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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.

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Having “The Talk” With the Drones

As we approach the end of sprint 34 the team continues making audio updates. We’ve added new tree falling sounds, audio support to doors in the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant, and gave the noise produced by the drone engines some tweaks as they change speed. In addition, we made a list of possible headshot alerts and narrowed down a favorite audio cue for hitting the sweet spot with the help of the public.

We increased the radius of torch lights to help players get a better look at their surroundings, and spot the dangers lurking in the darkness a bit sooner. Players have a new source of water, as we made puddles drinkable. We’re not saying the water is always going to be safe to drink, but you can give it a shot if you’re really thirsty. It needs a little bit of improvement yet, but we also added the ability to burn bodies. In addition to helping keep the landscape clean, burning a body will help players avoid attracting the attention of cannibals, and others, and bears, oh my!

We fixed a number of crafting bugs including: a bug where players could craft themselves out of the server by trying to craft an overly large stack of items in a single request, a bug where being killed while crafting would cause the items that were “on hold” to be lost, and a bug with items being deleted when trying to equip non-equippable items.

Lastly, the drone got a little love this week and gave a little back in an unexpected way. We fixed a bug with the drone getting stuck behind targets confused about which way to go, updated the spotlight and other night time effects, and added multi zoom effects to the drone for zooming in on areas when far away. It was then that we noticed a problem. We’re not sure if it’s the hundred years of isolation and loneliness after the Great Fracture, or just that the drones are reaching the age where they start noticing animals in a different way, but they gained an obsession with deer rears. That’s right. They like big bucks and they can not lie. Below you can see a short clip of what happened to our innocent drones after implementing the new cinematic module this week.

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Polish and Performance Improvements

Sprint 34 began this week and like the previous sprint, we will be spending a lot of the next 30 days focusing on polishing up current features, and hunting down any remaining bugs that are having a negative effect on gameplay. Specifically we will be improving AI capabilities and actions, adding more world spaces, adding some finishing touches to the drone, making performance improvements, installing a crash logging system, enhancing the game loop and making a player path progression that can keep our first set of players actively engaged for a few weeks of play.

The first tier of our pinging system is finished. This should allow players to ping various items like food or ammo to quickly communicate to others in their group the location and type of loot they’ve found. We plan on adding more features to the system soon to make communicating with others fast and efficient. We added a “hold F to eat” mechanic when picking food up off the ground so players can eat on the run if they need to. We also fixed bugs with containers not being able to be equipped in your inventory, and one that would keep you from looting a weapon with no ammo.

Our homepage got a big update this week too. We’ve added numerous navigation and style improvements, as well as a number of slides that better explain the game. Users should be able to get to various sections easier, and learn more about the game, the development process, and upcoming contests/events. Check it out and let us know what you think on our discord server.

Our performance improvements continue as well. We’re taking another optimization pass on procedural buildings and breaking down levels to get a boost. While we have had some crashing issues in the last few play tests, we’re working through them and still have logged some quality play time. Below you can see a video from a recent session that shows a player trying to keep his distance while filling some mutants with a few arrows. Everything is going as planned until a surprise bear decides to join in the fun.

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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.

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Bringing Back The Noise

Our drone work continued this week, while we add that last bit of polish to the autonomous cameras that fly around Lahaina filming the action. In addition to smoothing out their flight patterns, teaching them what’s worth filming, and improving their HUD, we fixed a bug that would occasionally see them spawn under the map. We also worked out a problem causing them to be unable to see projectiles or their trails. They can now properly follow a firefight and are spawning where they should. You can see all the progress we’ve made by checking out the drone feed on YouTube or Twitch.

The team has made a number of crafting improvements as well. We’ve added red to items missing ingredients, restored the green color to quantity counters, and crafting recipe images will now be desaturated when not enough ingredients are present, to make it easier for players scanning their piles of components. In addition, sorting has been added to the crafting list, details have been added to the crafting slider widget, and we’ve added “favorite” functionality back in so you can crank out items quickly and easily.

We’re just beginning a large audio push across the entire map. Ambient sounds have been added to the respawn level, as well as a number of wild areas in the game. The team has also improved the attenuation to gun sounds, so the twang of a ricochet just missing your head, sounds more realistic. We’ve also made a pass over damage values and updated damages for bows and crossbows

Lastly, we’ve been doing a bit of play testing to work out any issues with gameplay and find bugs. We’ve found issues with players getting stuck in a throwing animation when they were downed, and fixed a problem with players being able to execute throwing attacks while prone. We want to keep an army of axe throwers crawling on their bellies from taking over the island if we can. If you’d like to help us work out the kinks join our discord server and follow the directions at the top of the “Testers” channel. Below you can see a shot from a recent session, where we started a failed mutant tumor piercing service.
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Performance Improvements and Completing Packages

This week the team remains focused on performance improvements across the board, and work on tools and systems to make the game experience as smooth and engaging as possible. First, we tackled houses and building interiors. We’ve reimported all of the houses on the map and improved the LOD on the procedural house meshes to make them more performant. We’re putting on our apocalyptic interior designer hats, and roughing up rooms adding holes, cracks, and grunge to spaces, ensuring a trendy beat-up look to every abode.

Our work hasn’t just been targeted at the indoors however. We’ve simplified the foliage system and added solely the foliage necessary for gameplay temporarily while we work out some kinks. The team has improved foliage LOD transitions and are looking at ways to increase game performance while players are running through our wild places. We added tint to rocks allowing players to see that they contain harvestable ore, and fixed a creepy bug in which bamboo didn’t cast a shadow, leaving you to wonder what kind of supernatural thing was disguising itself as bamboo groves.

We continue work on the drones, improving their eye and decision making ability. While trying to teach them what things are worth recording or following, we discovered that they aren’t fans of mass combat currently. They’re pretty good at recognizing mutants, players, and animals and staying on the tail of a lone player, making their way through the map. However, in one of our play testing sessions, seven players were shooting each other, and anything else that moved, only to have a drone move away to film a nearby deer. We’re working on improvements to make them fans of shoot outs and the bloody fields of combat.

The team also made a number of crafting and inventory updates. You can now move around items in your inventory while crafting, and we added better support for switching between pause menu screens. The crafting screen now puts items that you have the ingredients to make at the top, so players can see what they have, and what they still need to harvest more easily. We also squashed a bug that would leave players unable to unequip weapon attachments, and one that was affecting some world containers not accepting drag and drop or double clicks reliably.

Speaking of world containers, we’ve completed the design to our Alohagistics boxes. Old packages from the crowd-sourced delivery company that promised to “Get There Eventually” will be replacing some of the more generic looking crates and containers over the game map. Below is a look at a stack of well worn packages ready for looting.
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Power Plant Makeover

The team is making some improvements to the various ruins across the entire map. We’re regenerating every structure made with our procedural building tool to add a new automated furniture feature. Instead of the barren husks that have dotted the map in the past, players can expect now to find the finest furnishings inside houses from our “Apocalypse Sunrise” and “Lahaina Legacy” lines. The new furniture tool allows us to fill every automated structure with set dressing appropriate for searching for useful items or taking a break from the struggle to survive.

We worked out a few AI issues too. We had a number of problems with mutant movement and spacing. Occasionally they were getting stuck, or caught in a loop when trying to move to specific locations. The whole thing looked a little like musical chairs, with the terrors of the jungle vying for the same attack location when spotting an enemy. We added a slight delay to their overlap resolving, and improved the AI on AI collision performance. Mutants should now murder players in an orderly, well organized fashion.

Much of our work recently has been to The Thorcon Power Plant, the game’s social hub. We’ve put a ton of painting, decorating, lighting, and materials work to make the inside and out look like it had survived a cataclysm. We discussed what players will eventually be able to find inside, and planned out where some of our NPCs will be located.

A crafting/banking spot is already set up inside, including our newest crafting tool, the smelter. Players will be able to build tools and weapons as well as transform ore into usable metal in the area. We talked about a few crafting mechanics and made plans for some future improvements. In addition, we’ve begun working out our tiered items system. In the near future, players will be able to enhance certain item abilities. Things like: damage, recoil, spread, and accuracy will be able to be improved in the crafting area with the right resources.

Below are a couple fly-through videos showing all the hard work we’ve put into making the interior of the Thorcon look great.

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Foliage and Food Fights

This is the first full week of sprint 32 and we have a lot planned for the next 30 days. Our main focus will be finishing up player persistence and polishing current features for our first set of test players right around the corner. We’ll be adding better player communications, a few more drone improvements, a crash logging system, and build out 8 more world spaces before we let the first group of testers trickle in. The goal is to have the features and systems in place to support a multiplayer experience that can keep a player engaged for an extended period of time. You can read about the sprint 32 specifics and all of our previous sprints on our Dev Updates page.

Everyone knows that a vital part of the development process is frequent play testing to find bugs and work out the kinks. Usually those bugs are annoying or break something in the game, but occasionally you find a gem, and we found one this week. While we were running around, causing each other grief, and banging on the game systems, we discovered that throwing cooked meat at someone’s head was not only annoying, it was down right deadly.

In no time, everyone was cooking meat as fast as they could, not wanting to fall behind in the Lahaina loin race. The air was buzzing with hurled proteins as we shot our own version of “The Deadliest Cutlet”. In the end, some good people were lost and lots of food lay bloodied on the ground. While it was one of the most memorable and dangerous food fights many of us had seen, it was ultimately decided that a pork chop to the face should do less damage than a hatchet.

When we weren’t clobbering each other with meat, we finished adding a little polish to our procedural foliage and road systems ahead of doing an audio pass over the entire map. The play area will sound great soon, but it is already looking terrific as you can see below.
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Lastly, your time to win a XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB in our giveaway is almost up. The contest ends February 13th so don’t miss your chance! There are multiple ways to enter including joining the Fractured Veil discord server, and reserving your player name

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Drone Fixes and New Animations

To start out the week the team made a few campfire improvements. Everyone knows how busy a House leader can be running through the jungle, and keeping their members alive all day. Cooking for all of them takes time and can be a hassle. However, now thanks to the amazing new meat stacking feature we just added, a House leader can cook a delicious dinner for everybody in seconds. Simply stack your meat by kind, and with the touch of button you’ll be making mounds of deer loins and rabbit by the platter. It couldn’t be easier!

We’ve added an ingame bug reporter, and are working out a few issues before we roll it out. The weather after the fracture is unpredictable enough without us inadvertently creating an irony vortex with excessive bug reports about our bug reporter.

Some big improvements were made to Big Bob, our favorite cannibal overlord. We adjusted his speed, gave him a ranged attack, and did a lot of animation work. We created charging and death montages and gave him a taunt animation so he can properly convey his disappointment that a player is not in his cooking pot already. We adjusted a few of his default animation play rates as well, so they look more realistic.

Of course our drones got some love this week too. We’ve added a refueling sequence to the drones, giving players a brief respite from having their movements tracked, and allowing them a window of anonymity. We included some basic wind effects and a dashed line ring to the HUD that rotates according to the cameras current FOV. They will slightly prefer to film animals, mutants, and players from the front now, as there was an issue with them locking onto something’s butt and then filming it all day. It was at the very least, unprofessional. We also fixed a few more issues with them getting stuck in poisoned areas, and excessively circling a target if a tree was anywhere nearby. You can check out the latest round of drone improvements on our YouTube page, and see how good our procedural foliage system is working in these shots below.
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Lastly, there’s only 8 days left to win a XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB in our contest. The giveaway ends February 13th. There are multiple ways to enter including joining the Fractured Veil discord server, and reserving your player name.

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Lighting the Sky and Chopping Down Trees

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.
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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.