Drone Archives - Page 3 of 5

Building a Building System

This is the first full week of Sprint 38 and we have a lot of big features coming in the next 30 days. In addition to finishing our game trailer, we’re working on a player construction system and Steam integration. We’re also completing the first pass of the map and preparing for our first round of players. More new audio, polishing up older features, drone improvements, updating world spaces, performance and crash logging systems are also on the agenda. You can always see what we’re working on and what we’ve finished, by visiting the Sprints page on the website.

We started the week with a few audio updates. The team implemented support for playing sounds when equipping an attachment, fixed a problem where two equip sounds would play when picking up an item that auto-equips, and an issue with audio sequencing when switching between weapons. There’s good news for fans of slurping, smacking, crunching, and other eating noises, we’ve added food sounds. While there may not be much societal pressure to eat quietly after The Great Fracture, players should still chew with their mouths closed or risk catching the attention of one of the cannibals.

Lastly, we’ve made good progress on a construction system so players can create their own apocalyptic bungalows or other tastefully decorated and easily defensible structures. We’ve added recycling and repairing this week so you don’t have to live with any design decisions that you’re having second thoughts about and can easily patch up any machete or claw marks on your front door. We still have some work to do, but players will soon be able to turn their huts into homes.

Speaking of homes, here’s a look at one of Lahaina’s best neighborhoods. Ruins here feature frequent drone patrols, usable roads, one working street light, partial roofs, easy access door ramps, potable water within walking distance, reduced mutant sightings and HOA fees. A perfect spot for first-time hut builders.

August 15, 2019

Setting the Scenery

This week the team is finishing up our game trailer and adding a bit of polish to several systems before we start sharing the fruits of our labor to a wider audience. The autonomous drones that patrol the island and stream gameplay live have great new controls that help us direct them to specific events and areas. They already do a pretty good job of finding the action themselves, but this allows us to make sure that we capture everything worth capturing and quickly make videos of certain aspects of the game. Below you can see a video we made of a drone getting some good close-up shots of a deer going about its business in the wilds.

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Always display content from YouTube

We’ve made a lot of audio improvements in the last few sprints and that work continues. Specifically, we’re working on audio and visual cues for status effects on players so a person starving, about to die of thirst, or shutting down due to shock gets the message that things aren’t going very well for them in a hurry. For those of you who believe automatic weapons are instruments that need to be played, we’re working on giving them a voice. Currently, we’re fine-tuning the micro Uzi to ensure that it’s spraying beautiful music and bullets at anything in your way.

The team is also making improvements to our AI spawner. We’ve created an actor that can be used to quickly generate AI spawn points within a defined area and adjusted how many and where the spawner will produce animals and creatures ready to rip off a player’s face. This way we can adjust how many mutant obstacles are in an area quickly.

Speaking of face-ripping obstacles, we’re working on a new loading screen and have decided to include The Butcher, one of our most beloved player-eaters. We adjusted some of the lighting around him to help bring out the murder in his eyes and added some torches to highlight his cleaver but haven’t decided on which shot to use yet. Below you can see some of our favorites so far.

August 1, 2019

Decorating Disaster

We’ve continued to add some polish to the drone and procedural building system this week ahead of putting together our game trailer. We’ve added more controls to the drone for spotting people and things of interest and staying on target long enough to capture anything worth capturing. These new controls will help us guide these automated eyes in the sky when needed, and improve their video streaming capabilities. If you’d like to see the fruits of that labor check out our most recent imgur post.

Adding a touch of personality to our building system has been a frequent topic of discussion around here. We want to make sure that the ruined houses feel like homes inside and provide the right atmosphere for players, reminding them of the lives lived and lost during The Great Fracture. We took a big first step in that direction with a new poster/picture feature. Now our ruins and a few other places around the map will have pictures or wall adornments that hint at the Maui that once was. Friends and family might recognize some of the people, places, and pets we have in rotation currently. We still have some work to go but you can take a peek at the system in the video below.

Click here to display content from streamable.com

Always display content from streamable.com

We didn’t spend all of our time hanging family photos on the walls, however. The team also nabbed a few bugs and worked on sprucing up the neighborhood we plan on using for the trailer.

We added some animations for our cannibals after discovery we didn’t have any transitions between them feasting on the dead and trying to feast on players. They now stand up and crouch down instead of blinking into attack mode. We fixed some clipping issues with Big Bob and fixed a bug with arrows not showing impact fx on clients and traveling through objects. While a phase arrow sounds useful for those who get sick of shooting around things, it would be too big of a disruption to game balance.

The area where we’re shooting the trailer is coming together nicely as the team continues to add little touches inside and out. Here’s a look at the latest improvements we’ve made to the neighborhood.

July 18, 2019

Building a Safe Zone

A new sprint started this week and we’ll be focusing on finishing up a few systems that didn’t quite get finished from the previous sprint, more drone improvements, audio support across the map, building out five more world tiles, quests, and a number of AI updates.

The team fixed a handful of drone bugs and made some upgrades to the flying cameras that travel around the island filming anything of interest. We fixed a bug where the drone would get stuck flying backward while trying to fly a long distance towards players. We appreciated how impressive it was to go all that way in reverse but it looked silly. We fixed an issue where the drone would drift away from the refueling station before it was fully charged, and a problem with it crashing when a target was being scanned and died. We worked out a problem with it rotating in the wrong direction and smoothed out the camera so it’s less jittery when changing targets.

We’ve turned the lightning back on so players can enjoy a good light show in the sky again. We’ve also made some lighting improvements to torches, added some new animations, and updated its stats as a weapon, for all of you angry mob enthusiasts. In addition, the team fixed some issues with arrows not being attached to skeletal meshes properly or disappearing when hitting a surface too close to a player that fired it.

This week we added some fencing around the perimeter of the social hub of the game, the Thorcon Power plant. The fence marks the border of the safe zone inside where players can take a break to do some crafting without interruption, or just take respite from the struggles of survival. Below you can see a couple of shots of what the first pass of the fence looks like from the plant entrance.

If you enjoy staying on top of our development process and would like to see what we’ve done on a daily basis versus a bi-weekly one, check out our new Daily Update Twitter feed and see what’s happening every day of the week.

June 11, 2019

Floating Fences and GPU Giveaways

The team spent a good portion of the extended holiday weekend fixing bugs and smoothing out systems in the game. We cleared the ziplines so players won’t get stuck in the sections that come too close to trees with no escape other than waiting to die of thirst. We nabbed a bug that wouldn’t spawn loose items in houses, and one that was causing water containers to be undrinkable, which is really the most important part of a water vessel. Fences across the map will no longer float a few inches off the ground, and will finally give gravity the respect it deserves as a fundamental force.

The largest portion of our time, however, was spent on drone improvements. We fixed some drone camera jitter when it was rotating around a target, or moving too fast to get back to the refueling station. The team smoothed out drone movements when switching between camera modes, and filming an actor at a long distance. We also worked out some issues with the drone getting stuck on tall structures and not filming properly when it was high up in the air.

With all of these improvements, the drones flying around and filming Lahaina have never looked better. To help you appreciate all of our hard work and the beautiful landscapes in the game, we’re giving away a brand new GPU. One lucky winner will get an XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. There are multiple ways to enter including letting us know your five favorite features in survival games. The contest ends in less than two weeks so don’t wait to enter. Below you can see a few scenic shots that would look great on some new hardware.

May 29, 2019

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.

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Always display content from YouTube

May 3, 2019

Sounds Like a Drone

This week the team made a number of player improvements. We are almost done with our pass through updating the player health system. We still have UI work to do, but we hope the new system will be more straightforward, and provide players better clarity as to what is happening to their newly restored bodies. We fixed a running bug so you don’t look like your trying out for the Ministry of Silly Walks anymore, and we adjusted how long a torch will stay burning once lit.

Big Bob, our favorite cannibal overlord, has new hunting grounds, and we made a bunch of improvements to his ability to call his followers to help gather up dinner. Not that he really needs it too often, Bob is the toughest thing plodding around the map currently, and is more than a match for a single player.

A number of bugs were fixed this week too, including:

Death from direct damage wouldn’t bring up the death screen leaving players in a sort of limbo.
Thrown items in a stack not updating in the hotbar and multiple other issues with stacked throwing items.
Holding F no longer looted items.
An issue with torch light not attaching at the correct location all the time.
A weird issue were the game would crash if you tried eating food off the ground when already holding the same type of food.

Finally, our drone work continues and we made a number of improvements to help our autonomous cameras find and film what’s going on in the game. The biggest addition this week is drone audio. We have a number of new operating sounds going in including: engine, refueling, low fuel, and startup noises. The drone should start sounding a lot different in the coming days as we get these sounds in the game. You can see how good the drones various filming modes are coming along, and hear a few of the new noises by checking out the feed on YouTube or Twitch.

April 25, 2019

Character Customization and Thudding Clubs

The team is finishing up our big optimization and performance push, and moving into character customization work this week. Our first step was to introduce a female player model to the game. Right now it works just like it does in nature. You randomly spawn in as male or female, and in the future we will allow for more personal touches to your character. While we still need to make a few adjustments to the woman model, she works fine for testing purposes. We’ll be spending some time working through all the combinations of weapons and gear with both models to make sure that they work on the post-apocalyptic red carpet, and don’t break the game somehow.

We made some more drone improvements too. We learned that the flying camera’s attention span left a lot to be desired, and they would often stop filming characters or battles if they noticed a squirrel running around nearby. We’re making sure they understand that players are more important than small rodents, and we’ve removed their spotlights when they’re flying around during the day.

We’ve made a few changes to the game’s co-stars this week as well. Players will find an increased number of wolves running across the landscape, hunting down anything too slow to escape the pack. We also discovered a bug with some of our mutants not moving unless they were aggroed. This led to situations where the terrors of jungle would stack up inside each other like twisted Maui nesting dolls. While this might make for a memorable encounter, we want the horrors to respect their personal space.

Finally, our audio work continues this week with updated soundbanks and improvements to: weak points, things breaking, weapons, ambient noise, buildings, and directional sounds. The underground spawning area now sounds as dark and dank as it looks, and melee weapons like the ones below will clang off metal objects, thud off of wood, and smack against your enemies.

April 5, 2019

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.

March 22, 2019

Working on the Drone and Slicing the SSHAM

The first full week of Sprint 33 is wrapping up and we have a lot planned for the next 30 days. We’ll be focusing on: polishing up current systems and features, adding better player communication so you can coordinate with your group better, and getting things ready for our first set of players. We’ll also spend some time building out some more world spaces, creating a crash logging system, and improving drone performance.

We’ve done a lot of work making the drones better already. The team has added camera support to keep attacking and attacked actors in focus better, and rules to keep actors in a group in frame. The drones can zoom in better now when they notice a player is ADSing (aiming down sight) to try and see what they are looking at. They notice smoke and loot drop beams from farther away, and we made some improvements to the drone HUD to make it more readable and include info like server FPS data.

We also nabbed a few lingering bugs including: A mesh visibility bug when reloading while ADSing. A problem with item hotbar selections not working properly after a player dies. An issue with throwing multiple pieces of food in a row, and sadly, pressing the right and left mouse button together will no longer launch a player into Death Blossom mode with endless melee weapon attacks.

The team added a bunch of new animations. We included proper sprinting animations, and updated drawing and holstering your bow when prone. Players will no longer pull their bow through the Earth while trying to keep a low profile. In addition, we added new throwing animations for food and small items, injection animations for syringes, and updated eating and drinking animations.

Speaking of eating, players will be able to enjoy the spicy-salted flavor of SSHAM for meals now. Lahaina’s favorite processed meat product joins other iconic brands like Alohagistics and Manimal on the map to remind players of the thriving world that existed before The Great Fracture. We’re adding our own touch to other generic items too. Below you can see our treatment to a medkit and what a can of SSHAM looks like.

March 15, 2019

Tag: Drone