The team is finishing out the week by focusing on a few ui improvements. Currently, it can be hard to see in the heat of battle what items you have selected or equipped from your inventory. The last thing we want is players mistakenly splashing mutants with a canteen, instead of filling them full of lead. We’re adding improvements to better outline the stuff you want to use. We’re also working on hitmarker improvements so you can line up your shots more accurately, either on the fly, or after a measured exhale.
While Terry and crew continue to manage the UE 4.20.2 and trueSKY upgrade, we made a few improvements to the map. We found some areas are too resource poor for our liking, especially when it comes to metal and minerals. The team is adding more rocks in these areas, allowing players the ability to smash stones until they give up the goods. We also talked at some length about points of interest visibility on the map. We’re making some improvements to better highlight places that are important for quests, might hold valuable loot, are fun to explore, or just act as landmarks and rallying points.
We’re just wrapping up final touches on the next round of mutants to chase players around Lahaina. These gruesome creatures will offer players new types of challenges to overcome, through different tactics and attacks than the Trophy Hunters do now. The group has been focusing on improving ranged AI this week too. We’re improving the tactics employed by ranged attackers like: taking cover between shots, focusing on certain targets, and funneling players into the teeth and claws of waiting melee fighters. After some discussion about what types of mutants would still retain enough of their minds to use complex weapons, we started working on gun tactics for specific creatures.
We’ve been moving all of our audio over to Wwise, and making some improvements as we go. Every area and building has its own specific noises, so those who’ve spent a lot of time exploring could theoretically tell where they were just by listening to the background noises. We’ve made some improvements to reloading sounds, because the noise a shotgun makes while being racked can be a great morale boost before combat, or a warning that something really bad is about to happen. We’ve made some other minor audio changes too, like slightly delaying the sounds of doors, and adjusting the volume of footsteps on different types of surfaces.
One of the biggest projects this week has been making improvements to the loot system. We’re creating all new loot tables based on “regions” on the map. While players have a chance to pick up any kind of loot anywhere, we want certain items to be rare in certain areas, and more plentiful in others. For instance, if you’re looking for shark teeth, you might find them anywhere, but beaches will be the best places to look. The mountains and dense jungle will turn up more harvesting tools and raw resources. Ruined neighborhoods hold more provisions than other areas, and downtown is the place to look for weapons and ammo. We’re also working on adding visual cues to help players see where a loot drop scenario is happening, and adding the same for quests.
Finally, we continue to work on improving performance issues with the Veil Station and our procedural building system. While we’re making progress on turning the station into the future social hub of the game, the team is also building out neighborhoods surrounding the Thorcon Power Plant. We’re still making performance and materials improvements to the automated building system, but as you can see from these shots below, the neighborhoods that we can build on the fly are looking pretty good.
