Hello! once again old friends. It’s been a really long time since we’ve had an update for you. I know it probably seems like we just disappeared considering how frequent our updates were originally but… hoof… it’s been a long year. First off, we want to apologize for how out of sync our new world update release date was with… well reality. Legendary Tales is a project that has been mired by a ridiculous amount of engine related troubles in its time. Those of you who have been with us a long while know this isn’t the first time it’s happened, but we had to switch our project, once again, to another engine version. [h2][b]Engine Changed : UE5 -> UE4 [/b][/h2] Unreal Engine 5 looked very promising, and we were very excited to use it, however, despite all our best efforts at optimizing Chaos physics engine there were still going to be players who would have ended up left behind. We were able to save 25% of the CPU cost, but it was still 35% higher than UE4 in multi-play, which would have meant many of our fans would have had performance problems. We really felt it wasn’t worth abandoning the majority of our players for this (Obviously) so we had to move back to Unreal Engine 4. This ended up sucking up at least 3-5 months. During last year’s announcement I had mentioned that this was a potential risk, and unfortunately it didn't end the way we had hoped. We're really sorry that things ended up this way, but we're back and situated in UE4 now. There is a possibility to upgrade the engine sometime in the future after release, but we don't want to waste any more time on trying to make it happen now, especially when our fans have been so patient already. We also wanted to let you know, despite us not appearing very active on Steam we have been seeing things. We know a lot of people think the game is dead, that's understandable. We can all think of a game where we got burned by developers just abandoning their ideas. But I want to assure you it’s not dead, our lack of communication is partly because we were spending so much time and energy on moving engines and due to some health issues. I know some of you are aware I had been needing to go to the hospital for a while, well I finally did, and I ended up having to stay and recover for a lot longer than anticipated, while work continued here at the office it was harder to communicate with you and the team. We can’t promise that the next few months will include a lot of communication, but we hope you can believe us that the game is not dead, and development is absolutely ongoing. So, because of all of this we were not able to release or update earlier this year, however the next update will in fact be the full release. Legendary Tales 1.0. Also, to inform you, there will be no early access test this time as we have been doing closed Beta tests for quite a while now. The feedback from that has been great and has been helping us immensely. However, it's possible we might ask more people to be a part of the closed beta testing before full release under NDA. “So, is that all there is to it?” I hear you cry. “A year of technical difficulties?” Well, no actually, we have been working and reworking a lot of other things at the same time. Switching engines also gave us the opportunity to update a lot of things and tweak some other things to make them look and run better (Like magic effects for a start). I can get into some of the details with you all at a later point but for now let’s go over some highlights. [h1]Game change list[/h1] [h2]Armor[/h2] First off, we have made some changes based on things all of you have been asking for or giving us feedback on. We have added armor! Haha well we already had that, but now every armor you can wear in game will will be reflected in your character model. A small thing but you’ve wanted it for a while, and we’d always wanted to bring it to you. It involved a lot of work on the part of our graphics team but they managed it. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/caba16397a0e281fb6ac130524b599c0b43bc53c.jpg[/img] [h2]Monsters[/h2] We’ve also added new monsters (I know we say that every time) including a necromancer, barbarian and paladins. But that also includes Named monsters. Monsters in the world that have unique fighting styles, so they won’t be like the hordes that you usually fight. No, you’ll have to change things up for them, they’re not only a cut above the rest they’re also different from each other! We know you’re all going to love learning how to take these guys down. According to our closed beta testers, this feels like the next level of VR fighting, almost like Legendary Tales 2. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/4becaf01e847ff673885b379fb2093cc1268b970.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/256e5e0bd7cb9d538ef7943a2f88afc71d3a9266.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/d61fd02ce59aeb72650b8ac64232c07f845c4565.jpg[/img] [h2]Dungeons[/h2] One thing we wanted to clear up, though we have toyed with procedural generation on and off since… well since the beginning of Legendary Tales. In the end we have moved to predesigned dungeons, they are very large, but we think this really gave us the ability to control difficulty, exploration, progression and honestly, just making the scene look cool. This would be one of the other things we’ve been working on all this time. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/e28de9e538b5cd0b8696c739e1ffd6fd65864a7c.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/2c8426ae3e8fca3b24cf6cc498076cfd6ea043e7.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/2a4f668200296527c6b8f59d3e1505ce76921b8b.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/72ca03446a43edc156f0664d5908d88ee13a95e6.jpg[/img] [h2]Skill Tree[/h2] There’re some little things we’ve added, extra magic skills, extra passive skills. We’ve added a lot to the skill tree, and we hope you’ll enjoy working your way through it all once again. There’re 17 different passive skills 6 new magics and 6 new magic passive skills. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/f1bffd6802de0a4716c07eff336cfce6ed3741ba.jpg[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/37c703223abf573eec44d219bc545f1d5ff5e040.jpg[/img] [h2]Way points[/h2] There are also way points to move around the world and dungeons now. [h2]Crafting[/h2] There have been a few changes to the crafting mechanism, things like the ability to scrap your items for parts, and the way items are put together is a bit more intuitive now. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/fe25d8579d38ddae9ebc2908602959b9f6d8e797.gif[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/f75e06f686647924a4031744dec16e4ff4bb5808.gif[/img] on top of that we’ve also added alchemy. So, you can finally make your own Potions. Also, it’s a small thing, you have to actually drink the potions now, no absorbing them by pressing a button. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/879f8f4be10848d46a06551d2ceffb6c1ba55c34.jpg[/img] [h2]Eat, drink and be merry![/h2] We’ve also added other ways to heal, you can sit by the campfire to restore health, and you can even cook meat on the fire! Meat and beer have been added as another way to restore small amounts of HP and MP. [h2]Weapons[/h2] 5 new spears and 1 legendary spear have been added. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/39366036/b3e7d5c10dc8b4b6de94460cb065b02d4617fc8a.jpg[/img] [h2]Sound and Musics[/h2] We also think sound and music are important to a game, so we have been working on producing original musics for Legendary Tales beyond our main theme music and background, environmental musics... there are 10+ new musics are on the way. We hope this gives us our own unique feeling. There’s more but for now we just wanted to let you know that we’ve added some end content too in the form of honor points. You can use these honor points to buy certain items in game. It’s going to be great. we know you’re going to love it. So here we are once again. It’s been a long road and forgive us if we’re hesitant to give a solid release date yet, best laid plans of mice and men and all that. But if you take nothing away from today’s update, we hope you can take away this; the game is not dead, we’re working really hard, and we’re really coming to the end. We have an internal targeted release date, but we can't share that at this time. But one thing I can tell you is that this game is going to be amazing and, we hope, worth the wait. Finally, we want to say thank you to all of you, those who have provided feedback, those who have kept active in the community, those who have supported us all this time. Those who have played quietly in the shadows. And even the people who ask if the game is dead, it’s great to know that people care so much about this game. We know people wouldn’t be asking if they didn’t really want this game to be released. So, thank you to all of you, we’ll try to be a bit more active in the chat. We are taking care of every aspect of this game because it is our passion, and we are burning all the resources we have to make it happen. We hope you have a wonderful day and this update could bring you out of the dark a bit. We got this. Warm Regards, BJ and all Urban Wolf Games Team.