Communication Tower Archives

Veilcorp Failure Causes Mass Evacuation

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources along with Federal officials have called for a shutdown of a Veilcorp facility working on 127 “Unbiseptium” synthesis. A containment breach early today destroyed acres of crops and led to the mass evacuation of thousands.

According to Veilcorp officials, the containment failure only lasted a few seconds. Acres of corn were destroyed in that short time and several surrounding towns have been evacuated. No casualties have been reported.

This is already the third such breach from a 127 synthesis plant since the beginning of the year, leading many to call for a moratorium on such research.

University of Michigan physics professor and Fields Medal winner Dr. Eric Oeming say Unbiseptium may be the key to sustainable clean power. “We need to understand that this is a very new technology so mistakes will be made. However, I believe the lives saved and the knowledge gained from studying this element far outweigh the occasional destruction of some corn.”

Tim Durney of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources disagrees. “What we’re seeing here is that we clearly don’t have a handle on this. If what Veilcorp says is true, a short release of these particles can destroy everything in a half-mile radius. It is a miracle that nobody was killed. We have no idea what the long term effects might be. Until we do, we should end this research,” he said.

March 27, 2023

The Cannibals Are Coming

This week the team made some improvements to our cannibal mutants. An important part of the ecosystem, the cannibals help keep the landscape clean of player bodies. Without their bone crunching work, the beautiful wilds of Lahaina would soon be filled with piles of ganked characters after a few bloody play sessions. You’ll have to make sure to burn any corpses now to avoid attracting the islands cleaning crew. Remember, they’ll eat both the quick, and the dead.

We nabbed a number of bugs as well. Weapon tracers will now move properly instead of hovering in place like the world’s deadliest fireflies. We fixed an issue with the drone crashing when changing targets, a problem with them trying to focus on a target while they were too far away, and a nasty bug that would delete an item from your inventory when you double clicked on it. The most interesting bug of the week however has to go to a bit of audio trouble we had with trees. When a tree was felled, the sound of it falling would play continuously. While it did answer some age-old questions, we decided to fix it before the whole map became a cacophony of falling timber.

We’re starting to fill in downtown Lahaina and working on stuffing those areas with enough rubble and ruins to properly represent how densely packed it is in real life. We’re also making improvements to our procedurally generated buildings. We’ve set up the homes that survived The Fracture with dressers, fridges, cupboards, and other things that make a ruined house, a ruined home. We’ve hidden loot in the nooks and crannies, and increased the amount of items that can be spawned in each building, making it worthwhile to go scrounging inside.

Finally, the team has continued to work on making the comm tower one of the most desirable properties after the apocalypse. With a strong support structure and ample windows, this spacious building is sure to be a favorite for everyone seeking a little shelter. As promised last week, we’ve staged the upper levels to make it a players paradise. Complete with crate and pallet tables, extremely distressed furnishings, and plenty of natural light, you can see just how inviting the zipline hub is looking in the shots below.

May 16, 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

Tag: Communication Tower