The EpicQuestz Newsletter
Issue 7 - 9 June 2019
Editor’s Note
Welcome all to the 7th EpicQuestz Newsletter! These have almost been going four months now and have become an important part of tracking project progress for Members, but also showing off our work to the outside world. Over the past two weeks a lot has happened on EpicQuestz, and we’ve seen plenty of progress on maps such as Dale, Archet and Helm’s Deep. You will notice I’ve made some formatting and aesthetic changes to this Newsletter - that’s because the wonderful @StealWonders has installed a new formatting plugin to the forums, so now I can finally change the size of text and add colours! Without further ado, let’s get into what’s happened in the past fortnight.- Editor, @Tobberz
Project Progress
Dale | /warp dale | In Progress
[Leader: @the_pharaohs_cat]
As noted in the project thread, all interiors on the South-West Island are now complete. I am working on prettifying things over there, by adding exterior decoration to the streets as well as decorating the house exteriors to improve immersion. Work on the South-East Island has now commenced, with Tobberz removing many of the roofs in order to re-build them in a uniform style (the same style as on the SW Island). More info on this will follow in the project thread.
- Project Leader, @the_pharaohs_cat
Helm’s Deep | /warp newhelms | In Progress
[Leader: @the_pharaohs_cat]
Since the last letter, the Helm’s Deep armoury structure is complete but requires some more interior work. After that we still need to make some finalising tweaks to the stables, at which point the non-terrain part of the map will effectively be complete.
- Project Leader, @the_pharaohs_cat
My work on the glittering caves is virtually complete, and only awaiting feedback from the Project Leader. It has ended up being a total remake of the entire cave system, complete with updated texturing and crystal design.
- Terrain Leader, @Enoshade
Archet | /warp archet | Resumed
[Leader: @_Kicker19]
A lot of work has taken place on Archet, and Builders have built a fair few houses according to the plan set out by me and Kicker. Right now these houses are fairly monotonous, so we will need to work on first sorting out some more exciting exterior decoration, before progressing into the interiors. At the moment we are trying to work out how to create a diagonal version of this house which is somewhat problematic. Hopefully this is the beginning of getting this project back on track.
- Project Overseer, @Tobberz
Barad-Dur | /warp baraddur | In Progress
[Manager: @thebeserker]
Not much work has been done on Barad-Dur as the focus has been dale, but we are continuing to complete the outer prison cells.
- Project Manager, @thebeserker
Minas Tirith | /warp tirith | Paused
[Leader: @the_pharaohs_cat]
Cat hopes to start work on this map again soon, but he’s a man with many projects and has been concentrating on the Helm’s Deep endgame, as well as the work which has happened on Dale recently.
- Project Overseer, @Tobberz
Other Developments
@LimeeFox’s Eoford cinematic is still on hold while he is busy with exams, but he gave me some info as to where he’s at anyway: “I have about 1/4 or 1/3 of the total scenes needed (in terms of length) in order to cover the music track I chose best; I currently have approximately 1 minute of in-game footage. Exams end in 2-3 weeks, but I should be able to resume work on the cinematic before then. You won’t be disappointed by the result!”
As mentioned above, we have started a forum thread for progress on Dale. Consider this a trial, and if it ends up working well we’ll use it on other projects too. It just seems like a far more effective and organised way of leading projects, and it can be used both as a log of what has happened, and as an insturction manual to builders as to what to do.
Technical Corner
After working out which plugins where compatible with 1.13, we’ve created a 1.13 test server which you can join at icecream.epicquestz.com:33007. Most stuff seems to work well, and we’ve ironed out the major problems. We won’t, however, be updating to 1.13. Instead, we’ll switch straight up to 1.14 from 1.12 - but to do that, we need to go through 1.13 behind the scenes. You are encouraged to join the dev server and test whatever you want - feel free to break stuff, it’s a copy of our main world so you don’t need to worry! Thanks to @StealWonders for working hard on the changes behind the scenes.
In terms of the website, further development has taken place in fixing up all the dead links. After that, we’ll have to work on getting search engines to catalogue it. Unfortunately, I (Tobberz) have encountered a bit of a hitch with that, so will work when I can to troubleshoot and solve the issue.
Promotions
Congratulations to @lew_yam11 on his promotion to Builder - our first true promotion in a fair while. Hopefully we’ll see some more soon, both to Builder and above.
Closing
Well, this has been an absolutely gargantuan Newsletter, but that reflects the amount of stuff which has happened over the past few weeks… along with the new picture-heavy Newsletter format. It’s gotta be said, I feel like the new letters won’t be so monotonous now. As I mentioned last time, we are financially very secure, but if you want to donate feel free to - everything which isn’t used goes into reserves for the coming months. Good bye, and happy building!
it makes the news letter more lively!