Children of the Void: Project Update December 1st, 2012

[MMXAlamar]

Children of the Void
Press Release: December 1st, 2012

Children of the Void: An Unofficial Sequel to Might and Magic

Project Update: December 1st, 2012

The holiday season is coming up and we’re hard at work on our teambuilding and department structuring here at CotV. In honesty, we have not shown you anything visual yet for several reasons, because we lack enough 3d modelers, and our current 3d modelers, who are amazing designers, are only just recently nailing down the exact process that it takes to design a level from scratch. In addition to this, we’ve had project staff come and go, but many have remained as well, and those who have stuck it through with us are those who make this project flourish and continue to push forward. Our plans for the tutorial level are set in stone, and it’s now the time to design and build the assets that will actually be in the game. It takes a certain talent and a lot of time to make game-ready assets, and good ones.

On the engineering side of things, we’re still working out issues with the game engine in order to make the gameplay of CotV as fluid and reminiscent of Might and Magic as possible, so that players may relive their past experiences in this new game, and those who are new to the series can have an authentic Might and Magic experience with improved graphics and all bugs eliminated. Where there is good engineering there must also be good management, and we do have a new task manager that we’re going to be using, which will increase team communication and productivity so that we know precisely what each member of each department is working on, and when an assigned task is due.

Operations Schedule for December 2012

• Migrate to OpenProject – W1 of December
• Begin Iranese Atlas – W2 of December
• Rough Draft of New Logo – W2 of December
• Final Draft of New Logo – W4 of December
• DeviantArt Campaign – TBD, December
• Updated Game Editor – TBD, December

Operations Schedule for January 2013

• Release 3d Ad – TBD, January
• Release Programming Ad – TBD, January
• New Website – TBD, January
• Second Draft of World Map – TBD, January
• Developer Podcasts – TBD, January
• Tutorial Outdoor Level – TBD, January

We now have a brand new way to manage our team! – OpenProject

Children of the Void is proud to announce its partnership with a brand new, freely downloadable software program called OpenProject. OP is a newborn task management service that was released to the public for the first time just this past week. All successful businesses and projects need an easy and refined way to manage its staff and employees, and OP is going to help CotV by providing this service so that we can thoroughly manage our operations and gain measurable results, which will give us insights into how we’re doing in an overall sense of making this game. I will be setting up OP throughout the first week of December and the following weekend the CotV team will start integrating management operations into OP and learning how it functions.

Check it out here: https://www.openproject.org/about

We’re working on a brand new logo for Children of the Void.

Upon inspection of other Might and Magic game logos, we recently discovered that our latest logo was actually plagiarized from Heroes V: Tribes of the East. All is forgiven because whoever made the old logo is no longer with us, but this is not tolerable and we must replace it. The top managers in the Art Department are promptly working on a new logo which will be released upon completion and is scheduled to be finished by the end of the month. The following graphics illustrate the logo that was copied, but we do not know exactly how it was replicated.

We are terribly embarrassed about this, and we will NOT allow anything like this to happen again.



Department Updates

Art Department

We have a new Art Director in-training who will be optimizing level design from an artistic and stylistic standpoint for Children of the Void. He is a young, talented, motivated, and well-prepared artist and 3d sculptor who is rising to the occasion to take on this difficult task. He will receive all the support he needs from our staff to make his new position a great experience in artistic creativity and a positive movement towards teambuilding and working together with our art staff. We still have new artists coming in, and our faithful artists have been nailing away architectural concepts for the town in the tutorial level. We’re taking it building by building for now and once the design specifications are set in stone and the 3d modelers have begun creating the buildings for the game, we will have ourselves something concrete to show.

Audio Department

Not much new has been going on in the Audio Department as of recently, but we do have musicians who are slowly working away at composing some beautiful fantasy soundtracks for the tutorial level. We will slowly be incorporating more and more in the sound effects area as we shift gears to the new task management system with OpenProject. In other audio news, Children of the Void is honored to welcome Asomath of Might and Magic Tribute to the team as an audio engineer and part-time manager. We will reveal more about his duties with CotV after the New Year with next month’s project update.

Level Design Department

The most critical aspect of this game is level design, and unfortunately it is our most struggling department. Migrating to OpenProject for task management will be our remedy for the disorganization going on in the Level Design / 3d Department. We have four highly skilled modelers on our 3d team, however, they are very busy people and graciously donate their spare time to help Children of the Void grow. As the semester wraps up and the holidays go by, our level designers will have more time to work on Children of the Void. We hope to have something awesome to show you by the New Year, but this all depends on the free time of our level designers. Rest assured, they are doing what they can to model the levels, however, it’s a very time-consuming process to get everything looking its best for your gaming experience in an amazingly detailed new world, inspired by Might and Magic.

Programming Department

Our programming staff is probably the most underappreciated division of our team, but don’t you dare forget about them! The programmers of Children of the Void are highly skilled and each have multiple years of professional experience in programming. They might be underappreciated because their code is not incredibly tangible, since it can’t be displayed in the form of visual art. Without programmers this game would not be possible, because they are the ones who lay the foundation for us to create worlds and to create an authentic Might and Magic gaming experience. We greatly appreciate the folks who are able to donate their time to code for Children of the Void. Thanks so much guys!

Writing Department

The journey of the writers’ is only just beginning! Our plan is to create the world of Iranese, region by region, utilizing the lore from the Heroes IV campaigns and filling in the missing pieces of the land using our own creative expertise in Might and Magic lore. These efforts will culminate in the Iranese Atlas, a comprehensive guide to every region on the continent. An interesting way we will tie Children of the Void to the previous Might and Magic installments is through the phenomenon of the Reckoning, which claimed the world of Enroth and changed the lives of thousands of refugees that survived that terrible event. In Children of the Void, the Enrothian refugees will struggle to find their place and purpose in this new world, restore, rebuild, and ignite their societies into a new era, battle religious denial between their former Gods on Enroth and the Gods of Axeoth, and last but not least, come to terms with the “cruel and heartless” abandonment of their races by the Ancients, which happened so long ago in the Silence. This unofficial chapter of Might and Magic will be real and revolutionary.

Thank you for your support, friends!

Sincerely,

MMXAlamar

Project Leader
Children of the Void
mmxalamar@gmail.com

[koval321]

Is there any rumors about official (by HoM&M producers) continuation of this game? Somehow am not catch heroes, am played only part 3 few hours, cant understand why they abandon so cool game and focus on something else.

If mm9 was last, then am even dont known how this whole serie ends because am not completed it, am even dont remember what was going on in last part.

Uh right I want ask, does fanmade M&M10 connected to story of mm9 or previously, where its story placed?

[tolich]

I am even dont known how this whole serie ends because am not completed it, am even dont remember what was going on in last part.

On the way to Mendosus, a group of mercenaries was shipwrecked on the Isle o Ashes, and Yrsa the Troll revealed them the way out in exchange of promiss to do something later. Then she send them to the quest of uniting the six clans of Chedian against Tamur Leng. After uniting the clans went into the war with Tamur Leng, leaving mercenaries behind, but were entrapped by a traitor. So mercenaries were to find their Writ of Fate (where there destined to stop Tamur Leng), and then visit the Afterworld to return the armies back. Then they lead armies agains Tamur Leng's Hoard and capture him only to find out that he has his own Writ of Fate, destined him to conquer Chedian. The cognitive dissonance bring mercenaries along with Tamur Leng to Krohn, where they obtain the final task, to imprison malicious god Njam and then recieve the true Writ of Fate (with the destiny they just have accomplished).

[MMXAlamar]

Hey, sorry for the late reply.

To answer your questions, the NWC MM Universe officially ends with MM9 and Heroes 4 (not counting the books). In continuation with the MM tradition, Children of the Void is tying together both of these games on the world of Axeoth. MM9 ends with capturing a Loki-type God called Njam who meddled in the affairs of the world, and H4 ends with the results of the 6 campaigns: 6 prevailing kingdoms.

[TheCoolinator]

Is there a reason why Ubisoft chose Heroes of MM over MM? And do they own the rights to regular MM?

[Asomath]

Is there a reason why Ubisoft chose Heroes of MM over MM? And do they own the rights to regular MM?

Ubisoft owns all intellectual related to Might and Magic. This includes the RPG's dealing with the Dark Guardian, SHELTEM, and the Kreegan invasion of Enroth.

It can be assumed, although not for certain, that Ubisoft believed that the biggest money to be made was in the Heroes franchise rather than the MM RPG franchise. After all, the party-based, single player RPG is something foreign in today's gaming market, and is a pretty big risk for a high-profile gaming company to take.

~Asomath

[Ribannah]

UbiSoft was only interested in Heroes, but all the rights were sold in one package when 3DO went belly-up.

[Karmakeld]

just out of curiosity, but does anyone know if this map http://mepic.ru/up/pic_b/ca08bceb36a9dd ... 821c9b.jpg was made by the COTV team? I kind of sense it, from Alamar's presentation..

[Talin_Trollbane]

So, did this project die like the others?

[Troller]

I'm afraid it is – if I remember correctly they made it official on their facebook page http://www.facebook.com/mightandmagic10 but it is closed now.

[Tress]

So, did this project die like the others?

Unfortunately yes. Most fan project require much larger manpower than is available. That is why many indie game look retro like, because its more realistic to create them with limited resources. No offense to people that placed their time into such a project but as I see one of main issues they all suffer from is ever-increasing scale i.e each project start with general vision like MMT. Initially it would require realistic ,mod comparable amount of assets like monster sprites, textures, 2d drawings of items(which could probably be gathered in couple years if few talented artists would appear, and people who can draw are much more common than 3d modelers) etc, but it moved to 3d that requires models, animations and generally unbearable amount of required assets. Nowadays it maybe would be more easy due to much larger amount of free tools like Unity and U3E but likely its all too late
I myself work in IT/software development industry and I see how hard and how much manpower takes even simplest release or update, the scale most fan project undertake is very far from realistic. Still I am very glad that years after original release of game that spawned fan-base there is still modding community.

[Talin_Trollbane]

Yeah, the first iteration of MMT (the first playable demo we got) seemed like the best way to go, a new MM game with the MM7-8 engine, making new engines takes time and if you dont got a loyal paid team you are basically screwed. Ive been part of like...2 MM and 3 other game projects over the years (mapping guy) and all of them have died due to people coming and going and the usual "life in general" thing of a free project.

[Troller]

Yeah as the number of people following Might and Magic dwindle so does the chance of seeing a successful release of a fan project.
My biggest hope lies with the MM6/7/8 remake to a modern engine – If they can achieve it - and it is a big if because it is a huge undertaking - then modding becomes easier and that could possibly invigorate the community.
Modding has the advantage that you can make small changes/additions/improvements so small project are much more viable. It has the disadvantage that it tends to be more fragmented where some parts get a lot more attention (female bodies in Skyrim I'm looking at you). The question is if there are a big enough audience in might and magic to support a modding scene – BDJ was met with a wall of silence when he started his big mod…

[Tress]

Well its understandable that MM community is dwindling, as game that created it came 20 (almost) years (mm6). I also hope remake mod will make it and it has good chances in my opinion.
In other fan games (MMT/WOX2 etc )scale they try is simply unbearable to internet recruited team, as well as people involved (I hope no-one takes offense as non is meant and I am grateful people got involved in first place) often do not have enough experience for development(I don't mean just technical like coding/modeling etc but mostly general development process and what it means and what scale it is) to pull it off as i often saw statements which are far from realistic. Same as when most of us see level editor and we try to make something and we all think it will be easy, because we all lacked that experience, but once started its so much more complicated, and then just imagine creating whole game rather than 1 map. THE reason why i think remake mod have good chances (and BDJ mod already did succeed) is that people behind it , seem to know what they are really doing, and there is less moving parts in terms of team required.
Still its wonder there are still modding activity at all, specially considering there is no such thing as MM UDK contrary to mod heavy games like TES series.

[Troller]

Still its wonder there are still modding activity at all, specially considering there is no such thing as MM UDK contrary to mod heavy games like TES series.

Then there is GrayFace who valiantly battles the fog of oblivion and keeps might and magic alive by sheer willpower, hard work and crafty hacks. If anyone deserves to be called champion of might and magic it is him!

edit: Forgot capital letters in GrayFace
edit2: Dammit