The team started the new year with a new sprint, some bug hunting, and a little ui work to existing systems. Jared is tracking down a few bugs in the upcoming timeline view for game stories on the blog. You’ll be able to read the numerous tales about the game world, and key individuals in chronological order very soon. We’re tracking down a unicode bug, and working on decreasing load times to make the page more responsive as well.
We’re adding a new package between “Princess Bernice” and “Makaha” for those of you who want to support the game, and get some cool stuff. Jesse is busy uploading images of all the merchandise and generating 3D images of everything in the store. We ran into a bug that is making images not render occasionally, and are chasing it down. We made a few changes to our all-over t-shirt design and are including our new Paddle Creek Games logo.
Our item spawning system is close to being completed. We’re just making sure all the new loot: skinning knife, axe, pickaxe, grenades, armor, clothing, and various ranged and melee weapons, are loaded and being dropped in the proper areas, at the proper rates. We’re adding some ui improvements to the inventory screen, and introducing some new alerts too. We talked about some new bits of walking audio coming down the pike, which will make it harder for bloodthirsty players, and the horrors of the forest to sneak up on you. In addition, we talked about tweaking some of the sunset colors a bit and increasing walking speed. It turns out Chris has some very specific ideas about slow walks on the beach.
The art team continues working on sectioning the map and adding detail to our large buildings. Despite needing some lighting work and a bit of grunging up, the shot below shows how well the inside of the Thorcon power plant is coming along.
We talked at length about our upcoming real-time game newsfeed feature, and discussed how we’d implement the service. Jesse showed off a few options for “Veil News Network” video overlays and some color options. The team discussed different streaming options and using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). Having put together a nice streaming system over the holidays, Chris has been on a video sharing mission. He’s put together a number of videos working out the kinks in his rig. The video below is from one of his lengthy staring at the water session, where he contemplates the perfect walk along the beach.
That’s it for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates and pictures.
