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 wonāt 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 donāt 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.