23 March

Sense of Identity: Character Creation Update

By Kaizen

Greetings, Elyrians! Last time we checked in on our latest internal release, we showcased visual targets for the tribes in Chronicles of Elyria and looked at a few work-in-progress screenshots of our character creator. Earlier this week, we broadcasted a live walk through of our character creator, and took suggestions from the Twitch chat. In case you missed it, you can watch the video below.

Throughout the video, we showcase both the eight starting tribes, and the four discoverable tribes in Chronicles of Elyria. We create a few different characters and dive into the details here and there, but if you need an additional recap, read on to find out more!

Making it All Feel Real

Before we work on getting the representation of the tribes in the game, we sculpt model targets to ensure we're hitting the vision of each tribe. Below are some of the targets we crafted to help guide the character creation process.

Although Chronicles of Elyria is a fantasy game, we want the ranges of character creation to be realistic. This means that we need to create constraints for each of the tribes when it comes to customization sliders - so no, you can't create big-head mode. We're creating an immersive experience, and that means each character created in game needs to look and feel like they belong to the tribe to which they are born.

Here's a time-lapsed look at some of the body controls in character creation

As with the body constraints, each of the tribes of Elyria have a range of visual characteristics for different facial attributes. We're still tweaking the constraints and ranges, but we're pretty happy with where we've landed so far. And of course you'll be able to give us additional feedback once My Akashic Records (a standalone executable where you can see your character and some of the items you own) is in the hands of Alpha backers. Soon™.

Take a look at this sped-up clip of the facial features in character creation

When you create a character, you choose a birthday and, with each individual birthday, there is a specific alignment of the planets associated with it. As revealed in the livestream, your birthday plays a key part in what sort of destiny may unfold for your character. As to the specifics of how this interacts with our destiny system...you'll have to discover it for yourself at launch.

Your destiny awaits...

What's Next?

Lastly, we decided to split up work for this release. Internally, we've called it the 0.2.0 release. The next production update will be from Vye, and she'll address what we're working on currently in our 0.2.5 internal release, which includes world interaction and inventory management.

If you enjoyed the broadcast, please follow our Twitch channel and you'll get alerted when we go live! We're looking forward to showing off more of the game in the coming weeks.

Until next time. . .