We’re starting a new sprint next week so we’ve been busy smacking down bugs, finishing up systems, and adding a bit of polish to a variety of things.
We cleaned up and reorganized some of the navigation on the website, added a search field to the right hand nav and fixed a lingering scroll bar issue. Our basic quest system was completed. Players will now be able to gather various goods for money and experience, as well as explore the jungle with a purpose instead of just mindlessly shooting all day. Don’t get us wrong. We expect you to mindlessly shoot a lot. It’s really fun! But sometimes you need to take a break and accomplish an objective.
Speaking of mindless fun, we’ve made a lot of progress on the inventory UI and character models. Drag and drop is now working on almost everything from the inventory. You can apply bandages quickly and easily, but more importantly, the post-apocalyptic dressup portion of our game is complete. Players can now swap out and remove clothing. Many of us consider the ability to shoot boars along the beach in brightly colored shirts and underwear, a milestone.
Work continues on the crafting and cooking system and we’re working on skills as well. We’re putting together our FAQ and buttoned up some of our social APIs. One of our guys learned how hard it was to test out inventory UI in the game when you’ve wandered off the path and are being eaten alive by Trophy Hunter mutants. On the plus side, he got a chance to work out some AI bugs and went to watch Dunkirk, which he highly recommends, when he was done.
We want to focus heavily on group play in the game, and talked at length about the work we’ve done on our party system, and what needs to be done yet. We’d like people to be able to set up groups outside the game and spawn together regardless of whether or not they usually play on the same servers. We talked about what ACLs we’d need for ad hoc parties (like leader promotion and kicking members from the group) and our goal of creating a party messaging system including Voip and shared telemetry information.
Finally, the art folks added a lot of lighting and shadow work to their mountain of blending and texture endeavors. You can see just how good the sun looks now shining through the Communication Tower windows below.
The lighting and shadow upgrades look great outside too. As you can see below, the shadows in the sand and behind plants is looking terrific. The jungle at dusk and in the morning is looking amazing as well. We’ll have a lot more for you soon.
