The team is finishing out the week with expanding the options for player talents. A dozen new options were added to help players forge their characters into better crafters, hunters, medics, or a wide range of other roles. Adding the new talents exposed a few ui bugs that we still need to work through, but we hope to get them fixed soon. We’ll be spending the weekend play testing the new talents to make sure their balanced too.
Inventory work continues as well. We’re still updating attachments and working through alerts. Tactical lights, bayonets, and scopes are just on the horizon. The team is finishing up item info for crafting and recycling, so you get some idea about how to build basic items, and what an item might break down into.
The web team kept chipping away at issues with the timeline view on the story page. Searching for a specific tag, and selecting stories by dragging the pointer along the timeline are both working now. New admin tools ha been added to the web page to make a few things easier for us, and we addressed a bug on the Friends page too. We talked about some potential layout issues with the upcoming settings page, and worked through some navigation questions as well.
Our latest iterations of a map and compass tool are done, and waiting for an art pass. It may not be as good as a car GPS, but players should be able to navigate the wilds of Lahaina without having to stop and ask the cannibalistic menehune for directions anymore.
Jesse and Jared are still plugging away at House and player customization. They’ve done some ui work to make House and player fields consistent. We’re adding a search feature on the House menu to help players find their friends, and are moving house settings to the side navigation to clear up some space. Jesse continued his work on making an easy to use automated color scheme system. When it’s finished you’ll be able to choose a couple colors, and let the system put together a great looking color theme for you. You’ll also be able to coordinate colors for all the different roles in your House, choose banners, and upload images.
Animations for a few weapons and swimming should be done by the weekend, so players won’t travel through the water like they’re strapped to the head of a painfully slow torpedo anymore. We looked at a few different body armor options, and discussed not only what we liked, but what might reasonably be available in a post fracture Lahaina. Our new underground start location should be in by the weekend to protect respawning characters. We want to avoid players being ganked while they load, and near immortal bullet sponges, that keep appearing in combat just long enough to act as a meat shield for their friends. We plan on doing some PVP testing to help dial in the armor, and make sure the new respawn area is working as intended.
Finally, this week will see the last of the work on the Thorcon power plant and large Veil Station, before we place them in the game. While there has been a lot of time put into adding detail to the interiors over the past few weeks, the Thorcon got some polish to the outside recently as you can see below.
I’ll be back next week with more updates.
