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Happy New Year (again) from the Realm of Uz!
Etherweaver:
It's a whole new year, and once more, we're here to give our annual update on Realm of Uz progress! Although there's still much on the horizon, we've come prepared with a ready selection of teasers to show - and more importantly, discussions with each of our core team members highlighting both the progress we've made - and the directions we intend to take going on into the future. Without ado, let's begin:
surv:
We currently have a small team of active volunteers slowly but surely bringing everything we've planned to reality, and we had 2 people join the team this year! Of course, we are always in need of more people, so you're welcome to apply if you have some time to spare. Roles on our team are rather informal, and it is volunteer work so there are no minimum requirements. The more work we can do simultaneously, the more feasible this project becomes.
Demonslayer456:
Not much, except for overhauling the entire spell system. Instead of mana, we'll be working with cooldowns per spell to find a good balance between impact and usability. Changes in item ids to account for this are still in early stages, but the change is expected to increase variety in combat instead of dragging everything down to spam or cycle-spam. A few other spell changes have been made, even if not everything is quite mapped out yet, including heavy changes to one of the classes. Fortunately, we still have enough designed for an effective first release.
Etherweaver:
We've always prioritized story quality - and naturally, quite a bit of time has been allotted to planning and discussing. We're glad to announce that we're finally finished, however, designing Deterra's main storyline, which has already begun spinning threads that will be seen for all the game to come. In Deterra, the first domain of the Realm players will explore, the colonies of the Church of Uz have begun to encounter seeds of growing dissent - whether from reports of a growing insurgency hidden away in the northern plains, the remerging challenge presented by the stalwart Old Roots Earthborn, or strange and eldritch happenings in the mysterious Thrashvine jungle. Under pressure from the Eternal King himself, the baron Tok'kotl seeks ever more ambitious methods to sate his liege's desire for the region's precious lodestone ore - a route that has already placed him down a path to clash with old and buried ties.
While the main focus of development has stayed on the game itself, we have also been working on designs of important areas, such as the major characters you will be meeting throughout the game. This has included research into the history and culture of the area, notably with the design of Gladewind, inspired by the Aztec Empire and the clothing worn around the time.
A central character to come, the Old Roots Archon Gladewind is a jaded leader of the increasingly fracturing Earthborn splinter sect that has constructed a sanctuary beneath the shadow of their Mother Mountain. Here’s a pairing of her ingame and as depicted in Arti’s concept art.
She wears a Timlahtli, a cape worn to show the status of an individual, as well as a headdress and feathers, which were permitted only to those of the highest standing to be worn. Her weapon is a Macuahuitl, which was used to show the skill of the individual bearer during times of conflict.
Earthbrine:
We've been making huge progress on creating a revamped map, with significantly better terrain, made by Gacrux1027. In addition to this, we've made progress on several major regions of Deterra. We have most regions planned out now, and we can't wait to present them! Happy new year!
Here's a showcase of an entirely different town from Geopolis - a rather covert place - yet of paramount importance to the region's developments all the same.
surv:
It doesn't feel like we've made much progress, but looking back at the entire year we've actually done quite a lot for the time we had available! First of all, we actually started proper development this year, where we'd previously been prototyping and primarily focusing on Xyraith. We decided to move from Xyraith to an existing server software, Minestom, which gives us the same low level control we hoped for from Xyraith while making allowing us to start faster. Since then, we've been laying down basic systems like items, entities, dialogue, cutscenes, and spells, as well as making the character select, Guidebook and Spellbinder UIs.
An image of a spell being upgraded in the Spellbinder. We've since made descriptions more concise, redesigned tooltips, and of course removed mana, so this image is rather outdated.
surv:
Overall, we've made significant progress on the major systems of the game, and are starting to work on the content for Deterra, the first region of the game. Since so much of it was planned beforehand, that part should go much faster. Once everything's in a playable state, we plan to open a beta for Deterra to polish the game and make tweaks and bug fixes according to feedback, with a similar process for the other regions. Who knows, maybe we'll be done with the game by 2035! Jokes aside, game development is an extremely time-consuming process, so thank you for your continued interest and patience. With that, we should probably get back to work. Happy New Year!
Happy New Year from the Realm of Uz!
It’s been a great year of development for the Realm of Uz team, and to cap it all off, we’re finally ready to talk about both the year’s accomplishments and release a few glimpses of content to come!
Most of this year was spent building infrastructure with our custom programming language, Xyraith, which received plenty of momentous updates throughout the year as it progressed towards the long-awaited release 0.3. Work on both custom particle and shader technology, as well as slow but steady resource pack development, has continued alongside it as well, setting up the world for content to come.
On the visible end of things, however, we made rather notable progress as well, starting off with the several content teasers we released throughout the year, each slightly fleshing out the vast world of the Realm of Uz. One of our personal favorites is this incredible depiction of an earth-shaking fight with a Holy Inquisitor by our talented artist and writer Artimemis!
Our largest content release was the Backways Bar novella, a two-part prequel detailing the fall of the Greater Plane and the rise of a character essential to the Realm of Uz’s future. Along with it, we released our very own website, serving as a platform for both the Backways Bar and future content to come.
And finally, we made it onto the Crossroads, a Discord community for displaying Minecraft MMORPG servers. Massive thanks to Theef from the Crossroads for allowing us to gain a public presence for the very first time!
And now, though we’re still not ready to announce a beta, here at last are some glimpses of content to come during the wait.
The Realm of Uz’s first region will be the domain of Deterra, an expanse of swampy pampas and tropical jungles filled to the brim with places to explore and secrets to discover. The Church of Uz has rooted its power in the great city of Geopolis, once built by world-shaping magics of the Earthborn people but now claimed by its new human conquerors in the name of the Eternal King.
Geopolis, Earthwrought City
Another look at the towering cathedral at the center of Geopolis. Beneath its foundations are the remnants of another, more ancient, place of worship.Canals such as these link underground Earthborn reservoirs with the city’s central lake, where a floating market displays goods sourced from all across the western Realm.Churchmen nobles gather within the walls of this Geopolitan manor, engrossed in excessive luxury even as the threat of war looms in the north.Inside the grand church, artwork depicting the Realm’s Founding is but one garnishment hailing the glory of Uz.
There’s still more, though! A while ago, we dropped this teaser for the item system, and now, we’re proud to show a small part of what we’ve done to translate that concept into Minecraft, complete with custom icons for every stat!
Item UI Improvements
Here’s the new, improved, and translated version, using one of the first items you may receive in your adventure.
Though that’s all we can share for now, there’s still far more to come - we’re currently working on building our unique ability system, completing the Deterran overworld, and designing content such as our sprawling quest storyline, short overworld challenges, and two forms of long encounters we still can’t unveil for now. Happy New Year, and have a great 2024!
