Greetings everyone, we’ve just passed the middle of 2020, and despite all that’s been going on, we’re still churning away here at Overmare Studios! Today, we wanted to give you a sneak peek and some updates on our progress.
As a note, everything we’re showing is still a work in progress and subject to change.
Unity 2019.4
Since the release of Wave 5.5, one of Programming’s primary goals was to upgrade Unity versions. We’ve been using Unity 5.6.3f1, which is all the way back from 2017, which in development years is quite a while. This has meant we’ve been missing out on potential bug fixes, performance improvements, and new features available to the engine.
Well, we finally bit the bullet and upgraded, initially to 2018 builds to the latest stable version: 2019.4. However, it wasn’t a smooth ride, as it meant plenty of thing breaking or requiring overhauls. So we want to thank the work of our Programming and QA team for getting us to where we are now.
Quests & NPC’s
So far, Ashes has been an open map, free for you to explore, roam the town of Ponyville, and kill any enemies you encountered. In the next wave, we plan to finally add the building blocks for quests and NPC’s. Our Script team is hard at work cranking those creative juices to flesh out the world and the stories told in this town.
This creates interesting challenges, for in the original fanfic Littlepip does not stick around the town very long, while getting a frying pan in the face to the realities of Equestrian life. In our adaptation, we are introducing a brand new story that fleshes out what happened to Ponyville, and the faction war between various raider clans that's been raging for control, with Littlepip suddenly drawn in to the conflict and ultimately deciding the fate of the town itself.
We’re still keeping wraps on the specific details for now but we feel you’ll like what we have come up with.
Course, you can’t have a giant quest if you don’t have people to talk to. Our programmers are working on our NPC system and dialogue, so you’ll find plenty of people to chat or work with (or kill them for their sweet hat).
Ponyville Improvements
Work continues on Ponyville map and its surrounding areas to make the town more fleshed out and detailed. It’s a mixture of whiteboxing to plan out improvements to regions of the map by our designers, and our 2D and 3D teams working out the concepts and 3d models to eventually be used in the game. Below you can see a few snippets of the work currently being done.
Research has also gone into improving our vegetation and terrain maps to make the surrounding hills and eventual forests more interesting to look at and explore via third party software. While not set in stone, initial results are promising.
Assorted Notes
Here are a few other things to take note of:
- Grenade usage has been changed to now have a dedicated Throw Grenade button, including the ability to cook the grenade.
- Mines are being worked on, with potential variants, making the map more deadly if you don’t have your wits on you.
- Save and Load currently being worked on, allowing you to finally save your progress, and that custom pony you’re constantly having to remake.
- Overhaul on how skills and VATS works.
That’s all for now. We still have more features we’d like to talk about, and much more work to do, but that’ll do in the meantime. As always, let us know what you think, and check out our Community Discord for future updates.
Cheers • ↄ • /)c •
Social Media
Discord
Our Discord community continues to grow and be the best place to discuss Ashes of Equestria or anything else. We post regular updates and announcements there. So if you want to stay informed or chat with fellow fans please come join us.
Do you prefer the word from the bird? We also have a twitter where we also post any updates and announcements. And also bad memes. Come follow us here!
Yep, we have a Facebook page too. If you prefer to follow us there you can!