As we begin the final week of Sprint 23, everyone is busy finishing up projects, and hunting down bugs. The web team has upgraded to the latest versions of Webpack and React, and are fixing some lingering layout issues. We’re improving our autocomplete feature to make it a bit smarter, and making some improvements to player/friend search as well.
We completed some more work on the crafting ui, and discussed adding a few more recipes to the already impressive list of apocalyptic arts and crafts projects available to players. The team fixed a bug on the loading screen, and updated the settings ui to make things easier to find, and adjust your game-play preferences. The HUD received some attention with a few new updates to make things less cluttered, and improve your field of view.
We’ve updated the team ui, fixed a few bugs, and included some new functionality into group play. A number of group features were added like messaging and auto-rejoin. In addition, we’re making it easier to find your friends and House members to help you rampage across the countryside, or whatever you’re in to. We’ve adding a few new weapon animations as well. Running a spear through your enemies, or throwing a club at their head has never looked better.
The team made some improvements to our second loot drop scenario. Players can claim buildings to defend against hordes of mutants and other survivors, in order to cash in on the prize when time runs out. We talked some more about the overall game economy, and distribution of loot and wealth. We’re spawning most of our loot in containers and boxes now, instead of just sprinkling weapons and goods across the map, exposed to the elements.
The team is almost finished with lighting and audio improvements in the respawn area, and our Hawaiification work continues with artwork, graffiti, and new furnishings in the underground haven. We have a basic recycling system in place for some items like empty beverage and food containers, and the art team is working on animations for turning trash into a usable resource.
We’ve made some AI improvements that have not only made things more interesting to fight, but have led to a huge increase in performance. We’re replacing many of the birds in the game currently to make those increases even greater. We talked some more about the map, and finalizing a backbone of surviving highways and trails to keep players moving. We want to make sure that players have a reason to travel over the entire map, and not get caught in a bottleneck, or congregate in one area.
Finally our lighting, weather, and foliage work continues to improve performance, and make the landscape look as amazing as possible while you struggle to survive. As you can see from the shots below, endeavoring to persevere has never had a more beautiful backdrop.
We’ll be back later this week with more updates and screenshots.
