Temple of Dailuk Mini-Video #2 9/2/06 – Live from Beta 3

Overall:

Running FRAPS is causing Jerrith to lose about 7-10 fps, so the framerate in these videos is much lower than would be were he just playing not recording a video and the animations much smoother and higher quality, because losing framerate means animation frames are being skipped.

Note: the beta players involved have been notified and consented to be part of these videos. They are still under NDA and cannot talk about the videos at all, much less answer questions – if you figure out who somebody is, please do NOT hassle them. Thank you.

Note 2: Animations are not where we want them – they need to be polished and tweaked and added to. We continue to do this in Beta 3 and will likely continue to tweak and add to our animation technology well into Beta 4. Likewise, you may very well see other flaws – this is still beta 3 and we have a lot of polish yet to do.

Note 3: As before, these mini-videos do not take the place of the bigger Marketing/PR plan we are working on. These are for people who already know about Vanguard and want to get a glimpse of where we’re at and how Beta 3 is going in general. We’re still holding back on a lot of things for exclusive deals with various popular web sites and gaming publications.

Jerrith’s notes:

This is a random / pick up group of players that I (Jerrith) joined last night in the Temple of Dailuk. The group is made up of Morgh, an 18th level Dreadknight, Syrok, an 18th level Monk (using hand wraps), Malacki, a 16th level Monk (using a martial staff), Ladroj, a 20th level Sorcerer, Cir, a 17th level Psionicist, and myself, Jerrith, an 18th level Cleric. This was recorded on medium settings at 1280x800, on my home system, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4 GHz) with 2 GB of RAM, and an EVGA NVIDIA 7800GTX w/256 MB. (This system is over 1 year old, with no upgrades.)

Also, regarding combat durations and damage dealt: We are currently working on fight durations with respect to NPC hit points and ability to deal damage. What you see in these videos will be changing significantly in the next beta update. This should be kept in mind, when evaluating these fights.

Finally, some notes about settings: I have turned floating damage number off for these videos, to keep them from obscuring the 3D world. This UI layout is not the default, it's my personal setup. I've also set the tooltips to not follow the mouse (which is default, but I had it on in the previous video).

Jerrith’s Notes specific to the VGInside2Garg.avi mini-video:

This is a video from deep inside one portion of the Temple of Dailuk, where we’re fighting two sentries of Xarkrafi, as part of an encounter route to summon Xarkrafi himself. Morgh had left just before this fight started, and so the monks and I end up taking most of the damage. Cir keeps the second sentry under control with a variety of stuns, mezes, and at one point, a simulacrum (an illusion which the sentry disbelieves just a few seconds after it is cast).