DEV

Lighting the Night and Making a Perfect Wave

After the holiday weekend, the art team started off the week with a bunch of environmental and audio improvements across Lahaina. We’ve added new sounds to a number of our wild places, as well as areas filled with ruins, and the remains of civilization. The ocean is looking good in the game currently, and we talked about various ways to make it look even better, without going too far down the “realistic wave action” rabbit hole. We want the water to act and look real, but we’re not making a reef diving simulation game.

Our Veil News Network (VNN) drones got a few refinements too. The first pass on the drone HUD is complete, but we plan on organizing the information displayed a bit differently, to make it easier and more intuitive to read. Watching the live stream the camera provides is a great way to see what’s going on across the island, and get a good look at our unique structures and landmarks.

We talked over some potential user flow issues on the upcoming player portal section of the web page. Jesse showed off some new wireframes demonstrating how players would be able to quickly navigate to the more game-important sections of the page. We’re updating to the latest versions of Webpack and React, as well as doing some refactoring work too.

We discussed crafting mechanics at some length this week. How to avoid playing inventory Tetris while crafting, adjusting cool down times, heading off potential abuses, learning recipes, and rewarding players who want to experiment, were all on the table. We worked through a few different resource harvesting issues, and Chris bemoaned the fact that little rocks tend to give the same amount of resources as large ones, when you beat on them with a pickaxe. We plan on adjusting a few things so that big rocks will now produce resources according to their ability, to fulfill player needs.

Our materials and foliage improvements continue, not only to make things look better, but to improve performance. We’re starting a massive foliage review across the island, filling in open spaces to make them look more in line with a world that has been untouched by civilization for decades. We plan on removing some of the old forests, and adding updated plants, with more native species, to make the landscape look more authentic.

Our lighting and weather work moved forward with impressive results this week. We talked about adjusting ambient light levels, and the brightness of the moon and stars at night. The team talked over the problems with making a light bright enough to stand out as a beacon from far away, without making it impossible to sneak around when a player is close. We want some of our large structures to be easily seen at a distance, but we don’t want to eliminate a players ability to stealthily move through the foliage at night.

We are wrapping up the latest pass of detail work in our large buildings. The Veil Station, Thorcon Power Plant, and Communication Tower are all getting some attention. Below you can see the current state of that effort in conjunction with our lighting work. The Communication Tower is looking amazing at night.
Responsive image
Responsive image

That’s all for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates.