As we approach the end of the week, the web team is making good progress on finishing up two projects: The Veil News Network (VNN) newsticker, and a table style view of game packages. We’ve fixed some overlap and spacing issues on the ticker, and have completed some styling work to make it more consistent. We plan to have links to live streaming video of news events, and a quick way for you to save pictures to your profile in the near future, but our first pass at VNN work is almost done.
The new game package view is almost wrapped up as well. Jesse showed off the latest color-coded iteration. Each item included in a package will have its own description and icon, making it easy to see what your getting with each purchase. We’re working on the icons currently, and making sure that the layout properly resizes for various screen sizes, and mobile devices.
We talked about upcoming 3d work and water effects to help add a bit of polish to the environment. The team discussed our item spawning system and the current state of the programmatic building system. They are both very close to the point where we can quickly customize playable worlds with any number of: structures/buildings, environmental items like trees and rocks, and loot controls, from what’s inside a warehouse full of crates, to how much food is in a refrigerator.
This led us to a discussion about a few of the large villages/areas we have planned for the future. We talked about the how fun a big village is, and how maddening trying to navigate a huge one can be. The last thing we want to do is create a place where it takes 20 minutes to run through a maze of stairs, ladders, and levels just to get a bottle of water or a handful of bullets.
The first version of our crafting system is fleshed out. There is a sizable list of items players can create to make their time in Lahaina more enjoyable and survivable. You can harvest: stone, cloth, metal, wood, and twine to build a wide array of weapons, armor, and gun parts. We fixed the bug that made the sky fill with wood when you chop down a tree, but discovered that a few rocks refused to give up stone or ore no matter how long you beat on them.
Finally, the art team is focusing on polishing up the entire map grid by grid, adding finishing touches and working out any bugs. We’re making sure that there is something of interest to explore, or a resource to gather in every area, keeping players moving around the entire map. As you can see from the shots below, we are making great progress with our global lighting and post processing work.
That’s all for this week. We’ll be back with more updates and screenshots later.
