Highsteppe Makeover Preview

Hey there Orbus community, we have been hard at work behind the scenes getting some major changes added to some of the over world zones. The 3D artists have started re-working the zones and started with the town of Highsteppe and the surrounding area. I wanted to share with you a short clip of a flyby done over the new town of Highsteppe to get some community reactions to the new area.

https://gfycat.com/FreshBruisedCero

A few notes about the new models. One of the goals of this art overhaul was to create models with lower vert and triangle count to ensure the best performance with all ranges of hardware along with creating a art style that is fluent across all zones. This should benefit players with increased graphical performance when handling high traffic zones (like Highsteppe village) when the player count is higher. In addition to that we have also switched from vertex shaded models to ones with textures created by our very own new 3D artist Nate. One thing to note is also that we wonā€™t be re-doing any of the interiors with this pass, as we are focusing on the over-world zones first. So areas like Tinnys cave and Lakewood Inn will remain unchanged for the time being.

I will keep posting some more screenshots as we continue to work on the zone and the others, but there will be a transition period where you might walk from Highsteppe zone (with the new models) to the Rainforest (older vertex models) while we are working on the zones, but in the end we think it will be worth it to have an continuous art style and direction throughout the world. I also donā€™t have an official roll-out date for the new models, as it involves re-working things such as the airship docks, moving Lakewood Inn to its own instance, etc., but we will announce the date in advance for everyone to know.

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I love this! Looks fantastic. Can not wait to see our world evolve :slight_smile:

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Absolutely phenomenal!

How many level 20 dummies will it have? We could really use a few more.

Also, new artist has been doinā€™ work! Wow!

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Wow, looks a bit more like a city than a small village.

It looks really nice, defiantly going to do some running around that town to check everything out once this comes out.

Will the player house be in the city, or outside like the Guild City house?

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you can see around the end of the gif that the house is inside :slight_smile:

@Robert I love it so far :+1:

Its hard to see but its the first house when you enter town (so in this video the last house you see before heading to cenns farm), Elijah designed the town to help funnel new players past all major ā€œlandmarksā€ of the highsteppe town, like the player house, chef lethrows kitchen, king stag area. Hopefully this will help with the newer players feeling less lost when first entering the new world, and also create a village where players have areas for interaction (like the maketplace area) and also a larger area for the practice dummies outside the town walls

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Players, and I myself lag when entering into Tinnyā€™s cave. Could it be possible to focus on this area for a bit. Especially if this is the magical place where you go to get your wand. But making the interior designs of other places later on is an idea I agree with.

Oh yeah, before I forget.

Great work! Those green roofs omg! Canā€™t wait to see it in game. I wantz it now :persevere:

Awesome! Canā€™t wait to test the optimization in new highstep!

Nice, Really looking forward to this & seeing other areas getting polished up.

I actually did some tweaking with tinnys cave so hopefully it will be better as far as lag goes in there (its in the position that Chef Lethrows kitchen use to be in).

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Thrilled to read there will be an outside area with multiple test dummies!

Looks incredible. As several have mentioned already, definitely looks more like a city now. With that being said, hereā€™s my 2 centsā€¦ the thing I loved about Highsteppe when I first entered the game was that that single ā€˜corridorā€™ straight through the middle of town meant you always encountered people. People who were always willing to stop and chat and help me when I needed it. I think the additions of the buildings near the gate split the town into alleys and the starting area loses a bit of that, ā€œeveryone musters here so I can surely find someone to help meā€ feel.

Incredible job guys. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in because for a game that has such an awesome community, it should have equally awesome community areas toā€¦ commune? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I agree with that also, hopefully this new layout keeps that same feeling where players will be able to always count on seeing someone helpful in town. Itā€™s hard to tell from the gif but there are 2 bigger spots where were thinking players will congregate (one being the market area) inside Highsteppe itself and then of course around the practice dummy area also.

This looks incredible, canā€™t wait to see how this work is spread across the Orbus world.

Iā€™ll pass on the love to the artists, also as a bonus I will be resurrecting Elijahā€™s old weekly artwork thread too but will be moving it to artwork Monday. So be sure to check it out if you get a chance.

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This is absolutely breathtaking!

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Wow, I love it!

Good job!

Oh man, Iā€™ve been waiting for this! Great work team, canā€™t wait for it!

To be honest this is probably the best dev team I have ever encountered. It seems like they actually care and respect the input of their player base. This new design is amazing. I canā€™t wait to see what this game evolves into in another 6 months to a year from now.

So glad to be a part of the experience.

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