VulcanVerse Roadmap — Dev Diary #2 2023
The Latest from our VulcanVerse Development Team
Vulcan Studios are our game development arm, consisting of development teams and artists. Recently, we provided the outline for forthcoming updates to our flagship blockchain game, VulcanVerse. It’s our pledge to our excellent community that we will remain transparent as we move toward delivering the phases covered in our first dev diary article. Phase 2 of our updates to VulcanVerse is about to go live — we cover what this does and doesn’t constitute below.
Here is the tentative schedule for VulcanVerse refactoring we are working towards:
- Phase 2: Visual Updates Hades | End of April
- Phase 3: Visual Updates Arcadia | Mid-May
- Phase 4: Visual Updates Boreas | Early June
- Phase 5: Visual Updates Notus | End of June
- Phase 6: Optimization | Early August
- Phase 7: Optimization | End of August
- Phase 8: Optimization | End of August
Phases 2 to 5 of refactoring are all visual or graphic improvements; our first update is to the dark and demon filled Underworld of Hades.
Refactoring Hades — Visual Updates
The updates you can expect in VulcanVerse consist of new and improved graphics. This includes rebuilds of Hades landmarks such as the Palace of the Dead and the Necropolis, but also improvements to the sky, lighting, shadows and textures such as the veiny earth of the underworld — in fact, the updates are so extensive that you’d be forgiven for thinking you were playing a different game.
Bridges across the three rivers are made of stone and closer to those described in the Underworld of Hades gamebook, The Houses of the Dead. To the far south west of the Underworld can be found the port of Hades, complete with shipwreck and sky portal, accessed through swampland — here also can be found the fishmonger, Manos.
We must stress that not everything appears in its complete state. There is still a little refactoring work to do in Hades for certain items, such as trees and rocks. This includes reducing polygon count further, optimizing colliders, fixing level of detail issues and correcting sea water plane overlay and ‘holes’ where the water meets the land. These will be priorities as we move towards the Phase 3 Visual Updates for the Gardens of Arcadia in a few week’s time. We are aware of the majority of the fixes that are needed — but as ever please report any bugs you find in Canny.
Our art and development team are working hard to complete the final elements of refactoring for Hades, though many of these last updates aren’t too easy to spot, so won’t affect gameplay. Download the update and head to Hades, there’s a lot to explore.
“A terrible marshland of foul waters, a steaming rotten miasma, the only route through being compressed mud forming pathways.”
The eagle eyed explorer may notice a little more of the areas on the map appearing in game — such as the Slimeswamp. Generally, where there is an area devoid of plots, we’re adding content. The Sacred Way has sporadic mausoleums and crypts and is marked with fences and gravestones.
The Necropolis has had a complete overhaul. Here you’ll find a mausoleum you can enter, a rocky hill covered in further houses of the dead and, from under the west gate, a tributary river flowing from underground that joins the River Acheron to the west of the Necropolis.
With the towering rocky escarpment on which the Palace of the Dead sits overshadowing the area immediately to the north, the Necropolis area is impressive — and your builds can enhance the area further — the likes of player Known Worth’s ‘Known Manor’ is an impressive modular build that sits within the area of the Necropolis on adjoining plots, that to long term players seems an integral part of the City of the Dead.
We can’t wait to see you in the underworld! In the game we mean, sheesh, so literal..
You can download VulcanVerse for Windows to experience the latest version right away! Get the launcher here.
About Vulcan Forged
Vulcan Forged is the company behind Vulcan Studios, a blockchain game studio, NFT marketplace, NFT minting engine and creators of VulcanVerse, Berserk: Vulcanites Unleashed and many other games. Vulcan Forged has also built Elysium, a carbon neutral layer 1 blockchain and MetaScapes, a metaverse as a service (MaaS) engine. The Vulcan Forged family is expanding rapidly, with many Vulcan Studios games now enabled within our blockchain economy.
The native token used within our ecosystem is $PYR, the secondary token $LAVA acts as a play-to-earn token. This dual token economy structure is ideal for blockchain gaming. Scholars or Cedalions are able to earn $LAVA while playing Vulcan Studios games and special NFTs can be earned while in-game. These can be sold on the Vulcan Marketplace for $PYR.
To stay up to date with Vulcan Forged, please follow on these channels:
Discord: https://discord.gg/vulcanforged
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