Intro

Hey everyone, I wanted to give you all an update to explain what’s being worked on, who’s doing it, and what’s needed for both beta and full releases. I’m excited to announce that bbgun09 will be joining the staff team. A longtime CivEx player, bbgun will be helping me pick up the slack where I need it most. In particular he will be writing lore fragments and planning events.

Active Staff

First off I want to clear up some stuff about who is working on CivEx. The only people working on CivEx are myself and, as of last week, bbgun09. Everyone else on the staff list hasn’t been involved with the project in months. Many of them I haven’t even heard from in that time. They’re all welcome back, of course, and I still need all the help I can get, but I wanted to clear up any misunderstanding that there being seven or so people on the moderator list means there are seven people in the loop about CivEx. Oh, also huge shoutout to Vaape for helping out with the enchanting plugin and contributing to our repos. I’ve had like three or four people message me over the past few weeks about contributing to the CivEx codebase and he’s the only one who actually pulled through.

Beta Release

I want to get a beta release out like ASAP, but there’s a couple of problems I encountered while attempting that this week.

First of all, the test server I’m currently renting isn’t very big and the performance I’m getting from this host is shit. I don’t want myself or a member of the community to host because some of you guys really don’t need my IP address and I’d prefer to keep some of our MythicMobs files private while still letting you guys try them out on the beta. That means I to first need to go figure out what kind of server I want for the live version and pay for it out of my personal ramen/snacks fund. I’m fine paying for it for a little while but that won’t be sustainable on the scale that CivEx needs. I’ll set up a Patreon eventually but I really don’t want to take any of your money until you guys can get a real feel for CivEx.

Problem number two, I can’t get the NameLayer mysql database setup on the server I’m renting. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing wrong, it’s like NL doesn’t have enough permissions to do some of the things it wants to the db, but I don’t have root access here so if that is indeed the case there’s nothing I can do before switching to a different host.

Problem 3: I want there to be enough enchantments so that you guys can get an actual feel for the new enchanting plugin. I’ve spent the past week working on the map so I need to switch gears for this to progress further. Everything for this plugin is on the github repo if any of you are interested in helping out, and any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Full Release

So, here’s a pretty clear picture of where we’re at and what’s still needed for a full release:

Map Work

Overworld 8k by 8k map

• Terrain 80% complete
• Foliage 60%
• Biomes 80%
• Caves/Rivers 10%

Dimension 1

• Terrain 90% complete
• Foliage 10%
• Caves/Rivers 0%

Dimension 2

• Terrain 80% complete
• I’m redoing all the foliage
• Caves/Rivers 50%

There will be at least one or two more dimensions for launch, I’m still deciding whether I’ll use public maps or try to generate them with something like BiomeBundle or EpicWorldGenerator.

Civ Plugins Bastion/Reinforcement balance post. All reinforcements will be a crafted item rather than a raw material. Finalized Bastion config Finalized Citadel config Exilepearl config

Enchanting The enchanting system works. Some of the new enchantments work. The enchanting system doesn’t have any way to repair items and won’t work with a vanilla anvil. A band-aid solution with some sort of repair orb is the easy way out, but I would much prefer to have an in-depth repair system.

Tech Tree The systems we will be using for enchanting and potion crafting have been announced already. No recipes have been finalized. Some potions or potion arrows will be uncraftable for balance reasons. No resources have been placed on any of the maps yet, nor has any crafting recipes been finalized. I am currently considering using factories for late game crafting only, notably pearl fuel, vault bastions, and adamantine refinement.

MythicMobs I don’t think the server will feel quite complete without 10-15 additional MythicMobs. A launch without them is possible but not preferred. We have quite a lot of mobs that are complete or mostly complete already. The totals (including summons) are as follows:

10 fire themed mobs 2 ice themed mobs 14 overworld mobs

Lore and Event Planning I’ve laid out a good chunk of this already, and I’ll now be shifting the remainder of this work over to bbgun. This will allow me to focus my efforts elsewhere without our lore falling behind. So far over 30 lore fragments have been created and we are in the process of drafting and refining the first storyline event.

Setup

We will need to decide on a server to rent before launch as well as set up a Patreon to secure future funding.

What to expect over the next week or so

• MythicMobs contest results
• Bastion, Citadel, and ExilePearl config discussions
• If there’s time, there will also be a map update, though this may not get out this week.