The team’s push to make crafting and player inventory improvements continues. We made some improvements to the drag and drop on the crafting screen, and found a bug that was displacing items. Jared is fixing it now. We also have splitting and stacking working well for players who have trouble leaving anything behind that they can fit in their bag.
We’re updating item info on your inventory screen so you can quickly delineate differences in similar looking items. We added some tweaks to icons to make they stand out better, and talked about making them more stylized in the future. Jesse made some layout improvements to mobile, and squashed a few lingering resizing issues.
The web team added some dialog boxes to a few different areas to help players navigate the page. While help tips can be useful the first couple times you navigate a site, we understand how annoying they can be, so we’re adding a setting to disable them too. Jesse has been working on navigation improvements, and we looked at the latest layouts. We discussed some new menu options, and ways to make user flow and experience better.
We’re still working on the bug that has interfered with our Veil News Network (VNN) drone. While that issue is being fixed, we’re moving ahead with a few ui improvements to the HUD. Designed to travel around the play area highlighting points of interest, and capturing action live as it happens, the drone can provide some useful information to players. We want to make sure that information is a clear, and concise as possible.
We continue our performance improvements to our landmark buildings. The Thorcon Power Plant is huge, and a great place to explore, but not if your frame rate is cut in half. The team is adding audio support to these buildings, and we have some new sounds for weapons and players too. It’s not as easy to run through the underbrush without making a sound now, and racking a round into your weapon makes a telltale noise too.
We’ve been testing out our loot drop scenarios to make sure the bugs are all worked out, and so far so good. We have a variety of fun challenges to offer players a chance to pick up some valuable loot until we include some quests. We added some visual cues to help players better see where they have to go to get their rewards, or deliver items to access secret caches.
Lastly, one of the biggest projects for the last couple sprints has been the stripping down, and rebuilding of the old map. We took away everything, and built the game area from the ground up with topographical data of the Lahaina area, all the current roads, and existing structures as a base. We’ve replaced all the foliage for better performance, and to get rid of non-native plants to make it look more authentic. With much of that work now done in staging, we’ve been able to finally push the new map to production.
While we continue to fill it in section by section, we discussed adding a few new areas to explore. We looked at concept drawings for cliff communities, abandoned bunkers, sunken waterfronts, forgotten mines, and other areas perfect for ambushes, and finding loot. The team talked about other places, and buildings we’d like to see down the road, while we make passes adding in plants, buildings, and paths. Below you can see some of the new foliage from a birds eye view, and the mountains from a clearing in the jungle.
