alerts Archives - Fractured Veil

Videos and Voices

To get the week started we had a lengthy conversation about game videos. We have some landscape and test footage, as well as a few bloopers, but we need to make quite a few more. We looked at what we already have in the folder, and talked about what aspects of the game we wanted to highlight. Putting on their editor hats, Jesse and company are working on a few more videos, and cutting them up to make GIFs. We’ve already shared the “Can Gun” video from a few weeks ago, with most people expressing interest in having it as a weapon option in the game, and wondering how many beans a second it could fire.

We briefly discussed which one of us had the most pleasing voice for doing voice overs, and came to a consensus rather quickly, avoiding a lengthy reality-talent-show-like process. In addition to the GIFs and videos, we talked about creating websites for the larger ingame companies like: Manimal, Duracave, and SSHAM, and what we’d like those sites to look like, and offer players.

We made a few play improvements recently too. We adjusted hitmarkers to make them easier to use, made some enhancements to points of interest visibility on the map, and have a brighter, more noticeable beam showing the location of loot drops in the game. We discussed the possibility of including a basic melee weapon, like a club or rock, in the player inventory when they spawn, so they always have something to defend themselves with. The led to a conversation about punching your way out of, or into trouble, in the game. Chris lamented the lack of a punching option, for when you’ve run out of ammo, and want to feel like flailing your arms around will help.

Jared is finishing up the last round of improvements to the email and notification system, as well as the settings options necessary to support them. We talked about setting up a RSS feed to add to the forums and our Discord channel. We continued work on building out an achievement system, both for the game and the web page. Jesse is currently working on layouts and designing badges while we compile a list of achievement worthy activities like: joining a house, inviting a friend, or filling out your profile.

Terry and crew continue our march towards the upgrade to UE 4.20.2, but the audio transition to Wwise is done, and we’re making the final push on our trueSKY update. We circled back to a few lingering play features that needed some attention like blocking player notifications from the annoying and needy, and various minor weapon fixes. We discussed ways to improve our iteration time, and solutions for NPC voices (see the conversation about pleasing tones and articulation in the second paragraph above.)

One of the team’s main tasks this sprint is improving performance in structures, and building out the game area around the Thorcon Power Plant, our temporary social hub.
That work continues this week, as we focus on adding details to our ruined neighborhoods while being mindful of being kind to your GPU. Here’s a look at a few houses and some roof detail work.

October 2, 2018

Front Page Fixes and AI Improvements

The web team started off the week by releasing a whole new navigation system on the front page. Everything a visitor needs can be found on our much cleaner left-side navigation now. The group did lots of refactoring work and are busy hunting down any new bugs that pop up. Jesse added some new loading animations between screens, and Jared is putting together a heat map, so we can see what areas people are visiting most, and how they’re getting there.

We’re updating our notification and alert system so you can keep up to date on everything your friends and House members do, and a setting to receive virtually no messages; just in case your loved ones are worried that you’re spending too much of your day tracking the goings-on of people you play games with. Jared is working out an achievement system for the website to help users find everything available to them, and explore the various social tie-ins. With Jared busy coming up with an idea for a Friendster achievement, Jesse is working on a few new pre-recorded videos to show on the front page when the drone is down. He’s also doing a little work on a Paddle Creek Games page, for those of you who are interested in learning more about us.

While the web team is focusing on making things better for real people, everyone else has been working on game AI and improving the mutants. They’ve completed designs on a couple new types of survivors warped by the fracture, and are working on their individual AI to make their fighting style and tactics different from the Trophy Hunters.

We found a bug that was making our creatures swarm downed characters and pound them into mush, even if other players were still up and shooting. We can see how it might get frustrating for them to kill someone, only to see that same person again a few minutes later, but we’d rather they don’t spend their time beating a dead horse or player. We’ve also fixed a pathing bug that would send groups of creatures on strangely long journeys upon sighting a player, and keep some from climbing stairs. As you can see from this shot of mutants on top of the Communications Tower, they have no trouble getting anywhere now.

We’re doing a deep dive into our road and village generating system to make sure both are working as smartly and smoothly as possible, while being mindful of possible performance issues. Our campfires now produce enough smoke that they are visible at a distance, and players will now leave dirt footprints in some areas making it easier to see if a place has had recent activity, and which direction those visitors might have gone.

We continue to make audio improvements across the board, from player and creature noises, to weapon sounds, and clangs and thuds when you drop an item from your inventory. With the first pass at our crafting system nearing completion, we talked about making it a bit more complex. We discussed potential new recipes, recycling improvements, and ways we can encourage players to experiment with recipes.

We made some refinements to the map’s loot regions, making sure that players learn they are more likely to find certain items in certain areas, and encouraging them to move about the entire game area. The team continues to work on performance improvements in the Veil Station, building out the areas around the Thorcon Power Plant, and improving the weather. Here’s a look at the tower and mountains with some darkening clouds rolling in.

September 26, 2018

Building Roads and Aging Buildings

Sprint 26 kicked off this week, and we’ll be focusing on getting things ready for players with items such as: Improving creature AI, filling in the map, implementing a way for players to bank or secure loot, creating a social hub in the game, and focusing on player growth.

We’re updating campfires to make them a more useful place to regroup your party, dry wet clothing, and make a meal. We took a brief tangent discussing the viability of pineapple s’mores, and other Hawaiian versions of traditional campfire treats. We discussed what we would like in a basic banking system and talked through questions like: Does money have weight? If so how much does it weigh? If not is there a cash limit? Is banking free? We haven’t made any decisions yet, but it was good to work through some of these questions.

We have the beginnings of a talent system in place, allowing players to specialize their characters to fill certain roles in a group, or just tailor to their liking (though there is no tailoring skill currently planned). These special abilities focus on things like combat, stealth, crafting, and medical expertise (Not tailoring). We need to play test the talents we already have, fine tune them, and fill in any holes we find (But not darning holes, no tailoring, remember?). We’re working on a talent ui currently, and trying to avoid the tangled-string-art (String? Seriously, no tailoring!) looking web of skills you see in so many other (non-tailoring oriented) games.

The web team discussed the alerts and notifications we already have in place, and what areas we could improve in. We want players to know when their friends, or people they enjoyed playing with, are online or near them. We also discussed the importance of having an easy way to disable those things so your game isn’t pinging you every few minutes. We also talked over a few ideas for game trailers and sizzle reels.

We had to face an uncomfortable truth this week when it came to clothing. It’s obvious that the fracture caused a severe food, water, and supply shortage for survivors in Lahaina, but we had unwittingly created a unique outfit shortage as well. A post-apocalyptic makeover show would be a huge failure on the island right now because there just aren’t any options for the all important “new threads” (Dammit! Again with the clothes!) segment. We talked about adding a variety of outfit choices with some waterproof options, as well as a good selection of hats and headgear to help keep players warm at night. Maybe we need a tailoring skill…

The group went over a few more ideas for new places to explore on the map, as well as locations from the game stories. The art team is working on concept drawings of a few of our favorites. We’re adding some final touches to our road and village generating system, and working out a few lingering weather bugs with TrueSky. We’re currently filling in the areas surrounding the communications tower and damaging/roughing up the building materials with moss/vines, discoloration, and cracks to properly represent decades of neglect.

We plan on using the municipal veil station as the main social hub for the game, but have run into some performance issues. The already poor frame rates would only get worse with every new player running around, so we decided to shift the main hub to the Thorcon plant until we get the issues worked out. The team is busy roughing up the outside of the power plant and armory, and filling up the interiors with decorations, furniture, and containers to root through. We’re also making sure there is a distinct path leading to these important buildings. Below you can see what’s left of a portion of the Honoapi’ilani Highway. Although the jungle has reclaimed much of it, highway 30 remains an important road even after the cataclysm.

We’ll be back next week with more updates.

August 13, 2018

News You Need and Subterranean Safe Spaces

The first full week of sprint 20 saw the web team finish up preliminary work on customizable House features. Players can now go to their House Settings page to: write their House charter, setup application instructions, load a House banner, pick their House colors, Integrate VOIP and streaming services, and assign a background image. We’re nabbed a few minor bugs as they arise, but players should be able to add some unique touches to their Houses now. Jesse is finishing a House callout page, and we discussed adding various email notifications, alerts, and overlay options during the next customization upgrade.

Houses aren’t the only things getting a makeover this week. We’re working on a complete HUD and fullscreen ui update as well. Our goal is to make a less cluttered view of Lahaina, with easy access to systems and equipment that a player needs to use often, or in an emergency. Things are looking great so far.

We talked at length about our in-game drone cameras, and setting up the Veil News Network (VNN) to keep players up-to-date about events in the game. Jared is hooking up our news API so that we’ll have real time data about player locations, kills, and actions in the game. We talked about a few different game tie-ins, real-time announcements, and integrating players and Houses. Our goal is to have a semi-interactive service that keeps track of everything going on in the game, and highlights the most important events, with some fun announcements thrown in. VNN, the news you need, the details you deserve.

The team is working out a few last kinks in the automated item spawning system so players will find more than disappointment in boxes, crates, and hidden spaces around the island. We’re continuing work on improving performance as well, by breaking down the map, replacing a few old structures, and updating the roofs of the programmatically built buildings around Lahaina. We’re working on adding some audio support to a few locations as well. Hopefully, it will be so clear, you won’t know if you’re listening to a nature documentary, or if a family of raccoons took up residence in your walls.

Finally, work continues on the sewer respawn zone. The subterranean safe space will give players who have just experienced a fatal assault a chance to reflect, and not be instantly hacked to pieces or shot while loading. As you can see from the shots below, it’s pretty nice as far as apocalyptic sewers go.

We’ll be back later in the week with more updates.

February 6, 2018

Maps, Mockups, and Armor

To finish out the week the web team is hard at work smoothing out any remaining kinks in the upcoming story timeline view. We’re addressing a handful of layout issues, and Jared is still working on overall performance and speeding up load times on the site. They’re reworking the “view more posts” button so stories load in a more intuitive way. In addition, the team added some much needed admin tools so we can quickly edit stories and announcements now, as well as change some layout options, directly from the website.

We dug into our current map, and talked about some different design options, and discussed exactly what we wanted out of it in terms of utility. Jesse continued work on the HUD, and integrating the many components: compass, map, alerts, quick bar, and chat window, without making the view feel overly crowded. We added a marker on the quick bar to make it easier to see what item/s you currently have equipped, and we’re adding some more specific audio assets to buildings.

We did some diving into body armor options and discussed an overall look. Guns, spears, and weapons in general get a lot of attention because it’s fun to blast or slash things, but armor can keep you alive. We looked at some military designs as well as equipment used in extreme sports, and talked about what things would have been readily available in Lahaina after the fracture. We looked at a number of different back and spine protectors available on the market, and talked about how much they looked like space armor from sci-fi movies in the 80’s.

With most of the work done on the timeline, the web team will be focusing on player and House customization next. Jesse shared some wireframes showing off different options for a house banner and player customization system. Before we got too far into the project, we discussed how detailed and how many options we want available to players. We talked about having automated color scheme tools that would pick complementary color palettes for characters vs. leaving everything up to players. Either way, we want players to be able to designate roles inside their Houses by color, add some uniqueness to their profiles, and set up a red-shirt brigade of expendables if they wish.

We continued working on our respawn experience and the areas that players will find themselves in after they die. Chris rolled up his sleeves and dug into the Unreal tools to make a mock-up of what he was thinking for a storm drain/sewer system respawn area. With a few caveats about being a newb, and being unfamiliar with all the tools, he pieced together an admirable respawn mock-up. We talked about specific design needs, and whether or not we’d want these areas to be connected to the larger sewer system at some point down the road. Whether or not Chris has been bitten by the design bug, and starts creating level mock-ups on the weekend for fun and profit remains to be seen.

The art team continues their work on sectioning up the map and adding detail to the remaining large buildings. While there is some lighting work left to do, you can see from the picture below just how huge the Thorcon power plant is.

We’ll be back with more next week.

January 11, 2018

Streaming Video and Spawning Loot

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.

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Always display content from YouTube

That’s it for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates and pictures.

January 4, 2018

Building Houses and Breaking News

With the current sprint ending today, the team continued to focus on adding some last minute polish and nabbing any lingering bugs. Jared and Jesse finished up most of the ecommerce work needed to get our shopping cart up and running. PayPal integration is complete, and mock-up images of all the new shirt colors are done. The player wallet API is complete and Jared is testing the system. It won’t be long before you’ll be able to buy a shirt with referral money from getting your friends to play the game.

Jesse showed off some new logo work and we looked at an awesome mock-up for waving House banners. We talked about various other options for customizing Houses as well, and what limits we want in place to make sure we don’t have areas of the map that burn up GPUs. Speaking of customizing houses, San shared the story of why the new rack has to stay in his garage for a while yet. It turns out it’s too big to fit through the hallway to get to the server room.

Work continues on our drone cameras and we should have a basic system up in running in a few weeks. We talked some more about how and where live video would appear or be shared on the homepage. We then took a pretty deep-dive into all aspects of a news alert/feed system for game events and happenings, including what we’d call the fictional news service providing the feed (protip: avoid any name the leads to an acronym that starts with VD.)

We talked about what kinds of events that would come across the ticker. Things like: good samaritan acts, major weather events, House raids, killings, and so on. We talked about how we’d collect and disseminate the data used in the feed, including the possibility of some sort of curated system to make sure important events were called out. We are collecting death information currently that covers the who, what, when, and where. The why seems pretty obvious; It’s a game. We talked about what bits of data were important for other events, and how we’d decide what gets run. Jesse showed off some layout and news alert mockups to help us visualize what the system could look like.

The team talked a bit about how the game map should lead players to explore areas, move around, and encourage longer gameplay. We talked briefly about the state of the AI in animals and NPC’s. There will be a couple basic AI archetypes when we roll out Beta, but really smart creatures and great battle tacticians are a bit down the road. In short, it will be awhile before players get to face off with a Hawaiian mutant Sun Tzu. The barking button and doors are fixed in the communications tower elevator, so that building is done for now. As you can see from the pictures below the interior looks great and it’s quite a drop from the upper deck. The art team is moving on to the Thorcon power plant and the Veil Station.

We’ll be back next week with more updates and screenshots.

November 30, 2017

Alerts, Notifications, and Playing the Game

Our plan to have a “Friends and Family” release tomorrow is on schedule. That means this past week was mostly spent hunting down some final bugs, last minute fixes, and adding some final polish. While there wasn’t a whole lot of new features or assets added, a few noteworthy things were finished.

The web team ran down a number of bugs involving Houses, fixed broken links in the launcher, and tackled a lingering issue with token refreshing and timeouts. We’re hooking up images and House charters so they can be seen in public view, as well as making it possible for you to connect Twitch, Discord, and Steam to your House. We continued our ongoing discussion about how to best display member stats and what data would be most useful for House leaders. We’re tagging stories with game character accounts so you can easily visit the profiles of our fictional characters. The sidebar got some more polish, and your online friends should now show up at the top of the list. Lastly, we made the images in the Media section easier to share.

We spent some time talking about how much/little information to show for an item in your normal walking around view. We want to make sure that we don’t clutter all your screen real estate with item info, but recognize the need for detailed descriptions of things you might want to throw in your backpack. We talked about notifications, alerts, and finished up the icons for various ailments. Now, when you have broken ribs, a life-threatening disease, are about to bleed out, or could just use a sandwich, an icon will appear warning you that everything isn’t alright with your character. Because we understand that behind every character is a real-life human being, we even included an alert for players. If you’ve been playing the game for 12 hours a deep vein thrombosis alert will pop-up and urge you to go for a walk. We love that you love the game, but we want you to explore the real world too, or at least not sit in one place for half a day.

The lion’s share of our time was spent making sure everything works in the tutorial area. In this area players will learn basic systems, shoot, loot, and assemble items. We highlighted some lootable items to make them more visible in the environment. The team finished work on alerts, crafting, assembling, and cooking. They did some AI work, installing a sense of fear in some of our factions. Now if things are going poorly for them, there’s a chance that an opponent will run away and regroup, instead of recreating The Charge of the Light Brigade. Finally, we fixed some collision issues we were having with people not being able to go through doors. Here’s a look at the tutorial area and a close up of the cabin that had the impassable doorway.

We assume that we’ll find a list of new bugs after we allow more players into the game on Friday, and will be spending much of our time next week fixing them. We’ll be updating the sprints section with an overview of what we plan to be working on during the next month. As usual, we’ll be back next week with another report on how things are going .

August 31, 2017

Adding Some Polish and Dealing With Floppy Hat Issues

Our Friends and Family Alpha launch is fast approaching, so there wasn’t a whole lot of new work to show off or talk about this past week. Everyone is pushing hard to finish up systems, give them a little polish, and squash and identify bugs. However, there were a few new or completed projects, as well as some pretty funny bugs since our last update.

Since creating and placing every building ruined by the Fracture would be a terrifically time consuming endeavor, the team has been working hard on an automated ruin system. As you can see below it’s really starting to come together. We’re still having some trouble with a few of the materials though. In particular, the glass needs some work because we don’t want to perpetuate the rumor that frosted windows are the wave of the future.

We discussed further improvements to our Houses. We talked about building out tools for House members like: the ability to add different backgrounds to your profile, different colors, and cropping functions. We discussed improving the data we collect and making better charts to easily disseminate the data. As we talked about before, our goal is to provide a quick and easy way to keep track of who the superstars in a House are, and who is slacking. The team also talked about integrating video uploads for showing off your best wicked jumps and kills or for House recruitment purposes.

A swarm of tiny bugs were swatted and styling work was done this week including: some inventory issues, reworded some prompt text to make it clearer, social media link styling, fixed some alert system problems, and adding a scroll bar to the launcher. The art folks are finishing up their marathon work on the Comm Tower this week and plan to start refining the Thorcon Plant next week. Tags are integrated in the media section and it is now split up into sections so you find the things you’re most interested in. We are adding a “Sprint” section so you can see exactly what we’re working on, what we already finished, and what we plan on tackling in the future.

We ran down the merchandise rabbit hole and made some progress digging our way out. Our alerts and recycling systems should be finished this week. The basic crafting system is done but we still have some work on cooking left to do. To be fair, ingredients and a sanitary cooking environment are really hard to come by in our version of 2117 Lahaina. What we focused on the most this week was upgrading and finishing the player controller and animations. While the team made some great progress we ran into a few issues that we had to share. For instance, as you can see below, going prone while shooting at wolves could cause a player to lose their head literally.

Finally, we thought we’d provide players with a way to keep the rain out of their eyes, and since it’s almost impossible to hold an umbrella while using a shotgun, (try it if your don’t believe me. On second thought please don’t. It’s really dangerous and your neighbors will stare) we thought a wide brimmed hat would do the trick. As you can see from the video below things didn’t quite work out as planned and our feature ended up being a bug.

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Always display content from YouTube

As usual, we’ll have another update soon with more pictures and news about what’s been completed and what’s on the to-do list. We might even have a few more screenshots of things that haven’t gone quite as planned.

August 17, 2017

Data Tracking, Animations, and Gift Shops

It was a busy weekend for some of us but the team still got a lot done. Here’s what we did and what we talked about since the last time we checked in.

Tired of looking at blank avatar icons on our test accounts, we added Gravatar support. If you already use the service, you can use your favorite icons on Fractured Veil now too. If you don’t and you can’t decide which picture of yourself that you’d like the world to see, it’s an easy way to have a unique avatar icon that follows you around.

We did a lot of work on animations in the prone position. Now your characters can crawl forward and backwards, pick up items, use them, and eat and drink, with or without a weapon in your hand. We don’t really recommend chugging an ice-cold Manimal while face down in the dirt with a machete in your hand, but we understand that things happen out there in the wilds. We also did a lot of detail work to buildings to make them look better. You can see from this shot below how the bullet holes in the windows really add the right amount of menace to this lovely home.

The team continued work on the inventory ui with drag and drop bandaging on the way. Our quest system progressed this week too, with alert systems being integrated including map markers to show you where to go. We added colored alerts to help players know when they have been poisoned, diseased, or are suffering from some other ailment. We did some refinements to combat and are almost done with the framework for our quest system. There was a lot of discussion about our crafting system and whether or not our recipes would allow for some experimentation. We decided that allowing people to play around with recipes was the way to go.

There was also a lot of talk around player skills, and the possibility of having some character abilities that benefit everyone in a group. For example: someone with a high level of medical skill might be able to give others close by a bonus when applying a splint or bandage. We discussed how that mechanic might work and how it would be displayed to players.

We buttoned up the player death/kills data and are refining the graphs. San continued his analytics work and we discussed what data could be tracked and how it could be used. Of course, lots of you would be interested in being at the top of the “shark teeth found”, or “pineapples eaten” graph but this data could be really useful to Houses. House leaders would be able to see who their best killers are, who is gathering the most resources, and who is crafting the most items. This way it would be easy to find who your superstars are and also how many moochers you have mucking around, not pulling their own weight.

The art people worked on some of our lingering lighting issues and made another pass on refining plants and some sand/ground textures. Lastly, one of our largest buildings got some more attention this week. As you can see below, the communication tower is nearing completion and even got a gift shop this week. There isn’t much as far as merchandise goes right now, but we’ll get the shelves filled soon.

July 18, 2017

Tag: alerts