==== MAIN POINTS ====
► In today’s [Thursday, August 5, 2021] Chief chat, Grummz had a calm Chief chat with the community talking about games and answering some of the community’s questions! He also shared a few images! (see below)
► The Emberdon plushie has its first prototype!
NOTE: Em-8er plushies are not worked on by the Em-8er team. They are taken from concept to creation by an entirely separate team at a merchandise vendor company.
As of now, no money has been spent on Em-8er plushie concepts, and no money will be spent on them until such time as a complete order is put together by pre-purchases from the community. All potential profits gained from selling the plushies would go directly into the development budget of Em-8er the game. That in mind: Selling Em-8er plushies would only help Em-8er the game become all it can be!
► Here is the Emberdon itself as concept art for Em-8ER in-game!
► And here is the plushie concept art!
► This is the first prototype of the plushie!
► Grummz mentioned the green variant of the Vulpeculi, but the community did vote that the purple looks better than the green, what do you think?
Heres the green Vulpeculi!
► And heres the purple Vulpeculi, this month’s Em-8ER Patron premium skin, for reference!
==== KETCHUP SPILLED! ====
► Grummz said he plans to do some writing today on the novel. The next chapter will be on the Tsi-Hu perspective and he stated that this is going to be a “critical chapter”.
==== Q & A ====
► Question: Are you guys using Vertex Textures?
Grummz: We’re probably not going to use Vertex Textures, If we go the way we’re going there will be too many vertices, and it is not supported by Nanite, which we are exploring at the moment.
► Question: If EM-8ER uses unreal, is it possible to add -useallavailablecores to it?
Grummz: I don’t know about core count yet, I don’t know how the engine divides that up.
► Question: Are the Vulpeculi going to be mascots in Em-8ER?
Grummz: I would imagine they function more like classic pets that you pull out in pilot/mecha form. That they would crawl on the shoulder on the mech or something.
► Question: Is there a way networking/server wise to prepare if players were to suddenly join from 100-300 players to 100k+?
Grummz: Yeah, were on AWS, so we are able to scale our servers. Hardware is not the issue, it’s can our software handle it?”
► Question: If we order enough of the Emberdon plushies, is there a possibility of a Vulpeculi plushie?
Grummz: Well yeah, if Emberdon works, why wouldn't we do more plushies as they can help fund the game, because I’ve seen that happen for a game.
► Question: What is the next step on the game dev side to jump from white box to home station? And if so, any estimates when that happens?
Grummz: I don’t have an estimate yet, as I’m working with Ricardo on it so we can release that to you guys.
► Question: Does removing the low-poly assets in the equation reduce game file size?
Grummz: Nanite meshes are actually super compressed. They’re not actually storing vertices. They’re storing clusters. It’s a 2D mip mapping structure that gets rendered into polygons in real time. So for the same number of triangles it’s actually more efficient. How much more efficient I don’t know; we have to play around with that.
I don’t know if it reduces game sizes significantly. Right now our biggest culprit on our build download size is the fact that we still include debug symbols and the large map, probably needs to be broken up into what’s called World Composition. We’d like to get the downloads sizes smaller because it’s definitely eating up bandwidth on the downloads.
► Question: Are you guys migrating to UE5?
Grummz: We’re trying to because the new art build we came up with could save a lot of time but, it requires nanite in Unreal Engine 5. So we’re currently experimenting. But we’re also experimenting with new modeling software. The artists are training up on it. Because even if we stick with Unreal Engine 4, we’re going to want to use this software to produce some of the mech art.
► Question: Are you going to have a dedicated launcher anytime soon so we don’t have to download each build separately from the site?
Grummz: A launcher would be great, If there was a launcher we could license it would be great so we don’t have to write it ourselves.
► Question: Will there be a road map post or is it too soon?
Ronyn: Little too soon to give a road map, but that is something we hope to put out once we get a little bit farther.
► In today’s [Thursday, August 5, 2021] Chief chat, Grummz had a calm Chief chat with the community talking about games and answering some of the community’s questions! He also shared a few images! (see below)
► The Emberdon plushie has its first prototype!
NOTE: Em-8er plushies are not worked on by the Em-8er team. They are taken from concept to creation by an entirely separate team at a merchandise vendor company.
As of now, no money has been spent on Em-8er plushie concepts, and no money will be spent on them until such time as a complete order is put together by pre-purchases from the community. All potential profits gained from selling the plushies would go directly into the development budget of Em-8er the game. That in mind: Selling Em-8er plushies would only help Em-8er the game become all it can be!
► Here is the Emberdon itself as concept art for Em-8ER in-game!
► And here is the plushie concept art!
► This is the first prototype of the plushie!
► Grummz mentioned the green variant of the Vulpeculi, but the community did vote that the purple looks better than the green, what do you think?
Heres the green Vulpeculi!
► And heres the purple Vulpeculi, this month’s Em-8ER Patron premium skin, for reference!
==== KETCHUP SPILLED! ====
► Grummz said he plans to do some writing today on the novel. The next chapter will be on the Tsi-Hu perspective and he stated that this is going to be a “critical chapter”.
==== Q & A ====
► Question: Are you guys using Vertex Textures?
Grummz: We’re probably not going to use Vertex Textures, If we go the way we’re going there will be too many vertices, and it is not supported by Nanite, which we are exploring at the moment.
► Question: If EM-8ER uses unreal, is it possible to add -useallavailablecores to it?
Grummz: I don’t know about core count yet, I don’t know how the engine divides that up.
► Question: Are the Vulpeculi going to be mascots in Em-8ER?
Grummz: I would imagine they function more like classic pets that you pull out in pilot/mecha form. That they would crawl on the shoulder on the mech or something.
► Question: Is there a way networking/server wise to prepare if players were to suddenly join from 100-300 players to 100k+?
Grummz: Yeah, were on AWS, so we are able to scale our servers. Hardware is not the issue, it’s can our software handle it?”
► Question: If we order enough of the Emberdon plushies, is there a possibility of a Vulpeculi plushie?
Grummz: Well yeah, if Emberdon works, why wouldn't we do more plushies as they can help fund the game, because I’ve seen that happen for a game.
► Question: What is the next step on the game dev side to jump from white box to home station? And if so, any estimates when that happens?
Grummz: I don’t have an estimate yet, as I’m working with Ricardo on it so we can release that to you guys.
► Question: Does removing the low-poly assets in the equation reduce game file size?
Grummz: Nanite meshes are actually super compressed. They’re not actually storing vertices. They’re storing clusters. It’s a 2D mip mapping structure that gets rendered into polygons in real time. So for the same number of triangles it’s actually more efficient. How much more efficient I don’t know; we have to play around with that.
I don’t know if it reduces game sizes significantly. Right now our biggest culprit on our build download size is the fact that we still include debug symbols and the large map, probably needs to be broken up into what’s called World Composition. We’d like to get the downloads sizes smaller because it’s definitely eating up bandwidth on the downloads.
► Question: Are you guys migrating to UE5?
Grummz: We’re trying to because the new art build we came up with could save a lot of time but, it requires nanite in Unreal Engine 5. So we’re currently experimenting. But we’re also experimenting with new modeling software. The artists are training up on it. Because even if we stick with Unreal Engine 4, we’re going to want to use this software to produce some of the mech art.
► Question: Are you going to have a dedicated launcher anytime soon so we don’t have to download each build separately from the site?
Grummz: A launcher would be great, If there was a launcher we could license it would be great so we don’t have to write it ourselves.
► Question: Will there be a road map post or is it too soon?
Ronyn: Little too soon to give a road map, but that is something we hope to put out once we get a little bit farther.
