In 1.24 we are releasing a new version of the British starting town Jenny Bay. While developing new content we realized that we had focused most of that content around high-level players. The redesign of Jenny Bay was an effort to offer something more for lower-level players and those new to the game. Our goal was to provide a design that showed an evolution of the town as if it had been built up over time.

We also wanted to improve its playability. A starting town like Jenny Bay should be visually spectacular and capture the imaginations of new players when they see the game for the first time. Players familiar with the old Jenny Bay may recognize landmarks and structures but notice that the architecture is much more impressive now and brimming with life.

Impressive views!

The Environment team has made some adjustments to their techniques over the past few months in both style and design, and boy, does it show! The work that they did for Jenny Bay is just one of the great examples of the culmination of these techniques.

Some of the factors that were taken into consideration in the designing of the town were:

• How to make the town easy to navigate
• How long it should take to get from one area of the town to the next
• How to create distinct visual landmarks and make the town feel lived-in and part of a larger world

All of the accessible rooms are logically placed, the town isn’t so small as to feel cramped but it also does not sprawl on forever, and everywhere you look there is a great view!

Some lively goings-on…

I was very excited to get my hands on this so I could populate the Lively content (those scenes you see in towns with NPCs chatting, listening to music or doing all manner of other things) in all of the new vignettes. I was also involved in the development planning of the town, so I was able to suggest idea to make the design work better for Lively content.

As an example, we discussed how most of our existing Lively content is on the ground level, but there are buildings with multiple stories that just don’t get used. What about having something going on to show that these people have homes and that they actually go home now and then? What the inhabitants of the town would get up to in their day-to-day lives was focused on a lot more, and I think a much more dynamic, interesting, and engaging environment emerged.

More impressive views!

Be sure to look for these new features as you explore Jenny Bay, which will be arriving on Testbed today. We hope you enjoy it!