The team continued the bug hunt this week focusing on fixing several combat-related issues. We nabbed a problem with hit indicators only showing up when hitting a headshot and fixed a bug with compound bow arrows bouncing strangely off the terrain. There’s no doubt that it looked cool but we want players focused on survival not seeing how many times they can skip an arrow. In addition, we added support for shooting at prone, unconscious and crouched targets, made a fix so players can interact with things while reloading, and made it so you can no longer load and fire a weapon at the same time.
We added some movement/UI improvements for players too. We improved toggling for sprinting and crouching. Sneaking and dashing your way through your new life has never been easier. Players can no longer crouch with a broken leg, because ouch, and they can no longer zoom in or lean while climbing. The apocalypse is dangerous enough without you trying to do tricks on a ladder.
The team also started work on testing bots to help us find bugs and improve performance. We implemented equipping weapons for pawn bots, firing guns and bows, melee weapon attacks, and throwing melee weapons. Shortly after we found that they liked throwing weapons so much they would sometimes attempt to throw their resource harvesting shark-toothed pans. Considering the lack of housewares left on the island we fixed the bug right away so players won’t lose their “killets” in the brush.
Our work on improving AI steering and pathing continued as well as drone improvements. Below you can see a video one of our drones captured of a player hunting and harvesting deer.
