We’re well into sprint 31, and there is a lot planned. This sprint will focus on: Harvesting improvements, finishing up crafting tier 4 (including new ore resources and resource refining), advanced terrain work, filling out more world spaces, adding two new AI types, some drone refinements, completing player persistence, and more. You can always see specifics about the goals for the current sprint and previous ones on our sprint page.
The team finished work on banking persistence so players can store their most important items to safeguard them in the event of their untimely demise. We’ve also added crafting/recycling persistence so all your hard work building things, or breaking them down, is not in vain.
Speaking of breaking things down, the team is starting work on something that Chris is especially excited about, making trees fall when you chop them for wood. We’re still working out some collision and audio issues, as well as a bug that would cause harvested trees to still remain on the map. However, we should have a complete tree felling experience soon for all you lumberjack enthusiasts. (And that’s OK!)
We’ve also made some great trueSKY improvements recently. This has allowed us to work on the moon and stars and optimize some of our environmental lighting. You can see below how good things are looking during the day or the darkest night.
Lastly, don’t forget that you only have 22 days left to win a XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB in our contest. There are multiple ways to win including joining the Fractured Veil discord server, reserving your player name, or answering a question (just one, this isn’t a survey). The contest ends February 13th. It’s not a bouquet of roses, but a GPU isn’t a bad Valentine’s Day gift.
Sprint 30 has just begun, but this is the last full week before the holidays, and all the travel they bring. Here’s a look at what we’ve accomplished so far, and what we have planned for the rest of the sprint.
We’ll be focusing a lot of time on our resource and crafting system tier 4. The game will see the addition of scrap metal, and different ores that players will be able to pound out of rocks, including a variety of metals and sulfur. We plan on adding the enigmatic element 127 to the resource gathering loop. The fuel that makes veil travel possible and fuels the Thorcon Power Plant will become an important energy resource, and might add a little zing to crafting recipes down the road.
We continue to work on the design for a craftable device to locate 127 on the map. In addition, we discussed where a player might find the element and ways to balance the risk/reward for carrying large quantities. The team made some campfire improvements as well, and made some stacking adjustments for items players cook-up or craft.
We’ve made a lot of improvements to the live streaming drones flying above our version of Lahaina, and that work will continue in this sprint. Recently the drones have had a ton of improvements ranging from smoother pathing and movements, to different FOV and lighting upgrades, including night vision. They avoid trees and buildings now, and can even follow animals and players, providing the people are doing something to catch their attention. Our goal is to further refine their decision making process allowing us to target certain areas, things, or actions. We’re also working on a new HUD that provides both information for players, and gives off a slightly ominous “all-seeing” vibe to the autonomous cameras.
The team will also continue their AI work, specifically on a general “commander” type, and a unique profile for our beloved mutant cannibal leader, Big Bob. We want to refine the mutant’s group tactics and make them all team players when it comes to tearing players to shreds. We’ve recently added the ability for mutants to know all the cover points in an area, and select the one best suited for them, instead of picking an area at random around them. There’s no sense in running twenty feet away, taking fire the whole time, to hide behind a rock, when there’s a perfectly good shell of a car just a few feet away. We briefly discussed a few unique options and actions for Bob down the road to separate him from other commander type AI’s.
There’s a lot of tech work and upgrades this sprint too. We’ll be doing some MYSQL and persistence work for a wide variety of things including: stat persistence, locations discovered, blocked players, player banks, and quickslot ordering. We’re also working on an in-game crash and bug reporter. Players are a step closer to being able to start putting together a crafting nest egg in the game, as the art and system work is done for player banks. We just need a little backend work for persistence, and the hoarding can begin. We discovered a bug where players would see their own deaths again when spawning near their old corpses. Having to relive your death in your mind is bad enough, but we thought being forced to physically watch it again was excessively cruel and fixed the problem.
Lastly, we continue our work inside and in the areas around the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. We’ll be looking at some concepts for the power plant’s interior before finishing up the the look and the materials inside. We’re working on designs for smelters, interior improvements, and safe zone areas too. While we made some great trueSKY, materials, and foliage improvements across the map already, we plan on making another global lighting and post processing pass this sprint. Here’s a couple of screenshots highlighting how good the lighting and environment is looking currently.
That’s it for now. We’ll be back later this week with more updates.
Still fighting off turkey hangovers, and the colds you always get at group events, we dug back in this week where we left off before the holiday. A lot of material and lighting work was done on the landscape as the team builds out the areas between the game’s main hubs, as well as along the coast. We made a number of day/night improvements and added ruined buildings and neighborhoods to allow players something to explore or set up an ambush between social hubs. We plan on taking another pass to add story elements, unique play features, and specific buildings to explore and loot, once we have theses areas connected.
We reworked the indoor lighting of the Armory, Communication Tower, and the Thorcon Power Plant after it had been disabled due to a truSKY issue. Players shouldn’t need to light an extra torch inside anymore to read their favorite book. Last week we found a huge part of the Thorcon reactor that we had somehow misplaced in a folder somewhere along the way. We’ve made a pass over it to match the rest of the interior, and will hopefully get it installed before the inspectors arrive. Meeting all codes and having the correct paperwork after the fracture is serious business. We’re also taking another pass at the look of the player bank, making it fit better with the game’s aesthetic.
Our hero buildings weren’t the only thing that got a revamp. For a while now we’ve discussed the damage balance issues we’ve had with weapons. The game’s craftable bow and hatchet were among the most powerful weapons for a while, but that’s about to change. We did a full pass on weapon damage and made quite a few changes to more realistically represent the ballistic damage of your typical firearm round. We also adjusted a number of gun stats including firing speed and fixed a melee weapon distance bug. Daggers will no longer have the same reach as spears, and you’ll need to get a little bit closer to a enemy to put your hatchet in their head now.
Speaking of bugs, the team fixed a few already this week. We boosted the interval between loot drops to 30 mins to avoid overlaps in delivery quests. Nobody is a fan of two of aunt Ruth’s jello salads at the Luau, one is more than enough. We fixed an issue with first person animations being used when using a weapon in third person. Also, we corrected a problem with damage highlights showing up on players when they weren’t healable. Medical co-pays are expensive enough, without phantom injuries showing up on characters.
The team made some harvesting adjustments and took a thorough look at the crafting cycle as it currently stands. We’ve made resources much more available and the amount a player can harvest per attempt has been greatly increased for some things. We looked at a few other games to see how they handle resource availability and the speed of their crafting cycle to help figure out that sweet spot, where the best craftable gear is attainable through diligent work, but not too easy. We also want players to be able to create useful gear throughout the crafting process, and not feel like the crafting grind is just a time waster. It’s a tricky balancing act, but we have a game plan in place, and know that we’ll end up making many more passes until we iron out all the bumps.
Lastly, we spent a little time on one of the most important parts of the environment and player survival, our animals. There are many things players have to battle or overcome in the game. In addition to the mutants, and blood thirsty players who just want to get as many kills as possible before their lunch break ends, the environment and animals play a huge role. Wolves and bears are a physical danger to players, while other animals can provide much needed food or leather, and some exist simply to make the landscape look and feel as authentic as possible. We have more about our animals on this imgur post with a few short clips of them in action. Below you’ll find a screenshot of a pack of wolves taking down a deer that is worthy of hanging in any bunkhouse or lodge, a shot of a bear making its morning rounds, looking for a player foolish enough to sleep in the open, and a few other shots of animals in the game.
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.
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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