Updates

Update of the Avatar #234 – 2017.06.30: Play R43 Now, Q3 2017 Schedule, Free Trial Starts Monday, RTX Event Attendance, Lord British Telethon & Sales, Raffle Winners, Community Events, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

Play Release 43 Now!

Release 43 successfully launched yesterday, June 29, with thousands of backers downloading, patching, and logging in to check out the changes! There’s lots of new content to explore, including:

Read more…


Shroud at RTX 2017 on July 7-9, Booth #323!

We are incredibly excited to announce that we are returning to Rooster Teeth Expo July 7 – 9! Come find us in Booth 323 at the Austin Convention Center where you can play the game, get a challenge coin, and meet various members of the development team including Richard “Lord British” Garriott, Starr “Darkstarr” Long, and others.

We go back a long way with Rooster Teeth. Richard actually made the very first mention of Shroud of the Avatar on their show before the Kickstarter! We then attended RTX that same year (2013), right after Starr joined the team, where we gave a presentation and a live demo of a very early version of Release 1. 

The next year (2014) we returned to the show and this time we had a corner booth on the show floor with crowds of people moving through our space every day.

Hope to see you at this year’s event!


Q3 2017 Schedule Update

Starr_avatar

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, we intend to publish quarterly schedule updates for our monthly releases. Even though the goals outlined in these schedules are likely to change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to periodically provide you with an updated roadmap.

Our priority continues to be to deliver new content to our backers each and every month so that you can give us feedback that will help us iteratively improve Shroud of the Avatar. This collaborative process continues to benefit the game, and often results in sweeping changes such as the upcoming addition of the Outskirts scenes. As you have seen in previous releases, the flexibility inherent to this process means that we sometimes push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

Performance: One of our biggest priorities for the third quarter will be to improve performance. A significant portion of each release will be spent on improving client stability, framerate, memory usage, and load times.

New User Experience (NUE): Another large priority for the third quarter will continue to be about improving the new user experience. These efforts will include adding the final two Outskirts maps and polishing the User Interface. Read more…


Release 43 Instructions

Avatars,

Please read this entire message, as well as the linked Instructions and Known Issues. Join the discussion of this update in the forums.

Thank you for being a loyal backer and follower of Shroud of the Avatar. Release 43 access for all Early Access backers begins this Thursday, June 29, at 10:30 AM US Central Daylight Time (15:30 UTC).

Release 43 contains both a huge amount of new content and a major improvement in performance that will generally improve everything about playing the game (and I do not exaggerate). Framerates have been improved in every scene, doubled in some! This really will make playing the game feel so much better in every way. Additionally, one of our biggest and most complicated scenes ever, Blood River Outskirts, goes live this release. Three scenes got completely rebuilt and four more scenes got major polish passes. Finally, we are expanding the mail system to allow player-to-player mail as well as expanding and balancing the Offline Economy!

On top of all this new content, we also launched our SeedInvest Crowd Equity campaign to raise funds for our commercial launch later this year. Speaking of later this year… stay tuned tomorrow for our Q3 Schedule Update to find out what we will be working on for the next three releases!

Read more…


Richard Garriott at Barcelona Gamelab (June 28-30) and San Diego Comic-Con (July 20-23)

Richard “Lord British” Garriott will be at multiple events over the next few weeks, starting with tomorrow’s Gamelab event in Barcelona! Richard will then be joined by Starr “Darkstarr” Long in San Diego next month for Comic-Con.

If you are at either of these events, here’s your chance to meet them!

Richard Garriott at Barcelona Gamelab

Meet Richard “Lord British” Garriott at the Gamelab Barcelona conference this coming June 28-30th in Barcelona, Spain! Richard is not only set to speak at the conference, but also will be receiving the Spanish Academy of Ineractive Arts and Sciences prestigious Honory Award!

The Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a cultural institution devoted to the improvement of a growing creative sector of over 400 companies and 4.000 professionals, announced today that the legendary designer, entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Garriott will receive its top recognition, the Honorary Award, during its annual convention in Barcelona.

Ivan Fernandez-Lobo, founder and chairman of Gamelab Barcelona and former president of the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, commented on the Academy’s decision to nominate Garriott for the Award that “the British-American designer and entrepreneur is a truly game-changer for the medium and a source of inspiration for anyone with a creative soul, even beyond the Industry limits”. Fernandez-Lobo also highlighted “the influence of Garriott’s adventurer spirit in the games he designed and the companies he founded”.

[Read More…]

Comic-Con Panels with Richard Garriott and Starr Long

Attending Comic-Con this coming July 20-23? Richard Garriott and Starr Long will be there to meet you! Richard has two panels with one talking about his adventures in space. The other panel is with Starr Long about Shroud of the Avatar!

Explore/Create: Richard Garriott’s Adventures from Gaming Pioneer to Space Adventurer – Richard “Lord British” Garriott authored the famed “Ultima” series and coined the term “avatar”. In 2008, he became the first American second-generation astronaut when he flew to the ISS. Learn more from his new memoir “Explore/Create”.

Shroud of the Avatar – Richard “Lord British” Garriott (creative director) and Starr Long (exec. producer) will discuss their latest venture, Shroud of the Avatar, currently the second highest crowdfunded video game of all time. Learn how they have developed the game while honing cutting-edge crowdfunding techniques.

Panel times and location have not yet been announced. Keep watch for updates on the official Comic-Con website.

Check out the Upcoming Events Calendar for a complete list of events kicking off in the coming months!


Update of the Avatar #233 – 2017.06.23: New Scene Updates, Lord British Birthday Telethon & Sale, New Free Trial, Comic-Con Panels, Reddit AMA, Party Contest, New Videos, SeedInvest Update, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

Isle of Storms Polish

Since this is the very first scene players encounter we felt that it could use some additional visual polish so we spent time this release making various improvements to lighting, terrain, visual effects, and flora.

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Travis “Vas Corp Por” Koleski]

Hello Avatars!

We’ve been busy with lots of improvements and updates this release. We keep improving visual tools and assets to build scenes with, and so it’s fun to re-visit some of the older existing maps and touch them up with our new toys.

Hutch, Damon, and I have been touching up Isle of Storms recently (as well as an update to Arabella from the character team!). Here’s some of our progress:

Before…

After!

Read more…


Community Livestream – Questing in Bloodriver Outskirts

Community of the Avatar

We will be kicking off this week’s Community Livestream by giving players a first look at all the new quest content in Bloodriver Outskirts! Damien “Puuk” Foletto will be driving the master build machine as we quest around the scene and discover its hidden secrets.

SPOILERS: Players following the Path of Truth encounter the Elven village of Bloodriver massacred by vigilantes from Aerie. The elves have fled for their lives into the forests upriver and invaded the home of an Elven hermit who dwells in a ruin deep in the forest. They have set traps to protect themselves from the vigilantes who have pursued them here and are harassing them still. Elven soldiers from Vertas are arriving from the north to protect them while Aerie soldiers are streaming in from the south east to try and stop all out war between the humans and elves. We hope to have this scene live in Release 43.

After the scene changes go live, we have even more content, including quests, you can look forward to in future releases!

The fun begins on Twitch this Friday at 4pm CT. Also join the community watching on Discord chat to ask questions about this scene.


Rock Me Avatarus! – Party Showcase Contest

Get your party spot ready for a contest that’s sure to wow all the guests! Over the next two weeks, you will have the opportunity to show off your party hosting skills in today’s contest – Rock Me Avatarus – Party Showcase Contest. Contest begins now and runs until 12pm (Noon) CT on July 5th, a day after Lord British’s birthday on the 4th!

Read more…


SeedInvest Digital Demo Day – June 22

SeedInvest is hosting a Digital Demo Day tomorrow, June 22nd, and Portalarium is included in the event! Attendees will be able to listen to several companies in addition to Portalarium on their current crowdfunding efforts. A Q&A will also follow, so here’s another chance to participate!

The event begins at 2pm ET and runs until the end of Portalarium’s presentation, which officially begins at 4:45pm ET (3:45pm NBT for you New Britannians).

Here is the complete schedule:

  • TopScore – 2:00pm ET
  • Lendsnap – 2:15pm ET
  • GoSun – 2:30pm ET
  • Trikke – 2:45pm ET
  • Crema.co – 3:00pm ET
  • HearMy Voice – 3:15pm ET
  • Made on Main – 3:30pm ET
  • Likeable Local – 3:45pm ET
  • Whereby.Us – 4:00pm ET
  • Level Therapy – 4:15pm ET
  • Chirrp – 4:30pm ET
  • Portalarium – 4:45pm ET

Visit SeedInvest’s Webinar signup page for details.

*Disclaimer: Portalarium is offering securities under Regulation CF and Rule 506(c) of Regulation D through SI Securities, LLC (“SI Securities”). The Company has filed a Form C with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its offering, a copy of which may be obtained here: https://www.seedinvest.com/portalarium/series.b


Reddit AMA with Richard Garriott and Team

Richard “Lord British” Garriott and other team members will be hanging out on Reddit today! Click here for the AMA link.

We are focusing this AMA on questions about the game’s development, though will consider what questions we can take related to our equity crowdfunding campaign currently running through SeedInvest. Please know that we will do our best to get to as many questions as possible, but we may not be able to answer everything in the time allotted.

Thanks Shroud of the Avatar redditors for allowing us to promote the AMA! We can’t wait to have a great chat with you.