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Banging Up Buildings and Working Out Designs

In addition to continuing some minor big fixes left over from our Friends and Family launch, there was a lot of iteration on inventory/crafting screens this week. After playing through the game tutorial ourselves, and listening to feedback from other players, it was apparent that the old screens were too cluttered and confusing to navigate. Jesse’s new designs clear a lot of things up, and make the process of finding or making things much more streamlined. We talked about: removing the character paperdoll completely from the crafting screen, adding a search function, grouping items that can be used to craft others together, including a timer to show you how long crafting will take, and having some quick visual way to compare two items in order to assess which one is best for your needs. In addition, we talked through what a “Trade” screen would look like and what it would need. Jesse also demoed an extra character slot screen, because if you’re like me, you’ll want to try out a couple different character builds.

Our ecommerce work continued this week too. We have a basic shopping cart layout now, and are buttoning up the last of the functionality that we need. We’ve integrated with a fulfillment service, and can now upload images of different types of merch. When you place an order we even collect your address now, something we haven’t been able to do before. Soon you’ll be able to look through different shirt designs in a number of different styles, colors, and sizes, and we’ll know where to send them.

The tech team continued their push to squash any remaining bugs and get things ready to upgrade to UE4.17. They’ve been working on shader changes and better crash reporting. San continued his work on persistence so your game experience won’t so closely resemble the movie “Groundhog Day,” but that led to some crashing issues that we’re still working through. We talked about the need for a dialog box to display errors when they pop up, so you won’t feel in the dark about why things might not be working, and including a bumper video during loading screens.

We worked a lot on the game map this week too. As we talked about last update, we want to make sure that we include the people, places, and things from the storyline, but we also want to ensure that those things are laid out in such a way that it’s fun to play. We’ve made a few changes to the Lahaina shoreline and other areas to show the devastating effect the fracturing of the veils had on the landscape. Buildings, points of interest, and quest hubs have been spread out in such a way as to form choke points in certain spots, and keep players moving through the map instead of collecting in a few areas. I’m sure we’ll make changes as more people play and we see their favorite places to go. What works for 20, is much different than what works for 200 or 2,000.

Finally, with most of the general play bugs squashed for now, the art team pushed forward with work on the Comm Tower, home/building ruins, and interior work on the Thorcon Power Plant. As you can see below, the lobby of the Comm Tower had a great maintenance crew and the onsite gardener did some amazing work before the fracture. We plan on scuffing the place up before we’re done, and ruining some of the flower beds, to show what happens when you don’t weed for 50+ years.

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Speaking of roughing things up a bit, our ruined houses are looking great inside and out. If you’re looking for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, in a 22nd century apocalypse style, we have plenty of options open. To be honest, the school district isn’t very good anymore, and some of the neighbors believe in a shoot first policy, but it’s a buyer’s market. Here’s a couple interior shots of available homes.
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That’s everything for now. We’ll have more updates and art for you next week.