We spent a lot of time this week fine tuning our player construction system and fixing bugs. The team worked through some issues with construction persistence not loading health values properly, and a problem with triangular pieces not playing well with square pieces when putting together your cataclysm cabana. We discovered that foundations and foundation stairs had some overlapping problems making basements less than ideal, and we fixed a bug causing a client side crash when destroying certain walls in a building. We made some audio improvements to the construction process too. Now players can enjoy the soothing sounds of a construction site along with the crashing waves and birds singing in the jungle.
The audio improvements don’t stop with construction pieces however. We worked out a problem with campfire sounds not posting to the correct actors and a great bug that would cause all players to hear the player death UI sound when someone died. While it was funny the first few times, hearing every death on a busy server would drown out all the audio work we’ve done so far, not to mention how creepy it would be. We also fixed the impact sounds made by thrown weapons and objects. Torches and axes now make a satisfying noise when smashed against a head or other object.
Wolves got a new attack sound and we made some improvements to aggro sound attachments to various AI. The terrors of the jungle have never grunted or snarled better. The team fixed an AI clipping bug and we adjusted the number of AI spawned in an area including the small passive creatures that make such adorable targets for our more aggressive players. Deer can now randomly spawn in groups, making collecting meat and skins much easier and wolves can now spawn in groups adding to the number of fangs to avoid while you’re out exploring.
Lastly, with the increase in overall AI and audio improvements to thrown weapons there were a lot of torches tossed on the island this week. While most of these throws weren’t particularly noteworthy, we had a few for the record books. First we have a well placed shot into the mouth of one of the tiki idols making it look like it was enjoying a fine cigar, and better yet a physics bug that created one of the greatest inventions since the fall of civilization, The Lahaina Disco Torch.
