This week the web team took care of all the remaining bugs discovered with the Friends system, and pushed the fixes to production. However, after some testing they found a few more bugs with the shopping cart. Jared is finishing up a little work on the checkout, and Jesse is tackling a few layout and flow issues. All the problems have been minor, so we hope to have the system up on staging by midweek. Our plan is to make sure the inventory is appearing properly before handing it over to Chris to see if he can break it. If all goes well, the shopping cart will go live on the site next week, just in time for the new t-shirt design Jesse is working on.
San has spent a lot of time hammering and tweaking our security/tactical camera system and it has really paid off. He has it working well enough now that we took a deep dive into its implementation, and possible uses in the future. We discussed the pros and cons of making them a purchasable item, something you have to craft or a combination of the two. We decided that security cameras should be tied to a base and require players to hook them up to a power source, instead of being able to drop spy cams all over the landscape. The team talked about having a limit to the number of cameras a House could have and maybe using a mechanic like character slots for them. There was a discussion about whether or not a camera could be jammed or destroyed, and a number of possible griefer scenarios.
We then moved on to how we’d like to integrate the camera system with the web and notifications. We talked about the need to have a list of usable and active cameras for House leaders and a possible new role for members, the camera monitor. Anyone who’s watched an action movie in the past 30 years knows how important it is to have at least a few security personnel to sit, and ineffectually watch screens before absorbing the first few bullets from an enemy attack. We discussed having a continuous recording and a triggered mode, as well as the ability to search archived camera footage, so you can see who’s been poking around your base. We talked through a camera notification system, because getting a text that the enemies are at the gates so-to-speak sounds cool. Jesse walked through some preliminary ui ideas and we talked about web page integration, with the possibility of being able to move camera field of view from the web.
We’re finishing up work on a lot of systems this week as well. The inventory screen is in the middle of an overhaul with various widgets, item data, and drag-n-drop features getting some final work. The team is wrapping up some loose ends on integrating talents and being able to heal specific body parts. Terry fixed the last of the build issues we ran into, and plans to complete the TruSKY integration that got pushed back because of a new update. Finishing touches are being made to the settings page, and the armor/damage mitigation system is being worked out. The last of the resource gathering work is also being done. You can already beat on trees with an axe until they give up wood, but soon you’ll be able to smash rocks with a pickaxe for minerals as well.
Finally, the tech team showed off the automated building system they’ve been working hard on all sprint, and even though it has a few bugs/issues yet, it is amazing. All you need to do is pick how many stories you want your building to be, and how many rooms it should have, press generate and it constructs a building using a huge library of building assets. The building comes preloaded with loot too. You can: change individual pieces as you wish, add/change windows, doors, and loot, and drag the blueprint into the game when your happy. This week they plan on adding an auto-furnishing feature (Bathrooms get tubs and sinks, kitchens get ovens and refrigerators and so on) and working out a bug that can lead to some maze-like corridors between rooms. We talked about adding some additional degrees of “ruined” other than the three that are built-in currently, and what we’d need to improve before it could be used for base building. As you can see below, Kalani beach has some nice fixer upper opportunities, but if all goes well, the neighborhood will get a little bigger and fully automated in a couple weeks.
That’s everything for now. I’ll be back on Thursday with more updates and the latest screenshots from the art team.
