As the week comes to an end, the web team continues to work on our achievement system. Jesse is finishing up some wireframes for Jared to hook up and is busy designing badges befitting each achievement. We talked a bit about giving extra rewards to players who join or start Houses, fill out their account profiles, and invite friends. We’re in the midst of a front page update with new navigation and some tweaks to the layout. The team is adding space for callouts, announcements, and contests. Jesse showed off some wireframes and we discussed revamping other sections of the website.
One of those sections getting a new look in the near future is the story page. In addition to offering something fun to read, set inside the game world every few days, the game stories are meant to introduce the people, places, and things that made Lahaina the thriving area it was before the Great Fracture. Through emails, transcripts, and news stories, players can find hints as to what caused the accident that nearly wiped out mankind, learn about places worth investigating, and a little about what happened to those who lived through the cataclysm. The team discussed ways to make that more clear, and how to organize all of that information so it is more useful for players trying to survive, and rebuild civilization.
With the game approaching the point where we’ll invite a few alpha testers to run around and face the terrors of the jungle soon, we’re focusing more heavily on marketing. We discussed a few different contest ideas, and fun ways to get players involved. We’re grabbing more videos of our mutants, weapons, and places, as well as extended gameplay sessions, and Jesse is busy chopping them up for promo videos and GIFs. We posted a brief introduction about us and the game, with a few shots of the island, and some of our concept art, and got some useful feedback.
One of the things we shared was some early animations of Big Bob Abramo, one of the first mutants that we fleshed out. Many of our upcoming creatures are based, at least in part, by Hawaiian mythology, but Bob and his troop of cannibals were born from a number of concept drawings. Once a meat-obsessed restaurateur, and real estate mogul in Lahaina, Bob was twisted by the fracture both mentally and physically. Don’t let his cane or the gout-ridden leg fool you, Bob is still quite limber and quick for his immense size. Cursed with unnaturally long life from their mutations, Bob and his crew of cannibals scour Lahaina for the slow or unwary to devour. Here’s a shot of Big Bob on top of the Communication Tower, running with his signature cane.
Terry and crew have worked through our crashing issues on staging, and are pivoting back to remaining weather and wave work. We have a new drone streaming the game world on our YouTube page, and it should be on the website as soon as we work out a few kinks. We still have to fix some pathing issues, as the drone will occasionally still dip too low or phase through a rock. Jesse is also working on a new standby video to use when we’re experiencing technical difficulties.
Lastly, we looked at some more concept art this week of places and natural features surrounding the Thorcon Plant and the Communication Tower. We discussed adding some natural boundaries in places like rivers, deep ravines, or sheer cliffs, to help funnel players around these areas, and the map in general. We talked about a number of buildings, and special areas that could draw players in and would be fun to explore down the road. We talked about where our ziplines go now, adding more lines over interesting geographical features, and to different locations. That’s it for now. I’ll be back next week with the latest news and updates.
