Ho Ho Ho! And a merry what? May day?

Anyways, we've cooked up another gourmet blog post for you all today.

This last week we had a closed testing session. Basically we went about and invited a couple of friends. Got together and adventured. And we encountered, among other things runtimes, bugs and other uh-ohs. Well, those are fixed now. Que bueno, eh?

This week I focused on the elf map, trying to piece together a pretty and tranquil sanctuary. Basically a place where you'd expect elves to live. You've probably already seen the elf town.




I wanted to add some more flair to the surroundings. Want to know what came to me? Butterflies, and when I told Wild about it he made me make them. So here are some flippin' butterflies:



I also designed a new area called the "Autumn Forest" above the Elfen Heartland.

The backstory is that it used to be just another piece of the long forest that encircled the world. This was however the place where the Onyx Pendant(that was later found by Kyron Montok) emerged. The deep magic that shrouded the pendant left a lasting impression on the area. We'll explain the rest of the backstory(Kyron Montok and the pendant later).

Here is the Autumn Forest:



South and to the west of that area, past the Mother Lake of the World, another interesting event happened. An aging Elf by the name of Lord Jaul, patriarch of a High Family, set up a huge tower, dedicated to the study of magic. One fateful night, however, it was attacked by a large raiding party of undead. His disciples were all slaughtered, and he himself was cursed becoming the first Vampire .

He raised his followers, and to this day they guard what they regard as holy earth and breeding ground for the "New Royal Elf Family".

Here are pictures of the entrance:



Next is the additions to the original Tarus Manor, human dungeon.

I've set about the task of spicing up the dungeons, adding traps and other interesting obstacles to maneuver through.

For example I've added turrets that shoot fireballs when you come close. Requiring the adventurer to time his crosses carefully or run the risk of getting roasted.



It'd be a lot of fun to show the rest off to you, but I'll leave that for the game.

I've begun adding in the guild system(Do not know if it will be in the initial release). We've opted for a guild sort of organization instead of town based organization because we feel players will want to be able to participate in the growth of more than one town and may use guilds to organize the strategic development of many towns or develop a whole town/trade empire.

I really liked the guild capes in Guild Wars, so those will be the identifiers in Progeny. So far I've drawn the cape like this:


Plus a bunch of ornaments and different colors.

Finally, I finished the saving a loading systems. =D That took a long time coming. The reason I put it off until now is that we didn't need it. Since we've reached the testing phase it was implemented.


P.S. Look below any artists interested in helping on the project.