The team did a lot of inventory and crafting work over the weekend, to make sure the arts and crafts scene in post-fracture Lahaina remains vibrant. They added some ui improvements, made some adjustments to the drag and drop between the inventory and crafting screen, and worked through stacking and splitting issues. We added a double press item deletion safeguard to make sure players don’t accidentally destroy an item when they are in a clicking frenzy. The team also expanded the official recipe list with a few new useful creations that will come in handy when exploring the wilds. We took some time to discuss mystery/experimental recipes as well, and how best to encourage players to experiment, and discover how to make things not written down
After finding and fixing a whole new round of weapon attachment bugs, we finally have the situation in hand. Scopes, stabilizers, suppressors, mounts, magazines, sights, and bayonets are all working as they should now. We still need the art team to make a final pass, ensuring that everything looks good, but the mechanics are working well.
With all the add-ons working for weapons, we took some time to make sure there was something worthy to shoot at, and made good progress with creatures and AI. Our creature AI got an upgrade, and we have the first pass at wave/group tactics done. The horrors of the jungle avoid grouping up in tight areas like halls and doorways, they move at angles instead of straight lines, and they make use of cover as the run through the jungle. We discussed making stronger versions of our Trophy Hunters and looked at a number of potential improvements like: ranged attacks, poison, healing, and buffing as well as just making unsually tough or fast individuals.
We continued work on group play, finishing up the ability to heal others in your group. We need to add a little ui polish, and a round of testing, but we’ve worked out all the previous bugs, and have the system up and running. Now your best shooters can stay shooting as you patch them up, and players too hurt to move can get back on their feet in a hurry.
We’ve made some improvements to looting too. The time it takes you to empty a container in now based on its size, (bigger containers take longer to pillage.) We are finishing up the visual effects and map alerts for our loot drops to make sure it’s easy to find where gear and goods have appeared on the map. We want you to spend your time gripped in a life or death struggle for those weapons and resources, not fighting to find them.
Terry is completing documentation for the Git rollover, and finishing setting up the East Coast mirror. We scratched a few longstanding bugs off the list, and started work on drone camera documentation. We looked at some of the improvements and fixes included in UE 4.20 and discussed an upgrade strategy that would give us the most benefit, without chasing down a tsunami of compatibility issues.
Finally, our map rebuild and restoration took a few more steps forward. After a few setbacks last week kept us from pushing the new map to production, we plan on doing it by Friday. All the world map code support is finished, and we continue to fill in the play area section by section. Below you can see the framework of some ruins along the beach, just waiting for an apocalyptic makeover.
Check back later in the week for more updates.
