This is the first full week of sprint 29 and the team fixed a number of bugs while finishing up some polish work over the weekend. Some of this work led to a number of temporary hitches that were just too good not to share. First, for a short period of time the Lahaina beach disappeared and the landscape offered all the proof a flat Earther needed to confirm their beliefs. Soon after, we were making a lighting update when we were suddenly veiled to night vision world. While everyone agreed that it looked kind of cool, ultimately everything was a bit too green for our liking.
We went to Imgur with another post about building the world and the structures in it. We discussed how we’ve tried to balance making the island lush enough to show what nature will do if left on its own for 60+ years, and still make players feel isolated and abandoned. We talked about how much time we’ve spent making an atmospheric system that lets us experiment with apocalyptic overtones to add a bit of dread to the normally cheery Lahaina. The team got a lot of good feedback, but we’d love to hear more of your thoughts and comments. Someone is almost always around to answer any questions and listen to your suggestions on our discord. Head on over and let us know what you think.
Our ongoing AI work continues in sprint 29. We’re improving our cover generation system so our mutants don’t stand in front of a wall of bullets when encountering a group. They’ll zig and zag instead of running in easy to hit straight lines, sorry no combat rolls yet, and ranged attackers will do their best to herd players in easy to claw groups. We’re adding a new “Alpha” AI for Big Bob allowing him to command other mutants to do his bidding while he shuffles into combat.
We’ve begun the third tier of our crafting and resource gathering system. Players will be able to skin animals and gather leather now, as well as find the volatile element 127 and convert it into energy to power equipment. While the fuel that powers the Thorcon Power Plant and made Veil travel possible is rare and dangerous, it might give a little kick to certain crafting recipes down the road. We’re adding more recipes for craftable gear and are taking a thorough look at resource availability. In addition to providing players with necessary ingredients, we want harvesting resources to help drive players around the map and encourage them to explore new areas.
One of the biggest areas of focus this sprint is going to be improving the camera drones that fly around the island filming what’s going on. We’re going to be doing some advanced movement work, and add audio recognition so they can detect things like a battle, and move towards it to capture the action. We have a lot of HUD improvements planned for the drones too, giving them a more authoritarian feel while still providing location details.
Speaking of drones, an interview we did with PCGamesN magazine recently digs into our work on the game’s eyes in the sky. We talked about what goes into making the autonomous drones work in the game and our plans for their future. Down the road we’d like to have a number of them, each with their own specialty and directorial eye, capturing and streaming all aspects of the game including: combat, wildlife, and social interactions. Check out the interview and learn more about our plans for the automated cinematographers here.
