Sprint 30 has just begun, but this is the last full week before the holidays, and all the travel they bring. Here’s a look at what we’ve accomplished so far, and what we have planned for the rest of the sprint.
We’ll be focusing a lot of time on our resource and crafting system tier 4. The game will see the addition of scrap metal, and different ores that players will be able to pound out of rocks, including a variety of metals and sulfur. We plan on adding the enigmatic element 127 to the resource gathering loop. The fuel that makes veil travel possible and fuels the Thorcon Power Plant will become an important energy resource, and might add a little zing to crafting recipes down the road.
We continue to work on the design for a craftable device to locate 127 on the map. In addition, we discussed where a player might find the element and ways to balance the risk/reward for carrying large quantities. The team made some campfire improvements as well, and made some stacking adjustments for items players cook-up or craft.
We’ve made a lot of improvements to the live streaming drones flying above our version of Lahaina, and that work will continue in this sprint. Recently the drones have had a ton of improvements ranging from smoother pathing and movements, to different FOV and lighting upgrades, including night vision. They avoid trees and buildings now, and can even follow animals and players, providing the people are doing something to catch their attention. Our goal is to further refine their decision making process allowing us to target certain areas, things, or actions. We’re also working on a new HUD that provides both information for players, and gives off a slightly ominous “all-seeing” vibe to the autonomous cameras.
The team will also continue their AI work, specifically on a general “commander” type, and a unique profile for our beloved mutant cannibal leader, Big Bob. We want to refine the mutant’s group tactics and make them all team players when it comes to tearing players to shreds. We’ve recently added the ability for mutants to know all the cover points in an area, and select the one best suited for them, instead of picking an area at random around them. There’s no sense in running twenty feet away, taking fire the whole time, to hide behind a rock, when there’s a perfectly good shell of a car just a few feet away. We briefly discussed a few unique options and actions for Bob down the road to separate him from other commander type AI’s.
There’s a lot of tech work and upgrades this sprint too. We’ll be doing some MYSQL and persistence work for a wide variety of things including: stat persistence, locations discovered, blocked players, player banks, and quickslot ordering. We’re also working on an in-game crash and bug reporter. Players are a step closer to being able to start putting together a crafting nest egg in the game, as the art and system work is done for player banks. We just need a little backend work for persistence, and the hoarding can begin. We discovered a bug where players would see their own deaths again when spawning near their old corpses. Having to relive your death in your mind is bad enough, but we thought being forced to physically watch it again was excessively cruel and fixed the problem.
Lastly, we continue our work inside and in the areas around the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. We’ll be looking at some concepts for the power plant’s interior before finishing up the the look and the materials inside. We’re working on designs for smelters, interior improvements, and safe zone areas too. While we made some great trueSKY, materials, and foliage improvements across the map already, we plan on making another global lighting and post processing pass this sprint. Here’s a couple of screenshots highlighting how good the lighting and environment is looking currently.
That’s it for now. We’ll be back later this week with more updates.
