Those of you who’ve been reading our daily dev blog posts, would know that I’ve been working on some project, amongst other things including some new AI. Well, the bulk of the project is nearing the end, so I thought I’d tell you all about it!
The Crucible, is the name of the project, and is a new sort of Arena. Once it’s complete it’ll be located off of Arena Lobby with the arena galaxies. Beginning from the relatively recently suggestion ‘wave solo instance’ area, the result so far I feel is looking pretty good.
The Crucible consists of 24 waves, split up into 6 stages, each wave spawns after the previous wave has been cleared, the end of each stage is marked with a boss. In some ways it’s quite like a DG with no wormholes. Most of the AI have been taken from other locations, but there are a few new things in the mix (notably the bosses).
Each class will get it’s own version of The Crucible, with specific AI for their class, and class will get their own specific rewards, although the rewards haven’t been fully fleshed out yet, there will definitely be goodies in there. The area is suited for all levels, as the AI range from lowly Helgas and Roswells all the way up, past Zaphragi fleets to some new AI.
The Crucible is currently on our test server, but only for Engineers. A lot of boss scripting is involved to get it to work correctly, once I’m sure that it’s okay, I’ll duplicate it and make the suitable adjustments for the other classes. The missions to try it out (as well as the entrance) are located in Arena Lobby over at test.starsonata.com on port 3032.
On to the second point of this blog post, the aforementioned new AI. After waiting which must be about two years now since I had the idea for Tech 22 skills to be released, I’ve finally added the final stage of AI.
These new birdies will be appearing in The Crucible, as well as in the wild (where they belong) as late as next universe. They may also appear in dungeons.