AI Archives - Page 3 of 9 - Fractured Veil

Inventory and AI Improvements

We say it all the time but player feedback is hugely important to our development process. Many of our decisions and designs are guided with the help of our testers telling us what’s working and what needs some of our attention. This week was no different as we started to work on a few AI improvements.

While we plan out new dungeons and out-of-the-way places to explore, your feedback about our AI is always on our mind. We’ve had a few tests now where the respawn rate became a problem. It seemed like the mutants were popping up almost faster than you could cut them down, depleting ammo and summoning an army of cannibals attracted to the piles of bodies.

We’ve adjusted the default spawn rate of AI in dungeons to a more manageable number that still forces players to move along while exploring but didn’t leave them trapped in the middle of an area with no resources. We fixed a bug too that would interrupt an AI chasing a target if someone was in their path. The mutants will now push you out of the way if you come between them and their meal.

We made a number of inventory improvements as well. We’ve added a message to the HUD when a player’s inventory is filled to the brim. We fixed bugs with the hotbar not updating properly and inventory UI not updating when the menu is closed. Adding an attachment to a weapon got a little easier. Players will find dropping an attachment anywhere on the weapon details panel will now work easily.

With our testers’ help we nabbed quite a few bugs this week. Players loading in can no longer suffer fall or bleed damage. This should address any problems for players who are loading into a base that has been destroyed. We also fixed a bug where a player could shoot or throw projectiles and reload weapons while using an item. We’re all for multitasking but drinking from your canteen while taking a 100 yard shot with your bow and loading your shotgun at once seemed a bit excessive.

Water catchers should be refilling properly once again across the map much to the relief of the thirsty. We added the proper damage resistance to totems so they should be able to take a little more smashing now and we fixed some problems with doors many of you reported. We fixed the invisible door issues some of you discovered and worked out a bug with the door lock UI popping up for players with permissions when opening a door.

You can learn more about the game and get all the latest updates by going to our Discord server or checking out our Steam page.

December 18, 2020

AI, Vendor, and Crafting Updates

We’ve said this before, but we really want to hear from our community. To prove it, this week we spent a lot of dev time fixing bugs found in our test sessions and making improvements based solely on player feedback. After our latest run through the caves, we made some updates to how AI move and how they navigate together. The pathing and grouping improvements should reduce mutant stutter-stepping, and keep them from pushing each other around, getting stuck in tight places, or worst of all getting stuck in walls while navigating places like the caves.

Next, we took a look at recipe and research costs. We introduced our first merchant last week inside the Thorcon Power Plant and after a few days of players giving us feedback about recipe prices and research bench costs we made some tweaks.

Mr. Mixer Head’s (official name still pending) entire inventory has seen a price change. We updated research bench prices, fixed bench UI not working properly, and added messages for learning and failing to learn recipes. We also adjusted the 127 costs of certain recipes and smelter costs to make sure the item/crafting loop is both fun and challenging enough.

We nabbed a number of bugs with the help of our players this week too. We fixed a bug where water would appear in the player inventory when recycling a canteen. We fixed a bug where a player wasn’t able to pickup a barricade, a handful of crafting failures, and an issue with NPC bodies not burning up properly.

Speaking of not burning properly, we discovered it was possible to attach a campfire to the side of a building. In addition to breaking the laws of gravity, it was a problem because if you attached enough the entire area would be covered in a cloud of smoke obscuring anything in the area. We fixed the bug so players can’t make their own fog banks anymore but don’t worry @spitfire we have plans for some sort of smoke machine for your base in the works.

You can learn more about the game and get all the latest updates by going to our Discord server or checking out our Steam page.

November 13, 2020

Player Fixes and Props

A big mahalo to all of our awesome testers for helping us make Fractured Veil better! Here’s a list of everything they suggested during last week’s play session that we’ve fixed or improved.

Zaccsi – No collision on fishing huts.
Aazlor and Zaccsi – Floating grass.
Chests take too long loading inventory.
Steelcrusher – Thorcon door sounds are too loud. Water is too scarce.
Elliot – Fixed bug with drone not being able to see construction buildings.
EspAion – Un/Equipping Ballistic helmet causes game to crash.

If you want to learn more about Fractured Veil head over to our Discord server.

This week the team spent a good amount of time adding props, resources, and buildings to the world. We adjusted the size of water barrels and added more of them to ensure that players aren’t completely reliant on rivers and streams for their hydration. We’ve implemented sign diorama spawning along roads, added lights and traffic lights to some areas, added props to various rooms in the Thorcon and Radio Tower, and placed the Veil Station on the map.

Last week we showed off some shots of our Lahaina cleaning crew, the cannibals. We thought it was only fair to focus on another one of our mutant family this week, so we picked the Trophy Collectors. These guys love throwing diseased body parts, collecting heads, and lurking in ruins. He’s a few shots of them hanging out in their favorite places.

May 22, 2020

Reading the Signs

Our test sessions are a lot of fun! If you’d like to travel to Lahaina in the year 2120 and try out your survival skills while helping us test the game we’d love to have you. Click the link to join our discord and we’ll give you a key and get you set up in the game. In other exciting news, we launched our Steam page. Head over there and check out the latest screenshots, trailers, and news about the game.

We addressed several bugs this week, including a few that we found during one of our play sessions. We fixed issues with the spawning of player-owned items and the removal of spawn beds. Players can now choose their character’s gender and we fixed a “female-only” bug on staging. Rivers will no longer put players in an erroneous swimming state. We finished persistence for totem energy and put a fix in for permission issues when placing a totem.

The team has been working on our diorama system for quite some time now. Our goal is to make the roads, paths, and trails in the game feel as real as possible by including cars, boxes, and the other trappings of a recently collapsed society. This week we added improvements to road foliage, material grunge, and some road decals. We let the grass grow into the streets to give them the right feel and added a few abandoned bus stops along the way. As you can see from the shots below, our work is paying off.

April 24, 2020

Speed Adjustments and Base Upgrades

If you’d like to try out your survival skills and help us test out the game we’d love to have you join one of our testing sessions. Click the link to join our discord and ask in our “testers” channel. We’ll give you a key and get you set up in the game. See you there!

This is the first full week of Sprint 46, and our main focus will be on bugs, usability, and playtest integrations. The big features this sprint will be the player construction system, world map updates, onboarding, and steam friends.

A number of bugs were fixed this week including foundation stairs ignoring collision checks, construction pieces not being recyclable, a problem with players able to build stairs through totems and totems not always updating proper claims. The best bug award, however, goes to an issue we ran into with our dead AI practicing social distancing and moving out of the way of living AI. We cleared it up so the quick and the dead are clearly delineated again.

The team updated wood meshes, imported metal wall meshes, and updated the decay system for new formulas and materials. We adjusted the time it takes a body to attract cannibals, updated the attack range of our traditional Hawaiian melee weapons, and increased the damage done by your starting weapon, the shark-toothed “Killet.” We increased your base walking speed, the max initial speed of arrows, and made sure that our wolves could outrun players in a straight line. The game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant, recently got a little polish and attention. Players will be spending a lot of time inside the old plant and as you can see below it is looking better than ever.

April 17, 2020

Loot and Danger Zones

We’d love for you to test your survival skills in our version of West Maui and help us make the game better while fighting the horrors of the jungle. If you’d like to join one of our testing sessions just join our discord and ask in our “testers” channel. See you there!

We got things started this week with several AI improvements and fixes. We increased the sight and sound aggro distance of passive AI by a factor of 2 to make them harder to sneak past, and fixed an issue that would find AI moving in a single file line when moving towards a shared enemy. A few bugs that would cause mutants to get stuck in doorways and unable to move on stairs were fixed.

We also turned our eyes this week to the Thorcon Power Plant. With our weekly testing sessions in full swing, the game’s social hub and some group features received some attention. We added accept/reject/cancel invite, add/remove friend, and block/unblock player as well as updated UI widgets to the new friend system. We increased the damage done by the game’s starting weapon/harvesting tool, the shark-toothed pan, better known as the Killet, to make it more useful to players who wander into danger before crafting or finding a weapon with more bite.

There’s no doubt that a more lethally seasoned pan is cool but the most exciting feature this week are the zones we’ve built around the Thorcon. Currently there are 4 different loot and AI zones radiating out from the power plant. Zone one is the area nearest the Thorcon. The loot isn’t great but the AI is relatively easy to kill. The farther away you get the better the loot and the challenge. Zone four has all the things that will make you the envy of post-apocalyptic Lahaina, and the deadliest opponents on the island like bears and our mutant overlord Big Bob.

Here’s a few shots of the Thorcon after getting a little polish this week.

April 10, 2020

Weapon Paint Overs and Mutant Steering

Would you like to run around the wilds of Lahaina, build bases, shoot mutants, and help us work out the kinks? We’d love to have you in one of our testing sessions. Just join our discord and ask in our “testers” channel. See you there!

As sprint 45 winds down and the team adjusts to working from home, we continue our push to refine the player construction system. We added torch attachments outside of windows offering plenty of light to deter bandits, introduced sleeping bags for an authentic end-of-the-world slumber party feel, and added weapon damage and decay modifiers to construction pieces. Many bugs were fixed this week too. We corrected issues with some construction attachments showing 0 health when they were full, arrows not dealing damage to pieces, and a problem with pieces not rotating properly when placed. We squashed a bug that was keeping rivers from being intractable as well. Players can now build bridges and drink their fill from Lahaina’s pristine creeks and rivers.

We also worked out a few kinks with the island’s mutant population this week. We discovered that the AI spawn managers were spawning one additional AI beyond the intended maximum across the map and spawning huge groups near the shoreline. We love a bloody beach as much as anyone but there were so many mutants there that you barely had room to lay down a towel after combat. The team worked out some navigation issues keeping AI from going up and down stairs or going through doorways and corrected Big Bob’s charge attack. Nothing is sadder than a mutant overlord reduced to simply plodding into combat.

With more mobile opponents here, we’ve been working on some weapon paint overs with some great results. Below you can see our touch on the Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle. We’re particularly fond of the design work on the SCAR’s stock.

April 3, 2020

The Bridges of Maui County

A new sprint has started and for the next month we’ll be focusing on performance, usability, and playtest integrations. We’ll also spend some time finishing up the player construction system, AI sieging, the diorama system and integrating steam friends and player surveys to help us gather feedback.

Things got started with some AI fixes. We discovered an issue with AI being unable to hit a totem if it was covered in foliage and a problem with melee AI getting stuck in place if they had a constructed wall blocking their path. Both are fixed now, making the mutants properly dangerous to your base. We also tweaked the amount of resources players get from trees slightly and the cost of a few basic items.

Most of our work this week, however, went into the doors in the construction system. We fixed some air gap issues and a bug with doors not playing the closing sound when auto-closing. We discovered that construction doors were not taking damage from bullets, and players could go straight through them by walking backward. Both aren’t physical qualities that you’d normally expect from a door, and since the fractured world we built is filled with enough of the unexpected already we fixed the bugs.

After fixing the door madness we needed to get out in the jungle and focus on structures with a bit more of an open feel. Below you can see a beautiful stone bridge we built across a stream. As you can see our stone material is looking great.

March 17, 2020

Stone Walls and Siege Improvements

With sprint 44 coming to an end this week, we’ve been focusing on nabbing bugs and adding a bit of polish to existing systems. The team has added new upgrade and repair tools so players can fix their damaged buildings in style. We also created new loot tables, groups, and container assets so the loot can flow across Lahaina.

Many AI improvements were made this week as well. We fixed bugs that would cause AI to ignore open paths when sieging a base, ignore a base’s totem if they were standing too close to it, and a bunching problem that would cause Trophy Collectors to pile up in doorways and get stuck. We adjusted the maximum AI counts that could occupy a base and a system for despawning AI after a totem is destroyed and there are no players nearby. Everyone knows that company, fish, and mutants begin to smell after a few days.

Of course, the player construction system remains a major focus and we made a number of upgrades and material improvements since the last update. We fixed bugs with glass not scaling properly in thatch windows, full walls snapping to half-wall only slots, and stairs not properly persisting which made building a second floor a dangerous endeavor. We made rounded walls easier to place, added placed torches to the system giving your base warm lighting, and added missing sounds to all construction pieces. Lastly, we added stone meshes to the system so players have a third construction material option now including thatch and wood. Below you can see what the stone building materials looks like currently.

March 6, 2020

Building Better Explosions

We started the week off by fixing some bugs with the player construction system. We corrected a problem where building foundations could be placed overlapping other existing building objects and fixed a bug with half and third wall icons being inverted. The team also improved how the Siege Manager tracks how long a base has gone without a siege. We want to make sure defending your base is fun and something players have to take into account when building with friends.

One of our most beloved remnants of civilization got some attention recently too. For quite a while the explosive barrels/cans that dot the landscape have been a favorite. When we discovered that they weren’t dealing damage we put in a fix right away, and we added a few new features. We doubled their damage radius and multiplied the amount of damage they do to AI. Best of all we’re creating a force applier in a radius around them that will send items flying when they explode. Soon you’ll be able to watch all sorts of things surf the pressure waves after you blow up fuel containers.

The party indicator will show the health of a player in a percentage now, and medical issues will display next to their names. We made a new crafting timer and fixed a couple of audio bugs. Shotgun reloads can be heard again, and we fixed a problem where torch sounds will continue to play for others after a player was killed. Lastly, we have a preview of one of the unique weapons we’ve been working on, the totem speargun. As you can see below it’s one of the best-looking ways to shoot a bolt into your enemy.

February 28, 2020

Tag: AI