Greetings, fellow Citizens of Epoch City!
We are thrilled to embark on an exciting new initiative that will bring you closer to the heart of our ever-evolving Big Time universe. This will be the first of a series of Community Updates where we will be sharing insights, sneak peeks, development updates and much more!
First, let’s dive into a quick recap of what’s been happening lately at Big Time:
- We teased one very special character that will send you on an amusing and challenging adventure in patch 0.27👀
- We also teased that new materials and PWs inventories are coming!
- Big Time’s CEO Ari shared an important announcement on our discord server🎉
- We updated our Economy Wiki!
- Also, you are now able to redeem your postcards in Open Loot!
Development Updates
We had a chat with the development team to talk about some features that are being worked on at the moment. Bear in mind that the topics discussed are not guaranteed to appear in the next patch, since sometimes it takes more time to finish polishing the details before releasing them.
Female character & avatar customization
The female character has been in development for a while, but it’s coming! We are targeting this year to release it, since most of the art work is done, we just need to get all of those assets integrated into the game.
The biggest challenge was taking the large amount of male armors and converting them to the female skeleton. Thankfully our Lead Technical Artist, Nelson was able to come up with a semi-automated system to convert many of the meshes. The character art team only needed to make minor changes on top of those automated changes to complete many of the female armor conversions.
We also have broader character customization options such as hair, skin, eye and face/head changing on the roadmap, that will come after we implement the female character. Potentially things like tattoos, scars and face paint would be in there too. We can’t wait for you to see it!
Social features
One of our top requests from players are social features, specifically a Guild System, more chat options, and the ability to Party Up more easily. We couldn’t agree more. These have always been a set of features we have planned for as it is central to facilitating the multiplayer gameplay which is at the heart of our game. Big Time is ultimately best with friends, so we want to make it as easy as possible to find friends and make new ones as you play!
A Party Finder to allow users to more easily find and join groups game-wide, without having to be in the same area is on the near term roadmap and we expect to have an initial version out this year.
A challenge all development teams face is weighing the priority and scheduling of features when compared to all of the other work planned. We have so many ideas, features, and content we are working on, and we have to identify what will be the most impactful for our players (both in short and long term) and get it made.
We want to make sure that players find the most suited party for them according to their level, class and other important factors. The Party Finder will have some advanced search filters, but they may be expanded upon over time. The first step is to get it working as intended, released, and then improve it over time from there.
Regarding a friends list, we are not sure it will arrive in time to be included in Patch 0.27, but it’s on the roadmap. More details will come later!
We are still in the process of designing a Guild System, so we don’t want to share too much as things may change between now and the final released product. However, we can say that we will be adopting best practices in guild designs that we think will make a compelling guild experience which everyone will want to be a part of.
Team Member Spotlight
We want you to get to know our talented team behind Big Time, so in this section we will introduce you to one of our exceptional team members, providing insights into their roles, inspirations, past experiences, challenges they face, and much more.
This time we had a chat with Oscar H. Castro, our Lead Animator!
This is what he told us:
“I was born in Argentina, and my desire to draw and tell stories inspired me to pursue a career in animation. Apart from cinema, I’ve studied manga and anatomy, and I’ve done some illustrations that today are more of a background in my portfolio, but helped me a lot to train my eyes to analyze animation from a more compositional perspective.
My career is a potpourri of things. I had the pleasure of starting it animating horror shorts for HBO’s Fantasmagorias, and working for clients such as Discovery Kids and Netflix. I even was the exclusive animator of the Creature’s Callouts 2019 and 2023 for Worlds League of Legends.
After 3 years doing advertising and freelance (where all deliveries are for yesterday), I was encouraged to jump into video games, and it has been worth every second. There’s something magical about seeing your animations flow with a click. It’s constant, endless polishing work, but one that allows you to manage your own pace, like a marathon.
Keeping a right balance between development and management is one challenge I face daily in my role. Sometimes I’m fully working on new animation features, and sometimes doing a lot of bug fixing, pipeline management, animation feedback, coordination with other leads, etc.
Is all about giving soul to a character, and how to tell its story through actions: WHO is it, not only move it. Sometimes we record ourselves to catch that emotion. After all, we’re the actors behind the computer.
I’m DEEPLY in love with anime, I consume it daily, and that greatly influenced my animation and drawing style. Of course there are a lot of influences here and there, but if I had to choose… I’d say Chrono Cross and Bleach marked me on fire.
I choose to work at Big Time because I fell in love with the core idea behind it. Give the power back to the players, creating a system that allows you to get profit for the time you spent in game and own digital collectibles, which I can relate to by all the hours I spent playing RPG MMOs.
From the art side, I recognized Tom Zhao’s concept art work and really liked that mysterious but simple Journey style. The time-space lore also gave me the chance to animate whatever I want, from dinosaurs, to sci-fi aliens, to tentacle’s horrors! The possibilities are endless! Also half of the team is from Argentina, and that gives me the chance to speak both languages on a daily basis. Part of me feels at home.
It has been 2 years since I joined Big Time, and we’re barely scratching the surface of all the things to develop. It’s beautiful to see the game grow while one works on it, and I’ve great faith in what it can become.
When I’m not working (which I do a lot), I’m watching anime, playing Dungeons & Dragons, beating up in medieval combat, taking up writing, complaining about the Argentine economy, or spending quality time with my friends. Sometimes at the same time.
A fun fact is that sometimes I do funny voices and performances in the team daily meeting to kill that routine monotony. Maybe I’ll act out some for you sometime! Who knows?
We’ll continue pushing forward with the animation team to give you not only the game you want, but the game you deserve!”
Sneak Peeks
We have some exclusive sneak peeks to share as the anticipation for patch 0.27 is building up!
Our forest dungeons are getting an upgrade that will make them look beautiful during the day or during the night. Don’t forget to explore every area!
We have been focusing much of our development efforts finalizing the implementation of our Game Economy. The rollout of our economy will occur in stages. The .27 release will contain critical pieces of the infrastructure we have built, which is necessary to facilitate the subsequent implementation of player-facing items in .28.
Take a look at some exclusive sneak peeks of how the utilities will look in game (but bear in mind that they could still go through upgrades and this may not be the finished version):
Time Warden
Armory
Community Corner
We want to thank you all for being such an amazing community and sharing with us your feedback, ideas and resources. We want to use this section to showcase some of the amazing things that you do.
One frequently asked question: Where are the trainers located?
You’ll find the answer in VIG’s map! Click here 🚀
Do you need an amazing looking character skill guide? Look no further, the Evermore Wardens got you! Click here✨
Duva’s shared this amazing clip that shows us that superheroes do exist in Big Time! 🦸♂️
The streamer of the day is CustomeTV, go follow him on Twitch!
Last but not least, some interesting numbers from the last patch:
Thank you everyone for joining us in our first community update,
See you in the future!
