animations Archives - Page 2 of 5

Building a Social Hub and Hunting Bugs

Nearing the end of the week and the current sprint, the team is focused on fixing as many bugs as possible, and adding some last minute polish to already existing systems. We uncovered a number of bugs and pain points while running around the wilds of Lahaina that have been resolved.

We fixed a bug with the bow playing whizzing sounds at incorrect distances and angles. The bow no longer will get stuck in the fatigued state, which was making shooting arrows difficult to say the least. We found that sometimes our aiming down site (ADS) transition animations were unreasonably slow after sprinting. Chances are you’re going to need to aim as quickly as you can after running away from the things lurking in the jungle’s dark places. We discovered that some of our harvesting and impact sounds were overlapping and cancelling each other out. This made it theoretically possible that a player wouldn’t hear a fight if they were harvesting wood. Lastly, we fixed a bug that would cause a party leader to get stuck when putting together a team, which was less than ideal for group play.

In addition to fixing all those bugs, we tweaked a few things and made some improvements to make game play more enjoyable. The team smoothed out the homemade bow pull back and undraw animation sequences as well as improved some un-nocking animations. We added proper attenuation to a number of weapon sounds. The team updated building meshes with proper inversions, collision and simplifications to improve performance and address the multiple stuck door issues we’ve had. Doors are now swinging freely from the little rundown shacks on the beach, to the gigantic social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. We also added more rocks throughout the game to help bump up the number of available resources for players to harvest.

The web team is busy finishing up their sprint work too. The new navigation on the front page is done and we’re nabbing any bugs as they appear. Jesse is completing work on front page callout/announcement slide templates, that we can use for future contests, events, and game messages. We’re working on a number of messaging initiatives to help clearly explain how our Houses work, as well as the referral system. We also discussed where we could use some tooltips, and incorporating a general site search feature on the front page.

With our trueSKY issues (mostly) fixed, and having a sky above Maui again, we looked at our day/night cycle, and briefly discussed the pros and cons of adjusting the length of our days. The art team is busy working on the art for the new banking system which will allow players a private and secure extension of their inventory to stash away goodies, crafting components, and any junk they can’t part with but is too heavy to carry. We talked a little more about all the neat places we could put these banks since we don’t need to include a drive up window. The team made some improvements to our AI by adding a fleeing module that will allow NPCs to flee to a location that offers cover if they’re being peppered by the slings and arrows of outrageous players.

We looked at a number of concept drawings of the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. The art team put together a number of possible options for the reactor room and other places inside complete with: living quarters, stands offering food, water, and gear for the right price, and differing amounts of people seeking shelter, and shady characters. Their work was not limited to the interior of the massive building however. One of their goals this sprint was to fill out the areas surrounding the plant with interesting places to loot and explore. Below is one of these places, an abandoned farm with the remnants of an irrigation pipe running through it, a barn that is still standing for shelter, and numerous chickens for those quick enough to scoop one up.

That’s all for now. Check back the beginning of next week for the latest updates.

November 8, 2018

Torches and Teaser Videos

With sprint 28 wrapping up in a few days, everyone is finishing up goals and hunting down any remaining bugs. Terry continues working through trueSky issues, cooks, and crashes. We’ve worked through many of our recent weather and lighting problems and are focusing on making the water look perfect. We’ve fixed our fog and disappearing sky issues, and future Lahaina is looking great.

The team has made a number of lighting improvements, and have good looking lanterns and torches lighting the dark and dangerous places in the game. We’ve added a number of animations to make players and NPCs alike look more realistic when they shoot, climb, crouch, and run. We improved a bunch of 1st and 3rd person shooting animations in particular. Now when a player draws back their bowstring and holds it for a period of time, they will actually shake slightly.

We’ve made similar improvements to weapon audio and appearance. Our firearms have never sounded better, and melee weapons thud, thunk, and crunch in the game more realistically. We’ve improved our ranged AI using all weapons but bows as well. Now, players can count on select horrors of the jungle shooting back when fired upon.

With all the lead soon to be flying around Maui, we started working on a cover system for our NPCs. Currently some of them will stand in the middle of a firefight like tears in the rain. Beyond just taking cover behind an object, (which we’re teaching them too), we want our NPC’s to move when bullets are flying, find tactically beneficial places to be, and avoid running in straight lines. They’re not likely to pass voight-kampff yet, but maybe later…

We’ve expanded our crafting system with lots of new recipes. Players can now make virtually any bit of gear in the game if they have the necessary resources. Even the volatile element 127, the fuel that allowed Veil travel and powers the Thorcon Power Plant, is incorporated into our crafting system now. Players brave or foolish enough to experiment by adding a little 127 in the mix while they’re building something like ammo, might get a pleasant surprise in the near future, or blow up. You never know with these kind of things.

The drones patrolling the island and broadcasting what is happening around Lahaina, are avoiding trees and not traveling through the Earth anymore. We plan on adding a lot more improvements like audio detection next sprint. We finished up some ui improvements as well, with new tooltips, widgets, and translucent menus that make it easier to manipulate your inventory without getting ganked by something coming out of the jungle.

We’re finishing up performance work that has resulted in huge building improvements, much to the delight of our GPUs. Our procedural building system is now constructing beautiful and performant buildings like never before. Our work building out the areas surrounding the Thorcon continues and we’re finishing a first pass at its interior. We plan on adding a lot more to the inside of the power plant next sprint, reflecting that it will be the social hub for players.

We’ve completed the nuts and bolts of a player bank system and just need to finish the art, and decide where players will be able to access the extension of their personal inventory. We discussed a few possible looks, and talked at some length about how many or few drop-off locations should be available to the encumbered.

Finally, the web team is finishing the work on the new site navigation, in addition to call out and contest slides. We’re focusing on improving user flow and various marketing initiatives too. We’re working on a number of promo videos and GIFs, as well as sharing some more of our early concept sketches, as we spread the word about Fractured Veil. Below you can see one of the teaser videos we made with one of our Trophy Collectors welcoming you to Lahaina.

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November 6, 2018

Meet the Mutants

The art team has been busy this week stylizing a bunch of items in the game and roughing up buildings. We looked at a number of different flare gun models, building interiors, and lots more loot. We discussed improving the pipeline for these themed items and building performance. The team has made great strides in this area, and our procedural building system is creating ruins that are up to 50 times more performant than before.

We took a long look at crafting and resource gathering, and decided that resources were too hard to come by so we’re cranking up their availability, and how much players harvest when banging on rocks and chopping at trees. With all the resources about to pour into player inventories, we talked some more about a player bank. Designed to allow players to unburden themselves and embrace their inner pack rat, the bank will act as a secure extension of their personal inventory. We discussed how it would work, how and when players could access it, and what it would look like.

We have a number of weapons in the game, most of which a player can craft themselves, but the bow is one that we’ve focused on a lot. We’ve made many improvements to bows in the game, and improved them a little too much. They are a bit overpowered right now. We plan on nerfing them a bit so the island isn’t filled with a bunch of overzealous archers, dropping everything in sight.

Most of our time this week has been devoted the biggest dangers on the island, the mutants. We took to Imgur with an overview and brief history of the terrors of the jungle. Players need to find food, water, and shelter in the game while avoiding being ambushed by other hungry players, but the biggest obstacles to their survival are the mutants. Below you can see some early concept art before we decided what direction we wanted to take.

We called our first mutants Trophy Collectors. Victims of the terrible SSHAM plague, Trophy Collectors remember little about their previous live, but retain an unnatural cunning and need to collect body parts from their victims as trophies. We tried to avoid just creating zombies with a different name. We wanted our mutants to have personality, tricks, and more ways to kill you than just teeth and claws. We gave certain Collectors ranged attacks and AI that allows them to “herd” players towards their melee attacking friends. All of them have complex group attack AI, and battle tactics sure to make them a challenge.

Big Bob Abramo is our first individual mutant, and the leader of the cannibals. A meat obsessed Lahaina real estate mogul and restaurateur before the fracture, Bob and the cannibals were twisted by the collapse of the Veil, and cursed with an unnaturally long life and hunger. Below are some early concept iterations of Bob before he was looking his best.

Players need to properly dispose of their kills when Big Bob and the cannibals are around or they will smell the blood and come running. Cannibals who find a corpse that wasn’t properly burned will feed on it, giving them a big speed and attack buff for a duration as they hunt down players, looking for some fresher meat. Don’t let his size or his cane fool you. As you can see below, Bob is still fast enough to be a danger to anything he hungers for.

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November 1, 2018

New Animations and Ranged AI Improvements

To get the week started, the team added some animation improvements. Players shooting at an enemy on a sloped surface, such as a staircase, look significantly better now. They take a more natural stance, and move with the target, instead of the jerky right angle motions they had before. We made some improvements to spear and harvesting tool animations as well, making stabbing, chopping, and pounding look a lot better.

We fixed a few collision issues with some shack doors that was preventing the doors from closing properly. They not only look better now, but players will actually be able to get a moment of peace inside a shack if they’re running from trouble. We made some drone improvements too. We discussed how long a drone’s circuit around the island is, and bounced around the idea of making them recharge after a certain period of time. This would give players a chance to engage in shenanigans without it being broadcast, while the all-seeing eyes in the sky are getting juiced up. We added some temporary audio to them as well, until we decide exactly what we want them to sound like while they patrol the island.

The web team remains focused on the navigation upgrade, and the front page facelift. We’re adding some new animations, and Jesse is working on wireframes for a new story section down the road. In addition, we’re finishing up work on a call to action/contest section, and hope to have it all buttoned up by the end of the week.

We’ve mostly fixed our tueSky issues. It’s not crashing anymore, which is good for everyone who likes playing in a world with a sky, but we’re still running into issues with some cloud rendering. The team dug deeper into our crafting system and implemented new resource requirements for crafting recipes, and added resource recycling for items. Soon players will be able to craft more things than ever before, and toss them in the recycler if they so choose for the resources.

Since last week’s update, one of the things we’ve focused on is ranged weapons. We’ve added a bunch of new weapon sounds to make the crack of a rifle, and the thrum of a bow string sound more realistic. We’ve made mutants use ammo when they shoot firearms, and stop to reload when they’re empty. Previously the terrors of the jungle where running around with unlimited ammo. We’ve also put in rules to make them stop shooting a player when the player dies. Up until now, some of the mutants would occasionally lock on a target, and keep shooting or clawing them into oblivion, disregarding anything else around them.

We discovered and fixed a pretty funny bug with Trophy Collectors and thrown weapons too. It turns out that the collectors could throw something an excessively long distance if their enemy was running away when a throw was started. We’re talking crazy long here. If a player took off on a zipline to get away from a Trophy Collector on top of the Communication Tower, while the mutant started to throw something, that thrown object could travel all the way to the end of the line, hundreds of yards. The same turned out to be true if we were using the debug movement speed, running around the map. We’re adding a max distance to their thrown items now, so a Trophy Collector on top of a tower with a telescope doesn’t take over Lahaina.

We continue our work adding structures around the Communication Tower, and the Thorcon Power Plant. We’re making a pass over everything to make it more stylized and focus on building out set pieces with a common theme around the map. This work extends inside our unique buildings. Last week we showed off some of the work inside the Thorcon reactor room. Since then, we’ve been busy with a few other areas inside. Below you can see what we’ve done with the control room and the locker room.

October 30, 2018

Slapping on a Fresh Coat of Moss

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.

October 16, 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

Bigger Buildings and New Mutants

Sprint 27 is here and in addition to covering a few goals carried over from 26, our biggest tasks are: upgrading to UE 4.20.2, speeding up iteration time, upgrading trueSky to fix some of our lingering weather issues, and addressing any bugs from the last sprint.

We made a big push to get our first quest ready to play. Centering around the Communication Tower, players explore the surrounding area fighting off dangers, gathering loot, and completing quest goals. As this picture of the tower with a little morning mist shows, the area is looking great.

However, Lahaina is a big place, and we’re moving on to bigger buildings, namely the Municipal Veil Station, and the Thorcon Power Plant. Being a little bit more play ready, we’re working on building out the areas around the Thorcon. We plan on making it the temporary social hub for the game, and are working on filling it up with useful items for players, as well as making it an interesting place to explore. The team has a few concepts for the surrounding areas, and are working to improve materials for our procedural building system.

The Veil Station still needs a lot of performance improvements before it can become the main hangout for players. We’re working on a number of updates and improvements inside to help performance, while we work on grunging up the exterior to properly represent 60+ years of neglect and encroaching jungle.

We found some of our mutants to be a bit too tough so we plan on balancing combat a bit. Right now, you can shoot so many arrows into a Trophy Hunter that they look like a bipedal porcupine before running up to you, and ripping off your face. The team is going to adjust their damage and health values a bit to make fighting more fun, but still challenging.

We’re making some improvements to mutant models and animations, and are improving the existing AI in the game to help fix a few bugs we uncovered. We’ve upgraded ranged AI to help players take full advantage of natural cover, and all the hard work we put into buildings to hide behind. We’re adding another type of Trophy Hunter for players to deal with, as well as a whole new group of terrors to encounter in the areas we’re working on.

With the new and improved horrors of the jungle to deal with, we’re making some weapon improvements too. We’re adding a number of audio features like reloading sounds, and fixes to attenuation and ricochet sounds. We’re fixing a bug where a players M4A1 will move around independent of their hands. This is a great feature for shooting around corners, but we’re not really into phantasmal riflery. We’re adding impact decals for gunshots to make things look more realistic, and misses will sometimes kick up a little dirt now as well.

Lastly, we’re fixing some social player items and game features too. The ability to block players has just been completed, so you can now easily ignore the annoying or needy with the click of a button. Inventory stacks can be split into manageable piles, and we’re fixing a bug to make sure medkits will heal poison now. While it can be fun and tingly for the first few minutes, nobody likes to stay poisoned for however long they have left. We’re adjusting how far away the sound of jumping carries, and are making sure that all the ammo boxes now contain ammo, which isn’t the case currently. We’re also adjusting how easy it is to see campfire smoke at a distance, so you can provide other players with a live action version of your favorite scary campfire story, or just make new friends. Whatever you’re in to.

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

September 14, 2018

Casting an Appropriate Level of Light On things

The team started off the week with some work on smoothing out the flight plan of the Veil News Network (VNN) drone. The game’s eye in the sky broadcasts a live feed of what’s going on in the game, highlighting different areas of the map, and capturing player activity. We’re also working on an “Art Bible”, that documents the look, feel, and methods we’ve used in the game, to help keep things consistent for any new faces in the future.

We’ve finished some AI improvements for ranged attacks and reloading. We found that occasionally a ranged attacker would lose confidence in their ability to hit a target at a distance and move too close. We also ran into trouble with NPCs emptying their guns and then taking time to ponder what life choices led them to be in the middle of a firefight, delaying their reloading time. We want mindless killing machines who know enough to stay out of machete reach hunting down our players, so we’re retraining our antagonists to make them appropriately deadly.

While Terry was busy doing documentation on existing servers, and updating tech documents, we revisited the old keybindings sheet and decided to make a few improvements. All the normal shoot, jump, and movement keys are right where you would expect to find them, but we mapped out a few of the other less used movement/action key in a way that is intuitive for players and easy to hit when you’re being torn apart by enemies. Of course, players can always change things in their settings if they have a set-up they prefer.

The web team was busy making some layout improvements and squashing a few bugs. Jesse reworked the game packages page to make it look better. We worked on some context menus, added a few new animations, and looked at some background/wallpaper video options to give certain sections a unique look and feel.

We’re taking a deep dive into some SEO issues we discovered, and are making some changes to improve things. We discussed a few tweaks that we plan on making to the friends system to help you find play buddies, and follow people streaming the game. We went over a number of forum improvements that we plan to roll out in the near future, and talked about updating our YouTube channel more often with different aspects of game-play.

The art team remains focused on building out the areas around the Communication Tower to support our upcoming quest/tutorial. Players will start out safe and secure in our sewer respawn area where they will learn the basics of game play: aiming/shooting/fighting, crafting, looting, harvesting resources, and moving around. They will then embark on a quest involving the tower and the surrounding area using all the skills they just learned. We’re fixing a number of little bugs and adding roads, loot, buildings, and enemies in the corridor leading up to the tower.

With so many systems and creatures ready, we’ve been putting in a lot of play time, and of course found a few bugs. We’re working on ziplines, making it easier to strap yourself in, fly across a large section of Lahaina, and hopefully stop. We’ve been having trouble with the stopping part, and that’s a pretty important part. We’ve discovered tiny puffs of poisonous clouds where they shouldn’t be, and we’ve mostly worked out our remaining weather and wind issue.

Lastly, we’ve made a lot of improvements to the game’s lighting. This shot below shows off the progress we’ve made. The large spotlight clearly illuminates an area but doesn’t wash out the dimmer bulb in the background or the stars in the sky. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting there.

We’ll be back later in the week with the latest news.

August 28, 2018

Ziplines, Buildings, and Bears

The team made some good progress on streamlining crafting and improving ui this week. We added some improvements to how drag and drop works, highlighting items selected, and fixing a bug that offset where your gear got dropped in your inventory. We cleaned up some of the navigation on the crafting page to make things a little less cluttered, and made some upgrades to how scrolling works. A bug that would occasionally break scrolling was fixed, and we are adding a few context menus to help you sort through your gear and compare items.

We plan on working on a queue layout the rest of the week. This will allow players to see what they are working on, and help people playing at work determine if their gun mods will be done before their next meeting. We added some animations, and looked at background options to make the whole crafting experience look more authentic.

Terry continued his work on builds, and the East Coast mirror is up and running with a couple of us using it. Git onboarding continues with only a handful of contractors left who need to move over. We made a number of audio improvements, and discussed what still needs to be done, including a Wwise update. Chris had some concerns about our patcher, so we discussed its size and various ways we could handle it differently down the road.

A number of bugs were fixed this week in the game. The rain now actually makes a player’s clothes wet, and is visible no matter what your body position. We weren’t really feeling the 2D dry rain on the island. We also discovered a bug that sometimes makes party members flicker in and out of existence. While most of us are big fans of bouncing between worlds, it’s really hard to fix someone’s arm when their physical body is manifesting across the multiverse. At least with a traditional splint anyway.

Our new and improved campfire is almost done, with only some ui work left to do. Players will now need to feed wood to the fire if they want to: keep it burning, dry their clothes, grab a bite to eat, warm up, and talk about their day. We discussed the proper rate of burn to strike that perfect balance between having an ever-burning log, and allowing players time to do something other than harvest wood.

We grunged up many structures, and roughed up a lot of ruined roads, but we still have a lot to go. We talked about some procedural building upgrades that should save us some time, and still provide different types of damage and weathering so all of our ruins don’t look like carbon copies.

The group continues to add the final touches to the underground spawn area. We made some lighting and texture improvements to make it look appropriately dark and slimy, but still comfortable. We added some new audio so you can hear just how bad the electrical connections to the jury-rigged Nuuskin pods are. The team briefly discussed the starting equipment available to players in this area, and possible tweaks to your beginning gear.

We began work on our first quest scenario for the game. While we’re still working out the specifics, it is going to take place in the area around the Communication Tower. We looked at some existing real-world features on that part of Maui, and talked about what we wanted to include, and what we’d like to add. We circled back to our zipline discussion from last week, and looked at our first semi-working zipline demo. There are a few bugs to work out yet, as San kept going straight into the ocean his first time down. He probably would have made it all the way to what was left of Japan had he not drowned first. Even with the bugs, fast traveling from the top of the comm tower is a lot of fun.

Lastly, we continue environmental work to make the jungle and beach areas look as realistic as possible. Here you can see one of the escaped bears taking a little nap on the beach. Unless you’ve come loaded for him, it’s probably best to keep your distance.

August 21, 2018

Creature Calls and Putting It All Together

As the week comes to an end, the team is hard at work making improvements to the crafting system. We discussed adding a few new recipes to the list of craftable items, and talked about different ways players could discover new recipes. We’re working on the drag and drop system to shake out all the bugs, and introducing sorting options to make the player inventory screen more manageable for those who believe in leaving no trinket, or piece of garbage behind. In addition, Nelson is making it easier for players to see what items in their inventory are equipped.

We briefly talked about game merchandise, and a few different Hawaiian-esque products. Jesse showed off the work he’s completed on the Paddle Creek Games bumper trailer, and it’s coming along really well. We talked about making a few audio changes, and possible animation tweaks. The web team fixed some bugs, and made some layout improvements too. The group discussed the problems we’ve been having with the Veil News Network (VNN) live stream on the front page. We’ve made sure that a prerecorded video of the game area plays when the live feed is down.

With a landscape as beautiful as Lahaina’s, we want lighting, and a weather system that is equally striking. Few things can be as scary as hunting something, or being hunted by something, in the fog. The team is working out some of the issues we’ve had with the rain and mist, to make it feel more realistic, and make it a potential factor in gameplay. We want the nights to feel dark and ominous, with players never sure what might be lurking in the brush just ahead, but we don’t want it so dark that you can’t move around without running into trees, or falling into a ravine. To that end, we’re adjusting light sources, and making sure the stars are bright enough to allow players to operate at night.

All of our loot drops are ready, and they’re being tested in the game to work out any remaining problems. Soon, players will be able to harness their urge to shoot, ambush, maim, and kill for certain rewards, not just a general love of mayhem. We’ve added more audio to our monsters so they sound as gruesome as they look, and discussed giving certain individuals in a group extra abilities, like using ranged attacks to keep players on their toes.

With the Wash Bench design complete, the team is working on a 3D model so players will be able to repair/clean clothing, and maybe even change the color of something down the road. Sorry, tie-dye lovers, we don’t have any plans, as of yet, that would allow you to set up shop. The Thorcon Power Plant and the Lahaina Armory are being placed on the map, and the team is working on incorporating some basic gameplay elements around them. They’re also adding placeholder lockout tiles around the border of the map to let players know that they’ve gone as far as they can go in one direction. We plan on eventually using natural boundaries like the ocean, lava fields, and cliffs as well as impenetrable ruins, poison clouds, and radioactive fog to mark the boundaries.

Since we stripped down the map, and were rebuilding much of it during the last sprint, we talked about areas of exploration that we could add to the mountains, and more remote locations. The group discussed, quarries, canyons, mines, and other places to loot and pillage. We also briefly discussed clearing land, and possible base construction at some point in the future.

Finally, we’ve finished adding the improved plants and road remnants to the map, and we’re ready to push the whole thing from staging to production. The new environmental work, and foliage looks absolutely incredible as you can see from these screenshots below.

We’ll be back with more next week.

July 13, 2018

Tag: animations