This week the team remained focused on filming our trailer and improving some of our automated systems. We’ve added many personal touches to the numerous ruins that dot the landscape to help indirectly tell the story of the people who once lived in Lahaina and the world before the Fracture. In addition, we began work on the building system that players will use down the road to make their own structures. We have a good amount of work ahead of us before players will be able to build their own apocalypse dream homes, but we’ve been working on textures and designs. Here’s a look at what thatched building materials might look like inside and out.
As usual, there were several bugs to fix this week too. We nabbed a bug with container widgets not showing item descriptions and addressed an issue where the torch VFX were sometimes not showing up if a player already had another item in their hand. The best bug of the week, however, has to go to one that saw players falling through the Earth when spawning. We fixed the bug right away although for some of us it seemed like a lost opportunity to wait 84 mins and 24 secs to see if players would come out the other side of the planet and then fall back through to Maui.
We’ve talked a lot about our procedural building and road systems but we’re also working on a water system to generate rivers, creeks, and streams across the map. In addition to other environmental cues and features like cliffs and smoke, rivers not only give players access to much-needed water but can act as a natural funnel to get players moving around the map. Below is a look at a couple of these water features around the area we are shooting the trailer.
