blending Archives - Fractured Veil

Armor, Audio, and Audacious Kitchens

The web team continued their polish work on the shopping cart this week and made a number of minor fixes and improvements. As I mentioned in the last update, we decided to try a new brand of t-shirt that we think will be more comfortable. We now have both men’s and women’s shirts instead of the just the one unisex style that we had before. Jesse designed new logos and we picked out some new colors for both styles of shirt. We’ll be adding some more new shirts, posters, and other merchandise soon. In addition, we made another pass at box design, and Jesse is adding the finishing touches now.

We talked a bit about our future server needs, and went over a few options to get us where we plan to be. San continued to work on persistence and we should have an inventory that stays with your character very soon. With the end of the year approaching, we took some time to go over a 3 month development timeline, to make sure everyone was on the same page, and that we weren’t missing any low hanging fruit. The team discussed messaging systems and what we’d like ours to do that isn’t readily available with other options. We went over different short and long term goals and solutions.

The ambient sound system is nearing completion and it’s sounding great. We have a number of different sounds for various areas and times of day. Players will hear different noises traveling at night than they will in the morning, and we have separate sounds for both birds and insects. Even buildings have their own associated ambient noises. The automated building system is almost ready to be deployed as well. The tech team showed off a number of screenshots from randomly constructed buildings and it’s looking good. Their still loading our game-specific furnishings and props so everything we looked at used generic placeholders, which led to this magnificent kitchen you see below. One can only imagine how many years of their life the cabinet maker gave to complete this kitchen. There’s enough counter space to hold the contents of another entire kitchen, and we’re still trying to calculate how many shark-toothed frying pans will fit in the lower cabinets

We talked some more about integrating a game camera on the website and discussed getting more House and player data on the front page. We’re collecting a lot of useful data right now, but we’re not doing much with it yet. We discussed displaying player metrics and events, things like: who crafted the most of X item, who did the most damage, announcing that Chris got more head shots than anyone else, and so on. Displaying user data can be tricky though, and we went over the different privacy options we’d need for those of you who don’t want your character info shared.

Our armor system is now in place and we’re going through and adjusting different damage mitigating outfits to make sure the game remains balanced. As I mentioned earlier this week, we had some issues with drag-n-drop in the inventory. Those problems have been worked out, so characters can drop anything they want instead of being stuck in a permanent item dragging hell. Finally, the communication tower shading and sounds are done, just in time for us to run into some lighting issues. It’s looking great even if it’s a bit dark right now.

That wraps it up for this week. We’ll be back with more updates Tuesday.

November 16, 2017

Dev Update: Dressing for the Weather

We started a new sprint this week so there was a lot polishing and last minute bug fixing going on. Refinements to our alert and inventory system continued and our crafting/assembly and cooking system also got a little love. We found a bug that would trap you inside a corpse after you dispatched an enemy. It’s common knowledge that bird watching while entangled in the entrails of a Night Marcher is one of the lowest rated activities in Lahaina, so we put a fix in.

We discussed and laid out in more detail, our plans and wants for an ecommerce system. We talked about promo codes and explored the convoluted world of drop shipping, logistics, and fulfillment services. We did some more patcher work and discussed how we could make it faster and more efficient. We did some docker work and made plans for autoscaling UI soon. We continued to do some work on lighting, blending, and textures. We loved this shot, but the sun is Hayuuuuuuge and premature inflation of the sun is not one of our disasters.

Since we got the ability to take off clothes and play dress up last week, we came to the realization that an important decision needed to be made. Realistic genitals, Ken doll, underwear, or some other solution for completely stripped down characters. Some of the more gritty in the group championed a natural look, arguing that realistic genitals would add a certain something to the game. Others argued that something a bit more avant-garde like a big red button where the organs should be would set us apart. In the end, calmer and more sensible heads prevailed and it was decided that the traditional boxer-brief for the male characters and boyshort + bandeau top for female characters was more fitting. Although, the idea of having those garments brightly colored and easily targeted is still being kicked around to encourage the wearing of clothes, which will protect players from the elements and make them a less obvious target.

Various audio components were added to the game. You can now hear yourself running, generators hum, and you can listen to the rain fall. Speaking of rain we added a some rain/wet lens effects. The weather improvements did lead to the discovery of another bug as well. Months ago, when we first started discussing what we thought might be fun to do with the weather, someone suggested that the possibility of being struck by lightning would be neat, and we all agreed. Unfortunately for any of us play testing, the lightning strikes had somehow been set too high. Every 30 seconds lightning would strike a random area sending a deadly shock through anything within 60 feet. Lightning in the game is not only striking twice in the same place, it is striking over 100 times an hour. Storms had unwittingly become the most dangerous part of the game. It looks like Zeus and Thor are having a shooting contest any time a storm passes through. We’ll get it fixed soon. Below you can see a few shots in the bad weather that we managed to take before being filled with at least 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.

August 2, 2017

The Lights Are Low and the Pants are Off

We’re starting a new sprint next week so we’ve been busy smacking down bugs, finishing up systems, and adding a bit of polish to a variety of things.

We cleaned up and reorganized some of the navigation on the website, added a search field to the right hand nav and fixed a lingering scroll bar issue. Our basic quest system was completed. Players will now be able to gather various goods for money and experience, as well as explore the jungle with a purpose instead of just mindlessly shooting all day. Don’t get us wrong. We expect you to mindlessly shoot a lot. It’s really fun! But sometimes you need to take a break and accomplish an objective.

Speaking of mindless fun, we’ve made a lot of progress on the inventory UI and character models. Drag and drop is now working on almost everything from the inventory. You can apply bandages quickly and easily, but more importantly, the post-apocalyptic dressup portion of our game is complete. Players can now swap out and remove clothing. Many of us consider the ability to shoot boars along the beach in brightly colored shirts and underwear, a milestone.

Work continues on the crafting and cooking system and we’re working on skills as well. We’re putting together our FAQ and buttoned up some of our social APIs. One of our guys learned how hard it was to test out inventory UI in the game when you’ve wandered off the path and are being eaten alive by Trophy Hunter mutants. On the plus side, he got a chance to work out some AI bugs and went to watch Dunkirk, which he highly recommends, when he was done.

We want to focus heavily on group play in the game, and talked at length about the work we’ve done on our party system, and what needs to be done yet. We’d like people to be able to set up groups outside the game and spawn together regardless of whether or not they usually play on the same servers. We talked about what ACLs we’d need for ad hoc parties (like leader promotion and kicking members from the group) and our goal of creating a party messaging system including Voip and shared telemetry information.

Finally, the art folks added a lot of lighting and shadow work to their mountain of blending and texture endeavors. You can see just how good the sun looks now shining through the Communication Tower windows below.

The lighting and shadow upgrades look great outside too. As you can see below, the shadows in the sand and behind plants is looking terrific. The jungle at dusk and in the morning is looking amazing as well. We’ll have a lot more for you soon.

July 27, 2017

A Whole Lot of New Art

There isn’t a whole lot to report since our last update. We found and squashed a few bugs, did some styling work to various parts of the webpage including the newest launcher, and talked about specific styling wants for player graphs and how best to display that data.

The team discussed potential privacy/security issues and hooked up some tooltips for user data and graphs. We talked about different ways to show players where to go besides just a marker on a map during quests, and went over what we’d need to do to allow players to shoot out windows while running around. Work on animations for our crafting system continued, and we talked at length about the importance of audio elements while crafting and in the game in general. A lot of games have a distinct sound to them in general, and during certain activities in particular. Most people would immediately recognize the sound of Mario jumping and we talked about creating audio that would be synonymous with Fractured Veil.

Mostly, we looked at a lot of new art. As you can see below, the Lahaina landscapes are looking great. In particular, some new shading and texture techniques on ground, sand, and rocks is looking incredible.

A few of our abandoned homes got some renovations as well, including wrap around decks with railings, to keep the Night Marchers from falling off when they get too excited.

Finally, work continued on the Communication Tower. The building now has some cool new light installations that would make even the most dedicated maintenance person cry, and places for visitors to take in the breathtaking view.

July 20, 2017

Making Things Secure, Crafting, and Perfect Plants

Chris got a new SSL certificate and banged his head on docker for a while, reminding him that the awesome thing about getting punched in the face is how good it feels when it stops.

We started working on an outline for the FAQ to answer all of your serious and some of your not-so-serious questions. We talked about putting together a trailer and what improvements we’d like to see in the look of the game before we’d be happy showing it off to a larger audience. The team also started working on the game ui for the crafting system. Cross stitching and making cordage out of plant fibers are hard enough on their own. We want to make sure the process is as easy and intuitive as possible in the game.

Our welcome to Lahaina sign got another facelift and is starting to look really good no matter what angle you look at it from.

A bunch more environmental work was done and we talked about the importance of making trees and plants of varying height. This helps create a nice sense of depth as you’re running through wilds of Lahaina, provides places to hide or wait in ambush, and makes the foliage look more real. We discussed at length what it would take to create a system to stomp plants, cut down trees, and ruin lawns. The effort and time needed to make a good looking and completely damagable environment is not a small one.

We went over blending techniques for the areas between the plants and the ground and discussed how we can make their union seem less abrupt and more natural. Even though we’re still not 100% happy with that yet, the shadows from trees moving over the foliage is looking great as you can see from some of these in-game shots below. We’ll keep working on making the plants more perfect and get some more screenshots up in the media section soon.

July 6, 2017

Communication Goals and Coming Back From The Dead Quickly

We didn’t spend the entire holiday grilling food and shooting off fireworks. We did a lot of work too. Here’s what we were up to.

We did a lot of work on our alert system and its ui. This got us talking about our communication goals in the game. We broke down player states into 4 types: Offline, Idle, Participating, and Playing. Our goal is to not only have things you can do in the game when you’re not actively playing, but to have a communication system that serves users in all states. Whether you’re just chatting with members of your house, waiting for your friends to login, or (and this is a big theoretical at this point) operating some defensive system while carpooling to work, we want you to be able to choose through a list of available channels and talk with a click of a button.

We did some work on friends lists and discussed the importance of hooking up privacy settings. Nobody likes being bothered by some random person who bandaged your character at some point and has boundary issues. Having working privacy settings will help those especially needy to move on and bandage other people.
We talked about the need for click tracking and a heat map to help us see what navigation users seem to like or use the most. We always appreciate feedback but understand not everyone feels like telling us that they like or hate something we’ve done.

San did a bunch of patcher/launcher work. Loading the game has never been faster. We continued working on our game tutorial and did some more environmental work. We’ve made some updates to how we display our 3D models that you have to see and began some audio work. Soon the forest will be filled with better sounding birds and our Kükenroot will finally sound like a proper Kükenroot. We even did some work on respawning. We were getting tired of having to restart every time we died and figured you would too. Soon the time between falling off the radio tower and being able to climb back up, to jump again, will be greatly reduced.

July 6, 2017

Tag: blending