepts that really points it out! Brad wrote some code with Chad’s help to hook up these anims and now we’ve got a new piece of art that we can ship. It rules to have another thing crossed off the list.

UI Sounds

Brian and Brian have been making a ton of progress on new sounds for the UI! This is a really important piece of the game because strategy games involve a lot of UI and MASSIVE CHALICE is no exception! What makes it hard to get right is the fact that the player is going to listen to the same sets of confirmation and cancel sounds over and over again throughout their game experience. So, those sounds can’t be too impactful or dramatic or they will become annoying but they can’t be too subtle either or else they won’t convey the info they need to help convey! We’re also trying to get rid of the more literal “banner” and “cloth” sounds that we had in there before. Our UI is very abstract and we want to make sure that our sounds fit the visuals. We’ll get there!

New Throne Room

Geoff has finished up modeling the final Throne Room! We simplified it a bit by removing some additional elements that he had placed in there and we think it works better overall. There’s more emphasis on the Chalice!

Random Events

Max and Nick, the writers for MASSIVE CHALICE, are cranking away one new Random Events for the game. These are proving to be extremely difficult! Brad’s pretty demanding about the tone and we want each event to give you enough information with which to make your decision but also leave room for you to be surprised by some of the outcomes that happen. We also want them to integrate nicely with the time scale of the game. For example, we don’t want players to deal with events that happen over the course of a week or month… everything has to happen over the course of years to feel important and relevant!

Tech Tree

We’ve been iterating the tech tree and we’ve got several versions that we’re considering. We’ll take a minute during the stream to go through some iterations and discuss the challenges that we’re facing. Suggestions are welcome!

Play This! Crawl

A lot of members of the MASSIVE CHALICE team have been dying to play Crawl and we fired it up this afternoon. Crawl is a 4 player dungeon crawler/brawler where one player controls a hero and the other 3 players control the monsters trying to kill that hero. When playing as a monster if you manage to kill the hero you get to swap places with them and continue thrashing the dungeon as the the new hero. It's a blast and we highly recommend it! You can find it on Steam Early Access from the cool dudes at Powerhoof!

http://www.powerhoof.com/crawl/

:D!

Can’t Join Us Live?

In case you can’t make the live broadcast you can find all our Twitch streams on the Double Fine YouTube channel here. And if there’s anything you want to talk about feel free to come to the MASSIVE CHALICE FORUMS and start a discussion! You can always check out the MASSIVE CHALICE blog for the latest updates from various team members.

Thanks so much for supporting MASSIVE CHALICE and see you Friday!

Sincerely,

New symbols are coming to the MASSIVE CHALICE Bloodline Editor! :D!