Hey everyone, I am happy to report that development on Alpha 17 is now in full swing! This release, most of the team takes another whack at building and town-improvement related features (led bravely by Chris; there’s dragons in that code) while Albert remains focused on combat, fixing bugs and taking on on new projects that have grown out of the pain points you’ve all reported from Alpha 16. Nothing is on-screen enough to show yet, so this week, let’s take another look back at Alpha 16, and round off the monster trio we built to challenge your knights/archers/footmen/clerics: The Orcs of the Red Kiln.
The Red Kiln
Recap from the video:
- The Red Kiln is the Empire of the Orcish Khan.
- Their leaders prize discipline and self-awareness over all things, and they wear colored clothing that reflects their strict social hierarchy.
- Green is the lowest ranked color because that is the color orcs are born wearing; they ascend to blue, red, and rare magenta based on the number of equals they have bested in their profession of choice.
- Tom modeled both male and female orcs, but in their original form, they were a bit too tall and broad to chase hearthlings through doorways, so Linda cut them down and fit them to existing animations.
- Linda also recolored them to be slightly more green and gave them taller, more intelligent looking eyes.
- Allie may yet do another pass on their coloring to make sure you can easily distinguish them from goblins when you’re zoomed all the way out.
- Linda wrote the orc campaign and orc encounters and classes guided by the idea that orcs are a lot like hearthlings: they are most often footmen, and as such, hold up their end of the ogre(tank) and kobold(archer) enemy trio.
- They can also be clerics, which involves an off-screen mediation to some place called the “Ochre Gate.” Who grants them their powers, and why? These are still unsolved mysteries.
- If you see an orc cleric, maybe kill it first, even over the kobold archers. Seriously.
- Orcs and goblins are related to ogres, but rate way lower than them on the Red Kiln social hierarchy due to intellectual/self-awareness issues.
- Nonetheless, Red Kiln has a role for every strata of person: orcs regularly employ ogres as tanks and doorbreakers, kobolds as scouts, and goblins as well…. contractors. Goblin’s gonna be a goblin.
- Orcs in A16 appear in Epic Raids, which, for those of you playing on normal mode, happens when your military score is about 200 (or around when you’ve dedicated at least four hearthlings to combat classes). For those of you playing on hard mode, that means when your population is about fifteen people, and/or you’re about twenty days in.
- Orcs will also appear in the orcish campaign, which spawns once you finish the goblin campaign and deal, one way or another with Ogo Skullbonker.
Other Announcements
Streams will happen at the usual times this week. Wooo!