The web team started off the week with a bunch of refactoring to help clean things up a bit before continuing work on the achievement system. We have the first iteration, with a handful of achievements almost ready to deploy. Jesse is still working on badges and layouts for the final product, and we looked at some wireframe options. In addition to the the new achievements, the web team is giving the front page a facelift.
Jesse is combining the tabbed navigation into one, separated by headers, on the left-hand side of the page. We’re getting rid of the slides, and adjusting the layout of the front page to make room for callouts, contests, and special game announcements. We’ve updated the download tab and talked about different FRV overlays we could make for people streaming the game. Jesse is designing cover art for us to use on all the major social networks, and we’re giving the story page an update as well.
Almost all of our audio is switched over to Wwise, with only a few ambient noises and sound effects needing an upgrade. Terry and crew continue to work on our weather and water issues. We’ve made some good progress on ocean improvements, but we’re still totally trying to make that perfect gnarly wave dude. Our trueSky updates are still a work in progress, and we’ve had some crashing issues on staging that we’re digging into, but the team is hopeful to have Hawaiian blue skies and a variety of clouds overhead very soon.
We’ve made some improvements to the craftable bow in the game, and listened to a few options for the string being pulled before settling on the perfect twang. We’ve updated the spear throwing and thrusting animations to make things just the right amount of stabby. With all the talk about improved throwing animations, we got a bit side-tracked discussing how fun it is to throw things at Jared in the game, the axe and pickaxe in particular. Jesse shared some fond memories of throwing things at Jared, and seeing how far away he could get while still accurately dropping an axe on his head. We got back on track with news of the addition of a few more shark-toothed (leiomano) items for players to pick up, and hack away with.
We’re making a number of improvements to the existing AI in game, focusing specifically on the next tier of ranged AI. Right now players will run into a few Trophy Hunters who throw things, but with Big Bob and the cannibals being included in the map, we’re working on teaching them to shoot. If everything goes as planned, well have some gun toting NPCs running around and shooting up the place by this weekend.
We’re making some ui improvements, adjusting the opacity of menus and updating the tooltip widget inside the inventory screen. The team has circled back to drone improvements, and are focusing on our pathing issues first. We’re updating the eye-in-the-sky with the new map geometry so the camera will hopefully stop its subterranean explorations. We’re adding some art to fuel cans, health kits, and various items to make them less generic and more Hawaiian, as well as building out the areas around the Thorcon Power Plant.
Lastly, as we build out these areas, improving building performance remains a high priority. To aid in that, we’ve started a large decal library to use on virtually any structure. We have a wide variety of stains, cracks, gouges, rust, and moss that can be added to: wood, brick, metal, plaster, and concrete. Below you can see one of our programmatically generated buildings with and without a number of these decals.
