The closed Alpha has been going on now for some time and its a been a lot of fun. Today a new map has been announced for the testings, and of course I can't wait to dig in. Here is the latest from Eternal Crusade.
Hey Crusaders!
A big thank you to all of you who have been playing in Closed Alpha, especially last week when we were pushing the servers to the max! We'll have several more opportunities to help crash the servers so we can profile everyone and further optimize Eternal Crusade.
Make sure to give us a follow on our Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ pages for the most recent updates when we push a new build.
Incoming Map - I said brrr, it's cold in here!
If you've been following our Twitch shows, you know the Dev team has been hard at work on a brand new map! I sat down with our Technical Lead Level Designer (Patrick Vaillancourt) and Lead Artist (Martin Spenard) to chat about it!
Can you talk about the setting of the new map? Where is it, and what type of environment is it in?
Patrick: We are playing in a new Promethium Plant called Pegasus Station, one with longer sight lines, that is a little more friendly for vehicles, and ICEeeeeeeee.
Compared to the Promethium map, how much larger is it?
Patrick: In actual size, it is roughly the same. The original Promethium Map was 600mx400m and this one is 700mX300m.
How many capture points are in the map?
Patrick: There are 3 capture points in a Classic domination game mode, 6 vehicles spawners and 2 quad guns total in the map.
How is the layout different than Promethium?
Patrick: We also added a lot of catwalks between buildings and quad guns to cover them. More interiors, bigger interiors (A lot more Assault Class friendly), more fights between buildings. More Chaos!!!
Can you talk about the differences between Promethium and the new map in terms of styling? What are some of the new elements we can expect to see?
Martin: We are developing our second biome, this one more of an arctic setting. We added reflection/refraction probes that allows lights to affect nearby environment assets. For now you can see that we added more of a light snow to showcase the possibilities. We are also developing and implementing our latest substance PBR shaders to improve the overall look of the assets as well as some vertex painting to break up the tiling and give even more richness to the environments.
What will the weather be like? Will there be blizzards?
Martin: Yes eventually there will be blizzards. We are keeping them to be used as one of the many mutators that will be part of gameplay.
We're releasing the new map, Pegasus Station this week! If you're not already a part of Closed Alpha, grab yourself a Founder pack - all packs give instant access to the game with a complete game key.
Chat soon, Crusaders!
Katie Fleming
Community Manager
Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
www.eternalcrusade.com