By PF2K on Apr 18, 2020 at 11:37 AM
  1. PF2K

    PF2K Lead Developer
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    Header_-_Week_35.png
    As we develop the Romans, we are showing you how we are building them, who is building them, and also why we are building them the way that we are. Though we have finally revealed every Roman Unit, Building, and Technology, we are continuing to present all of their miscellaneous extra features as we design them.

    We don't have anything big this week, so let's just check in on everyone and see what's going on.

    Up first, Happy Smurf has been busy working on the City of Rome. He hosted a Developer stream on Monday where he streamed his modeling of the Imperial Palace, which is going to amount to a cluster of unique buildings and monuments unique to that region. He plans another stream this Monday and hopes to work his way to the Circus Maximus. Tune in and feel welcome to ask him any questions you have.

    Happy Smurf has also been busy in other areas. From an animation perspective, our Legionary model was not up to our standards and had been giving Phillus fits. So Happy Smurf gave him an overhaul. This change will likely be unnoticable to players, but it amounted to a fair amount of work and should make for a stronger unit.

    Meanwhile, Chaos has fashioned together two new Capital City Buildings for two existing civs. As it turned out, in the apparent haste of building the Babylonians and the Norse, the original Devs neglected to make Trade Docks. So Chaos has fixed this mistake.

    Babylon_Trade_Dock.png
    Norse_Trade_Dock.png

    This week, Chaos also has built the Etruscan Town Center, which should complete Etruscan Buildings. As mentioned earlier, this minor faction will be featured generously in the main Roman Questline.

    Etruscan_Village.png

    Speaking of the Roman Questline, we presently have 20 quests blueprinted and in some state of development. (The number is actually a bit higher because one of those quests is a challenge quest that will have 7 different, increasingly more difficult, versions.) Andy has been working on the blueprinting. The plan is for the main questline to follow the early Roman Republic from about 509 BCE to 395 BCE.

    The Quests will bring players through the early Republic by following the stories three different heroes from those early days -- Horatius, Cincinnatus, and Camillus. Horatius was one of Rome's very first heros and is best known for his bravery in holding back the invading Etruscans in the years immediatley following the founding of the Republic.

    Cincinnatus lived a couple generations after Horatius and was revered for centuries as the archetypal selfless Roman. Twice granted supreme power as dictator of Rome, he held onto his power for not a day longer than absolutely necessary. Cincinnatus twice snatched Rome from the jaws of defeat, led it to victory, and humbly set down his sword and picked up his plow to return home to his farm. His legend extends into modern times, most famously by Americans who refer to George Washington as a modern day Cincinnatus for his role in commanding the Continental Army and serving as the first President before relinquishing his power for the good of democracy.

    Campaign_Map.png

    Finally, Marcus Furius Camillus, who lived a couple of generations after Cincinnatus is best known for his title as the Second Founder of Rome for his victories in driving out the invading Celts to secure Rome's permanent freedom.

    While the main Roman Questline will follow along with the historical narrative, we are also working on dozens of side quests that will touch upon all sorts of other areas.

    NumberOfQuests.png

    Along these lines, PF2K has been making a series of Challenge Quests featuring Cincinnatus that follow the spirit of the Augie the Augur Quests from the Celts. PF2K has taken a novel approach to these quests: he has built a single, large quest map that will house all three quests. Each quest, however, will use only a portion of that map. So as the player progresses through these miniquests, each quest will use different (and sometimes overlapping) portions of the larger map.

    In the quests, Cincinnatus first needs to raise an army of Legionaries located in small camps across the first map, which he will use to help defeat the big white Wolf summoned by the Evil Celtic Druid. Once the white Wolf is slain, they then attack a nearby Celtic village guarding the passage to the Evil Druid's lair, up high in the Alps mountains. After securing the Village, Cincinnatus tells his fellow troops to go back home while he deals with the Evil Druid alone.

    Cincinnatus_vs_Druids.png

    Once in the Alps, the harsh winds of the cold mountains will continuously damage Cincinnatus, so he will need to take shelter at the nearby Tents to warm up, regenerate his health and then continue his journey. On this final map, the disciples of the Evil Druid are constantly performing rituals to conjure more wolves to attack Cincinnatus, so he will need to take those out before going for the final battle.

    Cincinnatus_Tents.png
    These side quests are based less on history and more on gameplay. Generally, they harken at Rome's overall hatred and fear of the Celtic boogeymen who lived just north of them.

    This brings us to JilgueriN, RecoN, and lead Devs Ryddag, Kevsoft, and PF2K: we are very pleased to finally announce that sometime this week, we will be releasing the long awaited Adventures of Brennos and Commontorios. This patch not only includes this new (and rather large) questpack, but also a slew of Quality of Life changes and a new PvP Balance Patch.

    We know you all are waiting patiently for the Romans, and we appreciate your continued support. Again, we have only so many hands, only so many hours, and a ton of projects in the air. We hope these new quests will continue to keep you busy while we keep working away on the Romans. We will be back with another blog as soon as we have more to share. (Hopefully that will be next week, though we reserve the right to take a week off.) See you soon, and remember to watch Happy Smurf's next Dev Stream! You can find him streaming HERE.

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    Thank you so much for reading, and we will see you all next time!
    Project Celeste Development Team

    What do you think about this week's blog? What would you like to see next? Let us know in the comments below!

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    Missed the Roman Civilization's announcement? Find out about it HERE.

    Project Celeste is completely free and always will be. However, we gladly accept donations for our overhead costs, which are larger than we have budgeted. If you want to support us, you can do so HERE.

    Read every Romans related blog HERE.

    Tell your friends! Join our Discord HERE.
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Comments

Discussion in 'Romans' started by PF2K, Apr 18, 2020.

    1. ...ReignOfRagnarok

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      Fristi61, thanks for the speedy (and thoughtful) reply. Glad someone else ponders such things. Obviously, the history/historiography of the game doesn't have to be 100% accurate for the game to be awesome (which it is).

      I love the beginner's guide for (future) noobs, and I'm definitely looking forward to the "Quality of Life" improvements. I'm grateful that you guys have cracked down on other issues like illegal coin/item trading and spambots. Now, we as players all have to do our part and recruit noobs!

      Apropos that you commented on longswords while at a rank of "Long Swordsman" here in the forum. May your rank rise ever the more! WE'RE NOT WORTHY! WE'RE NOT WORTHY! (Wayne's World reference) :p
       
      Fristi61 likes this.
    2. Andy P XIII

      Andy P XIII Moderator
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      Hi everyone! Thanks for the comments. I hope I can clear some things up.

      You are not missing anything, and, yes, this historical mash-up is intentional. It all comes down to the natural constraints of the game.

      First, every civ has only so many regions, and those regions have only so many Quest Givers. For full civs like the Romans, this works out to four regions (three plus the player's Capital City) that have a total of 16 Quest Givers. (And of those 16 QGs, several are universal -- the Ambassador, Arena Promoter, Port Master, Trade Dock Foreman, plus the humble Wanted Poster. Every civ also has a handful of more generic, nameless QGs that appear in some civs but not others, such as the Engineer, Trader, Explorer, Priestess, Guild Master, Crafting Hall Master, Scout, Magistrate, etc. So ultimately, you really are left with only about five unique Quest Givers to play the role of some historic person. And in the case of the Romans, we found the list of intended Roman QGs, so we used that roster, which includes Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Mark Antony. We may add a couple more over time, but for our purposes, we have only so many Quest Givers to choose from to use in our Main Roman Quest Pack.

      As PF2K has indicated, we will be placing Caesar in your Capital City, Pompey in Capua, and Mark Antony in the Roman Army Camp region. The other more generic folks will occupy these cities, as well, in some order. If you look at where other QGs reside in other civs, you will get a very good sense of the pattern we are following.

      So now that we have the QGs established, we must then turn to the campaign. As we mentioned in one of the blog posts, we sincerely want to make a good number of Quest Packs for the Romans over the foreseeable future. Therefore, as the players will be leveling up during the main campaign, we want to take the opportunity to tell the story of the early Roman Republic. The period from 509 BCE to 395 BCE was essentially the adolescence of the Roman Empire. It makes sense for the player to level up during the same period that the Romans themselves were starting to stand on their own feet and spread their wings. We will get to Caesar, but we don't want to waste the Gallic Wars when you guys havent even unlocked every unit. We want to save the biggest moments for endgame Quest Packs and Legendary Quests.

      Obviously this creates anachronisms in the main campaign between Quest Givers and Quests. Fortunately, there's good precedence for these kind of inaccuracies already in the game, so we feel comfortable. And helping out Quest Giver Caesar with the founding of the Republic is much better than either (a) overloading the regions with Quest Givers in some mad hunt for perfect historical accuracy or (b) allowing the identities of the Quest Givers to dictate our plans for the identity and levels of our quests.

      This is 100 percent true. And not only that, but I would take it a step further and say that not only is OK for our civs to have some anachronisms, but it is ideal if they do. AoEO is like looking at history through a funhouse mirror. We are supposed to boil an entire civilization down to 25 Units and 16 Buildings. And we are supposed to use these civilizations in quests that span any number of centuries. There is no civilization in the game that is perfectly reflective of their real namesake, and it would arguably amount to mission drift if we created one. The style of AoEO is to use broad brush strokes and go outside the lines a little. That's not only its charm but also its challenge.

      I agree completely with @ProfessorCatPro. AoEO is not a historical game. It is a game inspired by history. If we put too fine of details on the Romans, they would feel out of place.

      So we are creating the Roman civ based on the days of Caesar, Augustus, and the Centurions and proudly marching them into battle during the days of Horatius, Cincinnatus, and the Hastati.

      And what of Caesar and Pompey? Well, they will be your Quest Givers in the campaign, so they will be filling your ears with their opinions on what is happening with the Etruscans, the Volsci, and how they would handle things if the darn Senate would just listen to them (all while bickering to you about each other). I am writing the Quest strings and still finding their voices, but we are aiming to hit a mark where it somehow makes sense to have them involved. It's a work in progress and the quest strings will no doubt go through tons of revisions. But here's your transparent look behind the curtain. I hope this helps. Again, we do not ask that everyone agree with our decisions, but we do insist you be given an opportunity to at least see how we arrive at them.

      We ponder such things, my friend. Oh, god, do we ponder them. Haha
       
    3. ...ReignOfRagnarok

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      I'm glad I'm not the only one. We do appreciate the effort put into everything! Keep up the great work, guys! :)
       
      Andy P XIII and Fristi61 like this.
    4. ProfessorCatPro

      ProfessorCatPro Spearman

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      You think after the Romans are released you guys could continue these development threads, at least in a limited capacity?

      These threads allow me to appreciate the game so much more not only in the capacity of allowing me to see the thought process of the people developing the game, but also the sense of community in the comments section with so much interaction between fellow players of this game.

      These threads just seems so special you know? ;)
       
    5. Andy P XIII

      Andy P XIII Moderator
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      So long as development continues, our development threads will continue.
       
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