Icecreamassassin

Odyssey Developer's Journal #8 - Burnout is a B----

Coming August 19th we are releasing a new developer feature video on Creation Mod Con 2023's live stream! (details below) along with a live Q&A after the video with me. This video will highlight some new and old content and give a broader feel for what is coming in Odyssey of the Dragonborn Act 1 and give you a chance to throw out a few questions during the stream.

This road has been a long and hard one to be sure. We've been met with challenges and setbacks in the project and in re...

Odyssey Developer's Journal #7 - lemons?

If life gives you lemons you are supposed to make lemonade right? Well what if life takes the lemons and stomps on them and then pours the sugar in your gas tank? Life has a great way of laying it on thick and 2023 has certainly taken a "hold my beer" approach to seeking 2020's title of crappiest year, but we press onward.

This quarter has been very slow progress due to a lot of real life challenges with various team members. We continue to make some progress but with people being SWAMP...

Odyssey Developer's Journal #6 - end of year address

So it's that time again, another year older and deeper ... into Odyssey. But hey that's a good thing! Since the last developer's journal I have been absolutely ON FIRE with main quest implementation and development. I have managed to get half way through the 10 major quest arc sections of the Act 1 main quest in just 6 weeks! Strike while the iron is hot as they say.

I've managed to trudge my way waist deep into elaborate quests with complicated handlers and new proprietary mechanics no...

Odyssey Developer's Journal #5

The time has finally come to tie together the old with the new. I have officially begun implementation of the main quest of Odyssey Act 1!

After a period of coordination and working to get a few people rolling on side quest implementation I turned to finally cleaning up the remaining elements of the main quests for Act 1. I had long been dreading approaching the major scenario that goes down in the town of Black head for literally years. I finally took a deep breath, rolled up the sleev...

Odyssey Developer's journal #4

So after a bit of a hiatus this summer due to a combination of various members having real life stuff to deal with and a bit of feeling overwhelmed with single handed quest implementation, we are finally back at it again! We added a new member to the team which fills one of the holy grail roles I've needed for awhile; armor/creature rigger. The Mithril Armor is now fully implemented (ignore minor clipping in the pic above, that's already been corrected) as well as several other items that wer...

Odyssey Developer's journal #3

These last few weeks have been pretty busy, sadly not on the modding front but rather the "end of school year" front. My son Kaden (who was the voice actor for Henry in Legacy) graduated High school (!!!) and we've been rather busy with all those festivities and arrangements for various things. My second son also just finished middle school and will be entering High school himself next year; so out with one, and in with the other it seems. The start of summer tends to also be a time of transi...

Odyssey Developer's Journal #2

A busy day at the harbor of Gallomarket. With recent events in Balfiera routing more ship traffic through the already bustling port city, the dock hands hurriedly work to ensure that all things in the harbor are up to snuff. There are many adventures to be had.

Working the last couple weeks on two particularly challenging quests implementation wise resulted in me hitting a bit of a "limit break" personally. With the stress of some business challenges and RL stuff along with being the so...

Odyssey Developer's Journal #1

So in an effort to engage more with Patreon supporters and to give generalized development updates as we progress towards the finish line on Odyssey Act 1, I have decided to try my damnedest to do a periodic developer journal to update folks about where we are at and what I am currently working on. Additionally it will also hopefully have the effect of keeping me motivated in tough periods. So without further ado, here we go.

Currently I am on a desert island of implementation, where th...

Updates and such

So just a quick drop in to let folks know how things are going in the world of the Legacy team. Firstly as always I want to thank all those who continue to support the project either financially, with support or as part of the development team. It all means the world to me.

Firstly a reminder that Legacy of the Dragonborn merch is still available on the Arcadiam Games web-store: https://arcadiam-games.myshopify.co...

From Ruins to Renewal

This has been one hell of a year to weather. Heck it's been insufferable weather as well. We thought 2020 was a tough year and then 2021 said "hold my beer". 

This year has absolutely pummeled our team with a veritable grapeshot of challenges. With the removal of Ic0n from the team, Pickysaurus having to step back from a lead role due to RMI (repetitive motion injury) concerns with constant keyboard and mouse usage for both work and the project, Sirjesto's current challenges that h...

Banners are here!

These nifty replica museum banners are printed on poly-vinyl fabric, top stitched for a banner rod (not included) and have a hand glued (by me) gold trim. These fancy-schmancy banners will proudly show that you are one of the top tier supporters of my works and a die hard fan of Legacy of the Dragonborn. A limited number of these banners are available at the moment but more can be produced if the need arises. Of course like the other reward items, these banners will be available on our merch ...

Cheers! Wine glasses and Museum banner in stock!

Another wave of thank you gifts has arrived and this time it's the etched wine glasses and the poly fabric museum gallery banners. I have a final little touch to put on the banners before taking a pic but they look really freaking cool. I think my 1996 DeCaprio Romeo and Juliet movie poster may have to come down (hey come on, it was my first date with my wife back in high school alright? lol).

Also if you can't afford to support at a higher level but you want a higher level gift, if you...

Patreon gifts available!

Mugs, Stickers and leather journal Patreon rewards are now in stock and ready to ship! Additionally we have products available for sale on our e-store page hosted by Chibi Chop Shop (my wife's and I's online store, the other thing I do with all my time lol). If you aren't a Patreon supporter but would like cool Legacy merch or just want to support for 1 month instead of a sustained repeating support level, you can get the same reward items at the price of one month of the Patreon level that w...

On the road again

Legacy V5 development is in full swing and I have a long belated update report so folks can see where I'm at and what we have going. Still hoping for a playtest launch by the end of the month and debugging finalization for release by the end of August. Fingers crossed.

Been awhile - Ideas still simmering

I know it's been a bit since an update, believe me, it's been well worth the silence as I've been focusing on development of Legacy V5 and making some headway again finally. Both Picky and myself have hit a slump over the last couple months but lucky some others on the team including some Odyssey team members have stepped up to help with a few tasks and I've been able to focus on the daunting quest re-builds and am making good progress. We are hoping by the end of June to be near testing read...

More help on board!

Just a quick announcement today that Trent Moriarty (http://www.trentmoriarty.com/) the amazing composer who wrote the score for the wildly popular "Forgotten City" Skyrim mod, has just joined the Odyssey team! Expect to hear a few awesome tracks initially in Act 1, with the plan being to turn over entire acts for him to dig in and find that oh so important musical theme that underlies everything in a great story mod. He's...

Team Odyssey - a year in review

This is a link to an article on my Mod Blog "Voodoo and Chicken Wire" about the progress of the Odyssey project. We have made some amazing strides in less than a year of hard core work, something we should be very excited about, but now with the holidays at hand, we should coast along and relax a bit before jumping back in full force in the new year. 

Remaking the past...

As Odyssey continues its development we have been struggling with the inadequacies of the old LE creation kit and are on the verge of stretching it to its limit. As such we decided awhile back that Act 1 of Odyssey would be the only act made available on both LE and SE before finally migrating to SE once and for all. As such Act 1 would be a teaser and incentive for folks to make the change to SE.

As if this weren't enough Picky and I have decided to do a massive overhaul of the Legacy museum ...

Gambling comes to Skyrim... or Balfiera anyway

So I have always wanted Skyrim to have some immersive mini games like card games, dice, knife throwing, pie eating, whatever so....

I spent the last two days doing the most absurdly small and menial task: make a dice that actually rolls (check; thanks Highever Rains), and make it calculate the resulting roll and in a real, interactive way! You Z grab any of the 3 dice, lift it up and drop it onto the table. The other two pop up there with it and they all fall randomly into the table and add up...

The return of Mithril to Tamriel

Awhile back we began discussion on the Odyssey server about design concepts for Mithril weapons and we quickly landed upon a wave/air theme/ Xilefenko jumped to creating the awesome concept art that I previously shared and then milled out the base models in record time. He then handed over the mesh files to me and I dove in head first into a new era of Icecreamassassin texturing. Using Blender to touch up, prep and UV map the models, Photoshop to lay down the textures and CrazyBump to create the...

Special thanks and input request

I just wanted to take a moment and thank all of those dedicated supporters who are continuing to help me to pursue all these amazing projects. I couldn't do it without your help. I also wanted to welcome all the new patrons who joined in the last month, making this month the largest growth of number of patrons yet! Thanks for joining!

Additionally I wanted to shine the light on my top 5 all time supporters who are a major force in helping me to make goals and attribute dedicated time to th...

E3 Odyssey Trailer! (kinda)

It’s E3 again, and that means it’s a time for big announcements in the gaming world and while we may not be at E3, we do have an equally big announcement for you. It has been a long road so far, but today I am proud to announce the first teaser trailer for Odyssey of the Dragonborn Act 1 and unlike some other E3 TES teasers I could mention, you will absolutely know where this story is taking place. So without further ado, I present the world of Balfiera, land of the D...

Awesomeness of Mithril

So one of the unique things being brought back for Act 1 of Odyssey is Mithril, which Balfiera is a very rich source of, allowing you to find within the depths of the darkest caves and ruins or within the Direnni Darkstone Mine. Mithril is a mythic metal that is stronger than glass but weaker than Stalhrim yet affords more power when enchanted allowing weapon and armor enchantments to be more powerful than with other metals when enchanted at the same skill level.

The above concepts were develo...

Progress, ever onward

Sorry again for the extended radio silence. I suppose that it's a consolation to know that I am putting that time to good use building this world and drive ever closer to the goal of the release of Act 1 of Odyssey of the Dragonborn. The mod blog article linked here will give you some awesome screen shots from over the last couple months and you'll see that the world is just about done being built. We still have a lot of work to go, but we're getting there in a very real way now. 

I want ...

Odyssey Progress Report March 2018

The link to my mod blog article says it all. You've asked for more pics, well here are some. We are making huge strides and your support has helped a lot from expanding storage on the project G-drive, to paying for extra features on Trello and more. Your help really does make a difference, and I thank you all once again.

WEZ HAS MAPZ!

let's face it, that thing can be seen from space, and why not? That's probably how the divines intended it. It is the lynch pin of creation after all.

And as Auryen might say: And here it stands in all its splendor, Ada Mantia, the Direnni Tower, the Adamantine spire, point of convention, the fall of the Doom drum... amongst .... many other titles.

Thanks to Sheeson's new version of xLODEdit, I finally have managed to get really solid LOD working and am well on the way to making this pla...

A world is reborn

After a great deal of work, I finally feel as though the world of Balfiera is once again taking shape. Over the last couple months the team has pulled together and the project has seen weekly planning meetings on Discord to develop the story in ever greater detail. My previous note spoke of my efforts to completely scrap the old incarnation of Balfiera and begin building anew on a much larger scale, rendering the entire archipelago of islands. So far the main island is taking form quite well, an...

New world taking shape

So I've delved into a new direction with Odyssey Act 1 and decided to reduce the size of the main island and create the entire island chain instead. This process ultimately I think will result in a better end result and frankly a faster more compartmentalized development. I have never been happy with how elevated and how large the original worldspace we made was, so I spent the last few days height map sculpting the above Iliac bay, after tracing the world map right on screen from inside a copy ...

I'm not dead yet!

Just wanted to assure folks I am in fact alive :) This summer has been insanely busy for me, and things have started to finally slow back down after a major household renovation (of which I have done a massive portion of myself). This winter I will be in a new room of the house getting real daylight and views of trees as compared to my current basement dweller computer station. This change of environment will be a big plus for getting those creative juices going again.

Over the last few weeks ...

Keeping in touch

Just a little update as I have not been around much the last several weeks. I have been neck deep in a major renovation at home and so have not had much time for the projects I love but I wanted to thank everyone for their continued support during this time and for all those donations that have been trickling in since V19 went live. I greatly appreciate it.

I am currently working on building a workshop from the ground up this week and will be finally getting around to finalizing the interior o...