DEV

Building a Social Hub and Hunting Bugs

Nearing the end of the week and the current sprint, the team is focused on fixing as many bugs as possible, and adding some last minute polish to already existing systems. We uncovered a number of bugs and pain points while running around the wilds of Lahaina that have been resolved.

We fixed a bug with the bow playing whizzing sounds at incorrect distances and angles. The bow no longer will get stuck in the fatigued state, which was making shooting arrows difficult to say the least. We found that sometimes our aiming down site (ADS) transition animations were unreasonably slow after sprinting. Chances are you’re going to need to aim as quickly as you can after running away from the things lurking in the jungle’s dark places. We discovered that some of our harvesting and impact sounds were overlapping and cancelling each other out. This made it theoretically possible that a player wouldn’t hear a fight if they were harvesting wood. Lastly, we fixed a bug that would cause a party leader to get stuck when putting together a team, which was less than ideal for group play.

In addition to fixing all those bugs, we tweaked a few things and made some improvements to make game play more enjoyable. The team smoothed out the homemade bow pull back and undraw animation sequences as well as improved some un-nocking animations. We added proper attenuation to a number of weapon sounds. The team updated building meshes with proper inversions, collision and simplifications to improve performance and address the multiple stuck door issues we’ve had. Doors are now swinging freely from the little rundown shacks on the beach, to the gigantic social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. We also added more rocks throughout the game to help bump up the number of available resources for players to harvest.

The web team is busy finishing up their sprint work too. The new navigation on the front page is done and we’re nabbing any bugs as they appear. Jesse is completing work on front page callout/announcement slide templates, that we can use for future contests, events, and game messages. We’re working on a number of messaging initiatives to help clearly explain how our Houses work, as well as the referral system. We also discussed where we could use some tooltips, and incorporating a general site search feature on the front page.

With our trueSKY issues (mostly) fixed, and having a sky above Maui again, we looked at our day/night cycle, and briefly discussed the pros and cons of adjusting the length of our days. The art team is busy working on the art for the new banking system which will allow players a private and secure extension of their inventory to stash away goodies, crafting components, and any junk they can’t part with but is too heavy to carry. We talked a little more about all the neat places we could put these banks since we don’t need to include a drive up window. The team made some improvements to our AI by adding a fleeing module that will allow NPCs to flee to a location that offers cover if they’re being peppered by the slings and arrows of outrageous players.

We looked at a number of concept drawings of the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. The art team put together a number of possible options for the reactor room and other places inside complete with: living quarters, stands offering food, water, and gear for the right price, and differing amounts of people seeking shelter, and shady characters. Their work was not limited to the interior of the massive building however. One of their goals this sprint was to fill out the areas surrounding the plant with interesting places to loot and explore. Below is one of these places, an abandoned farm with the remnants of an irrigation pipe running through it, a barn that is still standing for shelter, and numerous chickens for those quick enough to scoop one up.
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That’s all for now. Check back the beginning of next week for the latest updates.