audio Archives - Page 2 of 7

Setting the Scenery

This week the team is finishing up our game trailer and adding a bit of polish to several systems before we start sharing the fruits of our labor to a wider audience. The autonomous drones that patrol the island and stream gameplay live have great new controls that help us direct them to specific events and areas. They already do a pretty good job of finding the action themselves, but this allows us to make sure that we capture everything worth capturing and quickly make videos of certain aspects of the game. Below you can see a video we made of a drone getting some good close-up shots of a deer going about its business in the wilds.

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We’ve made a lot of audio improvements in the last few sprints and that work continues. Specifically, we’re working on audio and visual cues for status effects on players so a person starving, about to die of thirst, or shutting down due to shock gets the message that things aren’t going very well for them in a hurry. For those of you who believe automatic weapons are instruments that need to be played, we’re working on giving them a voice. Currently, we’re fine-tuning the micro Uzi to ensure that it’s spraying beautiful music and bullets at anything in your way.

The team is also making improvements to our AI spawner. We’ve created an actor that can be used to quickly generate AI spawn points within a defined area and adjusted how many and where the spawner will produce animals and creatures ready to rip off a player’s face. This way we can adjust how many mutant obstacles are in an area quickly.

Speaking of face-ripping obstacles, we’re working on a new loading screen and have decided to include The Butcher, one of our most beloved player-eaters. We adjusted some of the lighting around him to help bring out the murder in his eyes and added some torches to highlight his cleaver but haven’t decided on which shot to use yet. Below you can see some of our favorites so far.

August 1, 2019

Decorating Disaster

We’ve continued to add some polish to the drone and procedural building system this week ahead of putting together our game trailer. We’ve added more controls to the drone for spotting people and things of interest and staying on target long enough to capture anything worth capturing. These new controls will help us guide these automated eyes in the sky when needed, and improve their video streaming capabilities. If you’d like to see the fruits of that labor check out our most recent imgur post.

Adding a touch of personality to our building system has been a frequent topic of discussion around here. We want to make sure that the ruined houses feel like homes inside and provide the right atmosphere for players, reminding them of the lives lived and lost during The Great Fracture. We took a big first step in that direction with a new poster/picture feature. Now our ruins and a few other places around the map will have pictures or wall adornments that hint at the Maui that once was. Friends and family might recognize some of the people, places, and pets we have in rotation currently. We still have some work to go but you can take a peek at the system in the video below.

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We didn’t spend all of our time hanging family photos on the walls, however. The team also nabbed a few bugs and worked on sprucing up the neighborhood we plan on using for the trailer.

We added some animations for our cannibals after discovery we didn’t have any transitions between them feasting on the dead and trying to feast on players. They now stand up and crouch down instead of blinking into attack mode. We fixed some clipping issues with Big Bob and fixed a bug with arrows not showing impact fx on clients and traveling through objects. While a phase arrow sounds useful for those who get sick of shooting around things, it would be too big of a disruption to game balance.

The area where we’re shooting the trailer is coming together nicely as the team continues to add little touches inside and out. Here’s a look at the latest improvements we’ve made to the neighborhood.

July 18, 2019

Building Broken Neighborhoods

We just started a new sprint, and in addition to adding a few more features to our drones and automated systems, the team is focusing on designing a construction system and making a trailer for the game.

A number of weapon upgrades and fixes were completed this week. We added unequip and throw sounds to the item/weapon classes and fixed a bug that prevented weapon equipping sounds to play. We also fixed an issue with first-person animations getting stuck when swapping weapons.

We made a few torch improvements too. A bug where the torch wouldn’t play an unequip animation was fixed and we addressed a problem with torch fire VFX not being properly attached to the torch mesh while moving. While it looked cool and probably simulated the visual effects of severe dehydration accurately, we like our fire to obey the laws of physics.

In preparation for our game trailer, we’re finishing up what we’re calling “roadside attractions” to our automated road-building system. The paths most traveled in the game now have a collection of signs, boxes, streetlights, and debris to remind players of the vibrant Lahaina that once was. We improved the weather system as well and gave the sky that deep blue that Maui is famous for. Below you can see the culmination of this work in one of the neighborhoods that we plan to feature in our trailer.

If you’re interested in a daily update of our development, check out our Daily Update Twitter feed and see what’s happening every day of the week.

July 12, 2019

Thunder, Lightning, and Elevators

With sprint 36 coming to an end, everyone is fixing bugs as they appear and wrapping up new systems. We’ve fixed an issue causing environmental decals to be drawn on players. It made great camouflage in some cases but looked too weird to keep. We addressed an issue where players could get stuck on the inventory screen when “looting all” on some instanced containers, and worked out a problem with the crossbow blocking interactions while equipped. It came to our attention that players weren’t able to drink from rivers at certain angles and distances. Instead of coming up with a story about how the streams of tomorrow are only accessible at right angles, we just went ahead and fixed it so even sloppy drinkers can make use of the water.

We’ve made a number of audio updates as well. The team added UI and sound to drag/drop functionality, new audio for starvation, dehydration, and player death. We implemented thunder audio, created a new lightning bolt actor, and fixed a problem with some weapons not clanging or banging properly. The elevator inside the Comm Tower got a little love too. We’ve updated how the elevator works and added a number of audio updates to make your up and down experience more realistic.

We’ve made some great improvements with our procedural building system making huge performance gains. We’ll have a more in-depth look at the technical aspects of those improvements soon, but for now, you can see how great our shacks are looking morning, noon, and dusk in these shots below.

If you want to stay on top of our development process on a daily basis, check out our Daily Update Twitter feed and see what’s happening every day of the week.

July 4, 2019

The Sounds of Survival

It’s the last week of the current sprint, and we’re working hard finishing up goals and adding a bit of polish to current systems. We’ve fixed a bug that was causing footsteps to play the wrong sound or no sound at all, so there won’t be any ultra-light-steppers in the game anymore. We’ve also added a new drinking sound so you can really enjoy the noise of a Manimal being slurped down.

Speaking of wet noises, the team has been focusing on giving Big Bob, our cannibal leader, his own voice so to speak. We’re working out his combat roar, his disapproving harrumphs when being shot, and all the other little smacks and gurgles his ample belly and twisted anatomy makes. If you’d like to read more about our inspiration and motivations behind which sounds we’re using, check out our latest Medium post about the sounds of survival in the world of Fractured Veil.

We’ve been adding plenty of sights to our sounds this week as well. We’ve improved our fire and smoke effects and added some new torch animations. Campfires have never looked better. Players running through the wilds should be able to see smoke more easily now, so they can join others in a song or sneak up quietly, and act out their favorite scary campfire story.

Our automated road system got some polish too. We’ve added more “road-side attractions” so players will have plenty to rummage through or take cover behind if they run into trouble. They may not be as involved as a Mystery Spot, or as iconic as the world’s biggest ball of twine, but the streetlights and other items alongside our roads help bring in a touch of realism and can be useful for players trying to survive. Here are some day/night shots of a couple of freshly completed roads.

Finally, our GPU giveaway ends in less than a week. If you haven’t entered to win an XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB yet, you still have a few days. There are multiple ways to enter including letting us know your five favorite features in survival games.

June 6, 2019

Blazing Trails

This week we made some headway on improving craftable items. We’ve added color-coded outlines to items based on their quality, and an item’s durability now scales with its quality. We added damage and fire rate updates to items based on their quality, and updated UI widgets to properly display these new stats.

We updated audio support for weapons and continue to add ambient noises across the map to help make every area sound as unique as it looks. We even added some improved rain noises. Standing in the rain and blowing through a few clips at anything that moves has never sounded better! But don’t lose your head; we’ve also updated AI to investigate any nearby shots they hear.

The team continued their work on filling in the various structures that dot the landscape and making them worth exploring. Buildings will now spawn two loot volumes. One for filling containers, cabinets, and appliances, and one for spawning loose items. We want to reward players who are brave enough to root through the questionable environments that have grown in Lahaina’s crisper drawers after the apocalypse.

However, all our work cramming loot into nooks and crannies won’t matter much unless players can find these buildings to loot. To this end, we made some substantial updates to our automated road tool. Designed to quickly add roads, paths, and trails across the map, keeping players moving about and directing them to the large structures important to gameplay, the tool now includes a number of roadside props. Lights, benches, mailboxes, and various other items and debris are now generated along roads where appropriate. This gives neighborhood ruins and downtown a feeling of authenticity, as well as helps to define paths in more overgrown areas. Below you can see a few of these trails and the new roadside improvements.

May 24, 2019

Tower Updates and UI Improvements

We’ve kept our ears to the grindstone this week and have added a ton of new audio in the game. We’ve added new sounds for jumping, and harvesting, as well as increased the ambient noise along the beach. Players will be able to hear when they’re starving or dehydrated, and firing or interacting with weapons has never sounded better. We also fixed a bug where footstep sounds would play twice if a player was in third person view. There’s plenty of things running around the landscape for a person to worry about, without adding the paranoia of an unseen assailant following your every step.

The team made a number of UI improvements too. We’ve added a favorite button to the crafting filter list so you don’t have to search as long when you’re trying to make another pile of your preferred hat or weapon. We’ve improved ammo counters and encumbered alerts so a player knows when their backpack has reached hoarder level full. We’ve changed our gun equipping animations and nabbed a bug where falling damage was being applied twice to players. If you’re going to jump off the top of the Communication Tower there’s no sense in dislocating your legs and crushing your spine more than once.

Speaking of the Com Tower, the zipline center got a little love this week. We’ve done a bunch of performance work on our “hero” buildings, but up until this point most of it has been focused on the Thorcon Power Plant, the game’s social hub. Not only have we made the tower more performant, but we’ve started to add more “lived in” touches to the building. We’ll be making similar touches to many of the game’s structures to highlight just how important these still standing structures are to those who survived the upheaval of The Great Fracture. Below you can see some of the improvements to the outside of the tower and the ground level. We’ll have some shots of the upper levels next week when our designers are finished adding the right amount of post-apocalyptic chic.

May 8, 2019

Building a Better Bob and Handing Out Beta Keys

The team is in the middle of a huge audio and lighting pass. We’ve made some improvements to torch and campfire lighting and we’ve added slightly darker borders around crosshairs to help players see better when aiming at bright objects. We’re working on directional sound improvements so players can figure out where bullets are coming from, and combat sounds are muffled if you’ve taken cover inside a building. We’re adding ambient noises to a number of areas like: buildings, the beach, and noises that differentiate deep jungle from scrub land. We’ve also upgraded: bullet impact, footsteps, jumping, and tree falling sounds to round out the noises of the week. Things have never sounded better.

We spent some time improving our favorite cannibal overlord and all-round bad guy Big Bob Abrmo. The Maui meat mogul turned ravenous mutant got a boost to his projectile throw rate and an increase in the speed of the things he throws. He may be no Nolan Ryan, but Big Bob is bringing some heat now, and will make an even better combat closer than before. It wasn’t just Bob’s arms that went through a revamp however, we also upgraded his gouty legs. We fixed his occasional stutter step issues, and his tendency to find a spot he liked and stick to it instead of wandering around looking for food like he should. We also increased his charging speed. Don’t let his size or cane fool you, in a straight line Bob is more than able to catch most things when he’s excited.

We made some improvements to Bob’s supporting cast this week as well. We’ve increased the speed of body parts that Trophy Collectors throw at players, and we’ve made it easier for mutants to move through their own kind instead of getting bunched up Three Stooges style when taking action. The team tracked down and fixed a bug where a mutant’s line of sight could be blocked by items such as arrows. This made for a fun bug that would make mutant navigation erratic if they had enough arrows stuck in them at one time. It was fun to watch, but unfair to the poor mutants running into trees.

Speaking of fun, we are in the middle of our next contest. Five winners will be drawn, with the top two winners receiving a brand new XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB and a Beta Key to Fractured Veil. Third, fourth and fifth prize winners will receive a Beta key for Fractured Veil (not that Beta has started yet). There are multiple ways to enter, but only 3 days left before we pick winners, so enter now.

April 18, 2019

Character Customization and Thudding Clubs

The team is finishing up our big optimization and performance push, and moving into character customization work this week. Our first step was to introduce a female player model to the game. Right now it works just like it does in nature. You randomly spawn in as male or female, and in the future we will allow for more personal touches to your character. While we still need to make a few adjustments to the woman model, she works fine for testing purposes. We’ll be spending some time working through all the combinations of weapons and gear with both models to make sure that they work on the post-apocalyptic red carpet, and don’t break the game somehow.

We made some more drone improvements too. We learned that the flying camera’s attention span left a lot to be desired, and they would often stop filming characters or battles if they noticed a squirrel running around nearby. We’re making sure they understand that players are more important than small rodents, and we’ve removed their spotlights when they’re flying around during the day.

We’ve made a few changes to the game’s co-stars this week as well. Players will find an increased number of wolves running across the landscape, hunting down anything too slow to escape the pack. We also discovered a bug with some of our mutants not moving unless they were aggroed. This led to situations where the terrors of jungle would stack up inside each other like twisted Maui nesting dolls. While this might make for a memorable encounter, we want the horrors to respect their personal space.

Finally, our audio work continues this week with updated soundbanks and improvements to: weak points, things breaking, weapons, ambient noise, buildings, and directional sounds. The underground spawning area now sounds as dark and dank as it looks, and melee weapons like the ones below will clang off metal objects, thud off of wood, and smack against your enemies.

April 5, 2019

Performance Improvements and Weapon Noises

As we approach the weekend, we’re wrapping up our huge optimization and performance push. The landscape is still undergoing changes as we work on our new distributed foliage system. The backends and game inventory have gone through a huge refactoring as well. The performance improvements should make our testing sessions more enjoyable for everyone, and help us work out any remaining kinks. If you’d like to help us identify and address more issues with gameplay join our discord server and wait for your chance to join the testing group.

We’ve fixed a number of bugs recently including: animation stutters when switching or unequipping weapons, torches that weren’t spawning fire, (which is really the whole point of a torch), and a Peter Pan like issue were characters didn’t have a shadow.

In addition to these bugs, we’ve made a number of inventory and crafting improvements. Players can now affix or detach attachments from anywhere in the inventory. We’ve added scroll wheel logic for selecting items on the hotbar. You can now mouse wheel to highlight an item, and then select it. The team fixed an issue with dragging items getting stuck on screen after tab changes, and fixes a bug with the laser sight making weapon meshes distorted.

Our audio pass continues as well, covering jungle, beach, and building alike. We’ve added footsteps back into the game, so those with a good ear can hear trouble coming. In addition, we’re working on improved audio for bullets and weapons. Soon, players will be able to enjoy the wet slicing noises weapons like these below make as they tear though hide, armor, and flesh. You can see more 3D weapon models on our sketchfab page, or check out our gallery on the media page.

March 28, 2019

Tag: audio