This week marks the end of sprint 22, and the team is busy adding finishing touches and hunting down bugs. We talked over issues with the live VNN feed and discussed what features we’d like to add next. We’re building out a “Live Feed” area in the Media section, and Jesse showed off some wireframes for different feeds and options. We worked on user flow for both House and player streams, and worked on a few different stream overlays as well.
We made a few more ui improvements to the HUD, and the Settings section. We fixed a few minor icon issues in the inventory screen, and we discussed the possibility of allowing players to access their inventory on the web page. The team discussed what that would entail, and to what degree a player would be able to do things with their items while not in the game. We also made a first pass at our ingame currency, rai, and talked about different ways players could find/earn rai in the game. Game economies are a tricky thing to get right. We talked about the flow of resources, and how that interplays with money. The last thing we want to create is an artificial shark tooth bubble on the island, and have the whole market collapse.
We made a bunch of animation improvements too. A bug that would keep a player trapped in a calf and shoulder burning ladder-limbo has been fixed, so players should be able to climb up and down with ease. We added numerous other player and weapon movements, and are fixing long-standing issues with how iron sights work. We’re adding an audio cue when an item breaks, so you don’t charge into combat with a broken machete, or a gun with a heat-warped barrel.
The art team continues work on the newly improved respawning area. As you can see from the shots below, players now have a bit more room to run around when coming back from the dead.
Jared did a bit of maintenance and is hunting down a few bugs in the shopping cart. We added improvements to a House theme editor, and did a bit of ui work to player and House cards. We started work on a “Party” section on the Community page for group play. The team talked about easy ways a player could let his friends know that they were available to play, and simple ways to invite others into a group.
Numerous performance and material improvements continue with really good progress, as well as AI improvements to animals and creatures alike. We want to make sure the horrors of the jungle act in horrific ways. Lastly, all the lighting and environmental work we’ve done is really paying off, as you can see in this shot of a dock, and the crystal clear water below.
That’s all for now. We’ll be back later in the week with more updates.
