Camera Archives - Page 2 of 5

Drone Improvements and Weapon Upgrades

Sprint 29 is coming to an end this week, and we’re finishing up a number of improvements to our drones. Our goal is have a number of autonomous eyes in the sky that stream live footage of the island, broadcasting a number of things ranging from: beauty shots of the landscape, animals in the jungle, and players shooting up the place.

We’ve been working hard to make them as intelligent as possible. The team has added: nightvision, search patterns when they are flying long distances, the ability to change FOV based on what the drone is filming, volumetric shadows to their spotlight, different max view distances based on day vs. night and nightvision vs. spotlight vs. nothing, and panning movements. We’ve also smoothed out their camera work.

In addition to those improvements, we’ve fixed a few issues and bugs that popped up. We solved a problem that was preventing the drones from exiting one state and entering another. The drones will now avoid flying into the sides of buildings and structures, and they will no longer travel too far out to sea. There is still a little work to do on the drone HUD, but the cameras should be broadcasting the beautiful but deadly wilds of Lahaina soon.

Speaking of beautiful landscapes, a good way to appreciate how much work we’ve put into the environment is with a brand new AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB, and we just happen to be giving one away. You still have time to get your entry in by the cutoff date of December 15. There’s multiple ways to enter, but time is running out for your chance win.

We’ve made some animation improvements this week too. A number of third person animations got upgraded so shooting your M1A or bashing someone’s head in with a club is much more pleasing to the eye. We made a pass over all the the weapons in the game to balance their statistics and make them more realistic. All the game’s firearms now have updated statistics for: recoil, range, rate of fire, and damage. We worked some more on thrown weapons, and played around with throwing tools as weapons. Here’s a shot showing just what one motivated individual and their pickaxe can do.

We’ve completed our crafting system tier 3, adding some new recipes, and incorporating resources like leather and energy. 127, the element that made veil travel possible, will be one of the most important sources of energy for players, and we’re working on a 127 detector for them to use. Eventually this craftable device will ping the map with the general location of the element within a certain radius of the player.

Finally, we took to imgur last week to talk a little bit about animals in the game. More than just another enemy to watch out for or a source of food, the animals in Fractured Veil help make the island and the wild places come alive. We’ve put a lot of time into animal AI to make them feel like a natural part of the game, instead of just mounds of leather waiting to be harvested. Our wolves call for help when they discover prey, bears are attracted to the scent of blood, and our prey animals flee in random patterns when they’re being hunted. This week we made a couple much needed adjustments. The bears have been beefed up to make them much tougher and fitting of their place in the food chain, and we discovered that our squirrels needed nerfing. It turned out that the squirrels had more health than most things in the game, including some of the mutants. We decided to take some of that vigor away before they took over, and demanded a no cat policy on the island, and regular acorn tributes. Below you’ll find a couple screenshots of our animals in the wild.

December 7, 2018

Drone Cameras and Interviews

This is the first full week of sprint 29 and the team fixed a number of bugs while finishing up some polish work over the weekend. Some of this work led to a number of temporary hitches that were just too good not to share. First, for a short period of time the Lahaina beach disappeared and the landscape offered all the proof a flat Earther needed to confirm their beliefs. Soon after, we were making a lighting update when we were suddenly veiled to night vision world. While everyone agreed that it looked kind of cool, ultimately everything was a bit too green for our liking.

We went to Imgur with another post about building the world and the structures in it. We discussed how we’ve tried to balance making the island lush enough to show what nature will do if left on its own for 60+ years, and still make players feel isolated and abandoned. We talked about how much time we’ve spent making an atmospheric system that lets us experiment with apocalyptic overtones to add a bit of dread to the normally cheery Lahaina. The team got a lot of good feedback, but we’d love to hear more of your thoughts and comments. Someone is almost always around to answer any questions and listen to your suggestions on our discord. Head on over and let us know what you think.

Our ongoing AI work continues in sprint 29. We’re improving our cover generation system so our mutants don’t stand in front of a wall of bullets when encountering a group. They’ll zig and zag instead of running in easy to hit straight lines, sorry no combat rolls yet, and ranged attackers will do their best to herd players in easy to claw groups. We’re adding a new “Alpha” AI for Big Bob allowing him to command other mutants to do his bidding while he shuffles into combat.

We’ve begun the third tier of our crafting and resource gathering system. Players will be able to skin animals and gather leather now, as well as find the volatile element 127 and convert it into energy to power equipment. While the fuel that powers the Thorcon Power Plant and made Veil travel possible is rare and dangerous, it might give a little kick to certain crafting recipes down the road. We’re adding more recipes for craftable gear and are taking a thorough look at resource availability. In addition to providing players with necessary ingredients, we want harvesting resources to help drive players around the map and encourage them to explore new areas.

One of the biggest areas of focus this sprint is going to be improving the camera drones that fly around the island filming what’s going on. We’re going to be doing some advanced movement work, and add audio recognition so they can detect things like a battle, and move towards it to capture the action. We have a lot of HUD improvements planned for the drones too, giving them a more authoritarian feel while still providing location details.

Speaking of drones, an interview we did with PCGamesN magazine recently digs into our work on the game’s eyes in the sky. We talked about what goes into making the autonomous drones work in the game and our plans for their future. Down the road we’d like to have a number of them, each with their own specialty and directorial eye, capturing and streaming all aspects of the game including: combat, wildlife, and social interactions. Check out the interview and learn more about our plans for the automated cinematographers here.

November 13, 2018

Directing Drones and Seeking Shelter

As the week gets started the web team continues the front page facelift, and navigation update. Jesse has completed images for all of our social networks, and is working on a few custom overlays for streamers, as well as layouts for upcoming contests and announcements. We’re combining site navigation all in one place to streamline things, and help users find what they’re looking for more quickly. A number of minor improvements like new modal windows, and an easier to find download button are in the works too. Jared is still working on getting the drone footage to display properly, and it should be streaming live footage of the wilds of post-fracture Lahaina soon. In the meantime, you can always watch on our YouTube page.

The tech team is putting out the last of the fires caused by the UE 4.20.2 upgrade, but we’ve worked through almost all of the problems the update caused. Terry has worked out the issues with trueSKY. Beautiful clouds, oceans, and sky are right around the corner. We fixed a number of other lingering bugs, including tracking down an issue that was causing certain types of loot to spontaneously disappear from your bag. Nobody likes disappearing bullets, no matter how easy they were to find.

We’re making a number AI improvements focusing in particular with firearms and our Trophy Collectors. We’re adding some situational awareness to our plague-ridden body part collectors. We found their actions, (especially in groups,) to still be more chaotic than we’d like. The team is focusing on adding some cunning, and improving their battle tactics. In addition, we’re teaching some of our NPCs, like the cannibals, to shoot first and eat players later. They’re learning things like: laying down suppressing fire, herding players into groups for melee combatants, and not switching their machine guns to full auto until they’re close enough to not worry about accuracy. Lahaina is about to get a lot more dangerous.

The first iteration of a player bank is nearing completion. Soon, players will have access to a self-contained inventory to stash away the things weighing down your pack, or that you can’t quite bear to drop on the ground. Our drone cameras are getting some love this week too. In addition to upgrading them with the newest geographical info to keep them from gliding through the ground, we’re putting in a lot of work teaching them what to film. We’re improving their audio detection, so that they will recognize things like a fight, stop, and film the action. We’re also teaching them when to move on, so they don’t get stuck on someone determined to chop down enough trees to start their own lumber company.

We’ve made some “quality of life” improvements to help make the game more fun to play, and even have a new starting tool/weapon in the works for players to use when they spawn in. We discussed making sure that crafted items had more “health” than items found in the rubble, and ways we can encourage players to experiment with alternative ingredients when hard at work at the crafting table. We’re not encouraging people to try to make glass rifles, but we want to reward those who think outside the box. We’ve made some improvements to the bow and compound bow to make them look and sound more realistic as well.

Finally, we took to Imgur this week to talk a bit about the progression of buildings in the game, and the importance of seeking shelter. The Great Fracture not only wiped out most of civilization, it also had a lasting effect on global weather patterns. Maui was no stranger to the occasional severe storm or hurricane, but after the accident, the weather became much more unpredictable. Finding decent shelter is just as important as gathering food and water. We looked at some early concept art and talked about the progress we’ve made. As you can see from this shot below, having a cold drink on top of the Communication Tower, is a much different experience than collecting rainwater in one of the ramshackle huts along the beach.

October 23, 2018

Marketing, Badges, and Bob

As the week comes to an end, the web team continues to work on our achievement system. Jesse is finishing up some wireframes for Jared to hook up and is busy designing badges befitting each achievement. We talked a bit about giving extra rewards to players who join or start Houses, fill out their account profiles, and invite friends. We’re in the midst of a front page update with new navigation and some tweaks to the layout. The team is adding space for callouts, announcements, and contests. Jesse showed off some wireframes and we discussed revamping other sections of the website.

One of those sections getting a new look in the near future is the story page. In addition to offering something fun to read, set inside the game world every few days, the game stories are meant to introduce the people, places, and things that made Lahaina the thriving area it was before the Great Fracture. Through emails, transcripts, and news stories, players can find hints as to what caused the accident that nearly wiped out mankind, learn about places worth investigating, and a little about what happened to those who lived through the cataclysm. The team discussed ways to make that more clear, and how to organize all of that information so it is more useful for players trying to survive, and rebuild civilization.

With the game approaching the point where we’ll invite a few alpha testers to run around and face the terrors of the jungle soon, we’re focusing more heavily on marketing. We discussed a few different contest ideas, and fun ways to get players involved. We’re grabbing more videos of our mutants, weapons, and places, as well as extended gameplay sessions, and Jesse is busy chopping them up for promo videos and GIFs. We posted a brief introduction about us and the game, with a few shots of the island, and some of our concept art, and got some useful feedback.

One of the things we shared was some early animations of Big Bob Abramo, one of the first mutants that we fleshed out. Many of our upcoming creatures are based, at least in part, by Hawaiian mythology, but Bob and his troop of cannibals were born from a number of concept drawings. Once a meat-obsessed restaurateur, and real estate mogul in Lahaina, Bob was twisted by the fracture both mentally and physically. Don’t let his cane or the gout-ridden leg fool you, Bob is still quite limber and quick for his immense size. Cursed with unnaturally long life from their mutations, Bob and his crew of cannibals scour Lahaina for the slow or unwary to devour. Here’s a shot of Big Bob on top of the Communication Tower, running with his signature cane.

Terry and crew have worked through our crashing issues on staging, and are pivoting back to remaining weather and wave work. We have a new drone streaming the game world on our YouTube page, and it should be on the website as soon as we work out a few kinks. We still have to fix some pathing issues, as the drone will occasionally still dip too low or phase through a rock. Jesse is also working on a new standby video to use when we’re experiencing technical difficulties.

Lastly, we looked at some more concept art this week of places and natural features surrounding the Thorcon Plant and the Communication Tower. We discussed adding some natural boundaries in places like rivers, deep ravines, or sheer cliffs, to help funnel players around these areas, and the map in general. We talked about a number of buildings, and special areas that could draw players in and would be fun to explore down the road. We talked about where our ziplines go now, adding more lines over interesting geographical features, and to different locations. That’s it for now. I’ll be back next week with the latest news and updates.

October 18, 2018

Banks and Branded Loot

This week kicked off the beginning of sprint 28. The team was busy finishing up final goals from the last sprint, and fixing any lingering bugs. The main focus of 28 will be: completing our UE 4.20.2 update, updating crafting, and tightening up the game’s resource loop. We also plan to: build out the areas surrounding the Thorcon Power Plant, improve the camera drone, build a Bank system, incorporate more of the fictional game companies, and make some AI improvements.

Terry and crew are close to finishing our move to UE 4.20.2 and are addressing bugs as they appear. Last sprint, we identified a number of issues with how buildings were being constructed by our procedural building system that were creating some performance issues. The team addressed most of them, but will finish fixing the rest this sprint. We’re working on collision and audio detection features for the game drone to keep it from phasing through objects, and ensure it catches any action going on in an area.

The team has worked out the issues we were having with the disappearing sky, and Lahaina has clouds, a sun, and plenty of blue above once again. However, we couldn’t help but take another couple screenshots showing how bleak everything looked for those couple days when Chicken Little’s fears turned out to be correct.

The web team continues to work on the achievement system. We’ve compiled a list of achievements with their accompanying rewards, and Jesse is busy designing badges for each. We’re finishing up work on the ingame friends system, so you can more easily find friends you want to run through the jungle with, and blocking tools to keep people off your radar and your message stream.

After some time shooting and stabbing each other, and everything else that moves, we’ve decided to make some adjustments to damage and health values. We found a few weapons to be lacking in stopping power, and a few creatures a little too tough for our liking. Finding that right mix of the joy of wanton slaughter, with a sense of accomplishment by bringing down a tough opponent is tricky, but we’re getting close.

We’re beginning to build out the second tier of our crafting system, with more complex items and a bunch of new recipes. To support this, we’re making some changes to the game’s resource loop. We’re spreading more resources around the map for players to harvest, rocks in particular. In addition, we’re adding a few new resources like charcoal and sulfur. Our goal is that in addition to weapons, armor, and gear, players will soon be able to craft their own ammo, to help supplement the cartridges you can find spread out across the map and hidden in loot caches.

With all the new resources you can gather and new stuff you can craft, there’s going to be a lot of full backpacks and encumbered players running around; so we’re building a banking system for items. Players will be able to place their charcoal collections or anything else messy or heavy in a “Bank” to be saved for later use, and give their backs a break.

Lastly, Jesse and the art team have finished branding work for a number of ingame companies. SSHAM– Lahaina’s favorite canned meat product, Manimal– the most intense solution to an extreme thirst, and Alohagistics– the shipping company that promises your package will “get there eventually,” are just a few of the companies with products players will be able to find around the map now.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back later with the latest updates and screenshots.

October 12, 2018

Dangerous Canned Goods and Bug Hunting

With sprint 26 coming to an end this week, the teams are busy adding the finishing touches to a number of tasks, and hunting down some remaining bugs.

The web team has corrected a number of issues on the page that have been hurting our SEO, and have implemented some improvements to give us a boost. They fixed a few rendering issues, and Jesse continues to push forward with onboarding improvements, and streamlining our referrer section. We want to make the sign up process as easy and intuitive as possible, as well as, explain the benefits you receive when you get your friends to sign up, and adventure through the wilds of Lahaina with you.

Jesse has also been working on the logo for the ingame shipping company responsible for the numerous boxes players find abandoned around the map, or hoarded inside buildings. We looked at various colors, and cover schemes, and had a blast coming up with absurdly funny taglines fitting the humor in the game.

Terry is busy finishing up some server documentation, and taking a break every now and then to do some debugging work. He is looking into the cause of an occasional crashing issue we’ve ran into, and working on a rendering problem with the ocean and the sky creeping until they have replaced everything else in your field of view. While I would argue that there is a solid 10 minutes of fun in the movie Waterworld, we’re not looking to make a homage game to the movie, maybe for the guy stuck at the bottom of the tanker, but definitely not the film as a whole. We discussed at some length the best time to start the upgrade to UE 4.20, and having Terry available to focus on any integration issues we run into.

With our first quest/advanced tutorial coming up around the corner, everyone has been: running around, shooting, jumping, crouching, crawling, harvesting, and building to find and fix as many bugs as we can. We’ve found a few including: ongoing zipline issues, echoing footsteps that persist beyond the underground spawn area, strangely sized doors inside buildings, and players being able to walk through some of the props around the map, but by far the most enjoyable is the can gun. For reasons unknown as of yet, if you eat food out of a can while you have a pistol equipped the two will sometimes merge. There’s no doubt that if you break out the peaches to host an emergency meeting, nobody would expect a gun as an accompaniment, cinnamon maybe, but not a pistol. Below you can see a short video of the infamous can gun complete with reloading.

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Our drone work continues with the team smoothing out, and finalizing its initial flight path until we build out more of the map. The drone will cover the game live highlighting the best action, places of interest, and the most beautiful places in post-fracture Lahaina. We discussed the possibility of specific drone streams in the future featuring certain aspects of the game like: combat, wildlife, main buildings, or even specific groups down the road.

Lastly, work on our first quest continues. We are making some last minute changes to the look of some of the buildings and vehicles players will be searching through for specific items. Some audio and animation improvements are in the pipeline, but most of our time this sprint has been focused on trying perfect the games lighting, especially at night. You can see in this shot of the Communication Tower entrance and the area immediately outside, how much that work is paying off.

Check back later in the week for more updates and screenshots.

September 4, 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

Blue Skies and Beach Roads

The Team continued their work on adding new design features, and talking through the crafting process. We’re updating a few icons to give players a good visual representation of what they’re working on to avoid any confusion. We discussed adding additional recipes, and talked some more about using trash as a resource when crafting. We worked on a few features to make the player inventory easier to work with while you’re busy improving your rifle with: a new scope, a bipod, kitty decals, or whatever else speaks to you.

We looked at a few examples of wash benches that the art team had mocked up, and discussed different aesthetics from: futuristic high capacity machines, to piecemeal chic, and even the latest in radioactive-water-conserving designs. We discussed what features we want in other crafting/repair machines/benches and some possible ui issues to look out for.

The Team had a brief discussion about expanding the merchandize we currently offer in the store. New shirt designs, some additional Hawaiian themed offerings, and a few improvements to already existing products were discussed. We also put some more time into reworking the drone HUD. While we love the way the Veil News Network (VNN) live feed looks on the front page, we’d like to organize the information shown in the HUD a bit better. We want to give players easy to read information about the places they are looking at as the drone camera travels its path across the play area.

We circled back to our discussion about roads and paths in the game, and how important having a robust backbone of paths across the map is. We’re concentrating on including reimagined versions of Route 30, better known as the Honoapi’ilani Highway, and Route 3000, the Lahaina bypass. 30 hugs much of the coast offering players good access to the beach and coastal structures, while 3000 parallels through the heart of Lahaina. We talked about adding signs to help players navigate and warn players of any dangerous boar crossings.

We continue to make improvements to our AI. We have improved animal reactions when encountering people greatly. Since we no longer have issues with bears rolling over on their backs before mauling players, and small animals don’t charge into the sea when they see people anymore, we’re focusing on making the horrors of the jungle a little smarter. Everyone has played that game where the monsters are too stupid to go around buildings, jump, or climb to reach you. While shooting a bloodthirsty creature 100 times through a crack that it is too big to fit through is fun, and hitting it in the head with a bomb every time it tries to squeeze through can be a joy, it’s only entertaining for a few minutes. We don’t want mindless killing machines, we want at least nominally intelligent ones. We discussed what level of combat smarts would be the bare minimum, and the level of tactical know-how we aspire to in our monsters.

Lastly, we made a lot of progress on weather in the game. We’re making improvements to how storms work, and fixed a bug that was causing the rain to be invisible every so often. We’ve made lighting adjustments to make the stars stand-out and pop more at night, and highlight that famous “Hawaiian Blue” to the sky and water during the day. The shots below show off how much that work is paying off.

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

June 7, 2018

Lighting the Night and Making a Perfect Wave

After the holiday weekend, the art team started off the week with a bunch of environmental and audio improvements across Lahaina. We’ve added new sounds to a number of our wild places, as well as areas filled with ruins, and the remains of civilization. The ocean is looking good in the game currently, and we talked about various ways to make it look even better, without going too far down the “realistic wave action” rabbit hole. We want the water to act and look real, but we’re not making a reef diving simulation game.

Our Veil News Network (VNN) drones got a few refinements too. The first pass on the drone HUD is complete, but we plan on organizing the information displayed a bit differently, to make it easier and more intuitive to read. Watching the live stream the camera provides is a great way to see what’s going on across the island, and get a good look at our unique structures and landmarks.

We talked over some potential user flow issues on the upcoming player portal section of the web page. Jesse showed off some new wireframes demonstrating how players would be able to quickly navigate to the more game-important sections of the page. We’re updating to the latest versions of Webpack and React, as well as doing some refactoring work too.

We discussed crafting mechanics at some length this week. How to avoid playing inventory Tetris while crafting, adjusting cool down times, heading off potential abuses, learning recipes, and rewarding players who want to experiment, were all on the table. We worked through a few different resource harvesting issues, and Chris bemoaned the fact that little rocks tend to give the same amount of resources as large ones, when you beat on them with a pickaxe. We plan on adjusting a few things so that big rocks will now produce resources according to their ability, to fulfill player needs.

Our materials and foliage improvements continue, not only to make things look better, but to improve performance. We’re starting a massive foliage review across the island, filling in open spaces to make them look more in line with a world that has been untouched by civilization for decades. We plan on removing some of the old forests, and adding updated plants, with more native species, to make the landscape look more authentic.

Our lighting and weather work moved forward with impressive results this week. We talked about adjusting ambient light levels, and the brightness of the moon and stars at night. The team talked over the problems with making a light bright enough to stand out as a beacon from far away, without making it impossible to sneak around when a player is close. We want some of our large structures to be easily seen at a distance, but we don’t want to eliminate a players ability to stealthily move through the foliage at night.

We are wrapping up the latest pass of detail work in our large buildings. The Veil Station, Thorcon Power Plant, and Communication Tower are all getting some attention. Below you can see the current state of that effort in conjunction with our lighting work. The Communication Tower is looking amazing at night.

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

May 31, 2018

Blue Skies and Deep Mines

To wrap up the week, we’re making some minor adjustments to the Veil News Network (VNN) drone camera. Showing off major structures, and points of interest in real time inside the game, the VNN live stream is a great way to see what’s left of Lahaina, and what’s happening around the game world. Our first pass on the drone HUD is complete, and is looking good. We talked a bit about future view options with things like infrared or low light, and adding different bits of information to the HUD as the drone makes its rounds flying above the island.

We talked about a few new items that we could add to the merchandise selection down the road, a number of different Manimal products in particular. This led to a discussion about the current state of crafting in the game. We talked over ways players could learn new recipes, and the possibility of rewarding those who like to experiment on the crafting bench. In a related topic, we’re adding more recycling options to items in the game. Currently, when you’re done drinking a beverage, you can recycle the can for a small amount of metal. We plan on increasing that list this week, so players will be able to reuse a number of objects for basic materials. However, we still have no plans to allow players to recycle troublesome House members for their meat. We’re not monsters.

Our spawn area is getting some attention. We’re adding the finishing touches, and discussed leaving a few more survival items lying around, to give players a reasonable chance of making it on the surface. We’re adding some audio support to the area, as well as other spots across the map. Soon players will be able to enjoy the sound of buoys softly clanging in the waves, while being chased down the beach.

We looked at some concept art of the entrance of our cave area, and talked about what and who we’d like to add to the upcoming spelunking spot. We continue to make progress on AI work. We’d like to give the unfortunate creatures twisted by the fracture, a fair shot at taking down players with sound tactics and battle strategies, instead of charging in straight lines to their doom. We’re expanding the mutant loot lists as well, so you never know what things you’ll find on them other than really old lint, shiny bits of plastic, and strips of chewed meat.

We continued our work on Team play too. We’re wrapping up any lingering bugs with our loot drop scenarios, (currently we’re having some AI troubles. The waves of enemies who are supposed to test the defenses of players in one scenario, tend to walk around like they are at a meet and greet, instead of charging the gates and breaking down doors.) and we’re finishing up the Team ui soon. We ran into a couple stamina related bugs that we should have fixed soon. Right now, a player’s stamina doesn’t regen properly if they are crouched or prone.

Lastly, we’re doing a complete materials review across the game. We’re stripping out all the remaining placeholder foliage for performance issues, and making sure it is replaced with the correct plants. We continue our lighting and weather improvements too. We’re adjusting the ozone to allow the blue skies to be a bit more blue, and make the stars shine a bit brighter at night. Below you can see just how good the morning sun looks in the game.

That’s all for this week. We’ll be back later with more updates and screenshots.

May 24, 2018

Tag: Camera