ecommerce Archives - Fractured Veil

Time To Go On A Quest

This week the team started off by circling back to refine and build out a number of player and social features. We’re looking into ways to highlight our affiliate program, and improve its usability. We looked at how a few other games use theirs, and discussed at some length what would work best for us. This led to a conversation about gifting Kula, our premium currency, to other players, and using it to buy packages or merchandise to give to your friends or fellow House members.

We looked at the House sign up and creation process. Remember, if you want to go fast in Lahaina, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We started a list of House improvements, and other issues we found too confusing in other social aspects of the game. We talked a bit about bundling game packages to make it easier for people to buy copies of the game for their friends, as well as clearer notifications to tell when your friends are online, or playing the game.

Jared cleared out a few bugs on the web page, and dug into some form validation work. After finding a bug with how the forums work last week, we decided to take them out of iframes, and figure out a better way to incorporate them on the page. Jesse finished the design for the ingame shipping/logistics company Alohagistics. Instead of the boring old crates, and boxes found around the map, players will now find a good mix of packages from 2050’s cheapest shipping solution. Alohagistics – Get There Eventually.

We continue to push ahead with crafting improvements. Jesse has finished the last of the wireframes and we just need to hook them up. He’s still doing some rollover work on inventory items, and addressing a few minor bugs. With a little ui polish, we hope to have the first iteration of the system working by next week. We also took a look at our old keybindings, and made a few minor changes to make certain actions in the game more intuitive, while keeping things like shooting, running, jumping, and crouching in the usual places.

After a lot of hard work on our quest demo this sprint, it’s completed and moved from staging to production. Certain Trophy Hunters now throw things at players more macabre than pineapples, and we fixed a bug that would crash the game when a player would throw a weapon. We’ve worked out the bugs with the zipline, so you can now enjoy a panoramic trip from the top of the Communication Tower, and actually stop at the bottom. We’ve: fixed some audio issues, finalized the quest dialog, populated the areas around the tower with loot and quest items, and worked out the lighting as you can see from what’s left of this tiny park near the tower.

We’ve completed models for the next group of mutants to chase and murder players, as well as fixed many of our weather issues (before we upgrade trueSky next sprint), and made a lot of performance improvements. However, with all the work we put into the quest demo, we didn’t quite finish a few goals. We’re carrying over a few things into the next sprint including finally biting the bullet and updating to UE 4.20.2. We’ll have more on that later this week.

September 11, 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

Performance Improvements and Cloudy Days

To finish out the week, the web team is completing performance improvements on the web page. Jared has made some caching improvements, images have been optimized across the page, and we’ve made some changes to the Story Timeline view, in order to make it quicker to scroll through. We talked some more about a secure player to player trading system, and what things we need to avoid when creating such a mechanic. We also briefly discussed new merchandise options, and what things we’d like to see available on the Shop page in the near future.

The team made some melee weapon and crafting updates as well. We looked at some options for destruction effects for trees being chopped down for wood, and rocks splitting apart for metal and minerals. Soon players will see a tiny explosion of rock when their pickaxe work bears fruit. We added a few more weapon animations and improvements, so spears look great when you throw them, or thrust them into the horrors of the jungle up close. Chris did run into an interesting bug however, when his hands started to produce a blurry aura, like they were about to go into stealth mode, but got stuck midway through their transformation. We’re addressing the issue, and will get a fix in soon. Here’s a screenshot of his sneaky hands on the bottom right.

Our AI work continues to make creatures fight and act more tactically, and we’re wrapping up ui improvements to the Settings page. The team is still working on ui for leveling up your character, and a way to claim buildings for one of our loot scenarios, as well as some other potential applications down the road. We had a longer discussion about ways other games handle currency: weight, where it is kept (taking up an inventory slot or not), how much you lose upon death, if any, and how much other players should be able to loot from your lifeless corpse.

The art team showed off a number of concepts for specific areas on the map. We talked about how to best use existing structures, and the landscape to funnel players to and from different areas, and where we need to add a clearly visible path. We discussed natural and manmade structures that would have survived the fracture, and would make good “hero” areas, where players could either get supplies and quests, or rampage through and explore. We discussed different options for work/wash/crafting benches and we talked about whether we want to go with a futuristic looking design or something a little more jury rigged.

The team is working on map, grass, and foliage improvements across a wide range of Lahaina, and we’re making some lighting improvements in those areas too. Our large buildings: The Communications Tower, Municipal Veilstation, and Thorcon Power Plant, are all getting some attention. We’re working on some performance improvements there in order to make them better able to handle large groups, without making your GPU fan spin like a top. Lastly, while the weather in West Maui is mostly beautiful, it has been known to get a few cloudy days and some rain. We haven’t been satisfied with the way things look on a cloudy day, so we’re working on a few things to make the game look beautiful, even when the sky is grey. Below you can see a screenshot of the beginning of that silver lining work.

We’ll have more updates next week.

May 17, 2018

Throwing Machetes and Holding Territory

This week the team is finishing up our first pass at a crafting system. We’ve fixed some issues we had with crafting timers running too long, or not resetting, so item production should flow in Lahaina once again. We’re adding a repair/wash feature so you’ll be able to fix chips in machetes, clean gummed up firing pins, and scrub the Shrig blood out of your cargo shorts, extending the life of all your gear. We talked about a design for a repair bench, and the possibility of having a group crafting system in the future.

We did some performance improvements to the player inventory, and started work on a tier 2 loot drop system. While our first loot drop scenario is a scramble to get to the gear first, this second option is about holding an area for a set period of time. A flare will go off letting players know what area needs to be defended. Creatures and players will attack the area until the timer goes off, and a loot chest or hidden cache will open for the successful defenders. We added a way for players to throw melee weapons to help them fend off invaders, and because throwing a shark-toothed koa axe at someone’s head is awesome.

San added new camera rotation algorithms, and a few other improvements to the VNN live feed on the front page. The drone coverage has never looked better, and gives a great view of many places of interest in the game. Jesse added some improvements to the animations on the video overlay, and we discussed adding a few more bits of information to what it already displays.

Lots of other animations were included to other parts of the game too. Various player movements including: going prone, a number of weapon actions like stringing a bow, and racking the slide of a gun, and new ladder animations were added this week. We discovered a great bug this weekend too. When you kill a rabbit in the game and try to harvest its meat or fur, it explodes and reforms again. While an endless supply of small exploding animals sounds like a good hook for some sort of rodent throwing warrior class, it’s not a feature that we want to keep in the game, and has no basis in Hawaiian history or culture.

The web team made some improvements to the Shop page. We optimized images for all products and packages, improving performance, and Jesse fixed a few lingering layout issues. We then turned our attention on making a 3D game map for players. We talked about different layers that we could add to show different types of information like House, and friend locations, as well as landmarks and key buildings.

Audio improvements continue throughout the game, and we’re doing some AI work to ensure that the horrors of the jungle aren’t just terrifying, but smart too. We’ve made several HUD updates to make things look and play better. In addition, we’ve updated the Settings ui so you can personalize the game to you liking. Finally, with the first iteration of our programmatic building system up and running we talked about what we’d like to improve next. As you can see below, buildings on the beach are looking great.

As always, we’ll have more updates and pictures later this week.

May 1, 2018

Dropping Loot and Making a Nicer Respawn Room

As the end of the week approaches, San and the web team continue to focus on improving the automated camera drones, and making the live streaming experience as nice as possible. Our live stream tour of the island is still broadcasting on our YouTube channel, and we’ve been working on some overlay options to add a touch of realism, and in some cases, make the view more closely match some HUD elements. Jesse has been working on Veil News Network (VNN) layouts to better highlight the live video feeds, and make the look and feel more consistent with what you’d see on a real news network.

The web team has also been hard at work making some revisions to the home page and refactoring. There are a few older sections that don’t follow the overall design layout. Jesse is making sure all the layouts, images, and formatting across the site is consistent with one design and feel.

The art team has been working on improving our spawn area. What once was a rather drab one room cement space, with brown water highlights, and the latest in crate furniture, is getting a big facelift. The Nuuskin respawn beds are getting some animations and a little color. We’re expanding the area into multiple rooms, giving players a little more freedom to think over what went wrong after they were brought back from the dead. We’re adding some decoration, Hawaiian colors, and improving your seating options. The importance of a good chair is often overlooked after the fracture, especially with food, water, and medicine being so rare. However, nothing can help you relax from a run through the terror laden jungle, like a good sit in a comfortable chair. Our materials improvement work has made it to seating, and not just in the respawn area. Below you can see the fruit of our latest work, including before and after shots of some of the hottest post-fracture Lahaina styles.

Jared has been digging into some email issues, and doing some pagination wok too. Players should receive email reminders when they get invites from players and Houses now. We’ve even hooked up an “Exiled” feature for Houses. House leaders can now boot an unruly player, or one who isn’t pulling their weight, and leave a brief message explaining the players shortcomings, if they so wish.

The art team continues work on the look, and performance of our large buildings. The Communication Tower has been the recipient of most of the work so far, but the Thorcon Power Plant is starting to get some attention now too. Both will be excellent places for players to practice their survival skills against each other, before adding the additional animal, creature, and environmental dangers of the wilds of Lahaina. We’ve completed an initial loot dropping feature designed to make sure that players around the map are coming together to make new friends, strengthen alliances, and sometimes slaughter each other over limited resources, or for fun. We talked at length about other loot scenarios, and ways to accomplish the same goal without dropping a box of shiny gear into the world.

Finally, we have started to turn some of the in-game products into real merchandise. Last week we got a big box full of Manimal cans, the extreme energy drink in the game. The art team is busy working on making models for inclusion in the game, and we’re pretty pleased at how they turned out as you can see below. With a taste that can best be described as an “overly salted, aggressively sour lemon/lime punch to the face,” they’re sure to be a hit with extreme athletes and mathletes alike.

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

April 19, 2018

Item Quality and Creating a Channel Lineup

The web team continued their work on the Veil News Network (VNN) this week. The service designed to provide players almost-real time updates of in-game announcements and events, is coming along nicely. We’ve made a VNN section on the home page to provide more in-depth coverage of the stories scrolling by on the newsticker, and host a number of videos. We’ve discussed a number of channel options for different video feeds, video length, and having a library of previously recorded material for use in promos, and when we’re experiencing “technical difficulty”.

Jesse is still working through some layout issues and a few bugs on the VNN page. The team is working on navigation controls on the video feeds, and improving animations on the bumper and stinger videos. We’ve created a weather bar to sit alongside the live videos as well. Now players will know the relative humidity while they’re being chased down the beach by one of the twisted horrors born from the fracture.

The web team worked on more than creating a news network this week too. Jared focused on getting a promo/coupon code system working for game packages and merchandise. The layout needs a little love yet, but the basic system is working well. We’re working on a way to incorporate the referral system with promos, as well as some CSS, 3D, and pagination work on the page too.

The team is also currently hard at work making game items a little bit worse with every use. The days of running ammunition through your Haikili rifle until the barrel turns a nice cherry red with no impact on its durability are over. We’re incorporating the item deterioration system in every usable item, including clothing and armor. We recommend using the delicate cycle if you plan on getting stabbed or shot a lot.

We looked at concept art of a few new areas of the map, and discussed incorporating the real-life geography and structures of Lahaina, as well as the story elements in the game. We talked about a number of interesting scenarios and places to explore, and how to best “spread the wealth” around to avoid bottlenecks and crowds.

Night and day work continues, along with a lot of environmental effects to add a bit more realism to the wildest of our wild places. With trueSky working well, and the lighting improvements, the forests and beaches of Lahaina are looking fantastic day and night. We’re continuing our performance work in our large buildings as well. The Thorcon Plant, the Veil Station, and the Communication Tower are all on the list. The Tower is up first and as you can see from the shots below, it’s getting a facelift along with the performance work. It’s never looked better and will be a joy to have a firefight in.

We’ll be back with more updates next week.

April 12, 2018

Working on the Weather and Group Play

The web team continued their work on creating the Veil News Network (VNN) this week. Designed to keep players updated with the latest ingame news, and important events, the news service is making good progress. We’re giving VNN its own section on the website, and are working on some animated scenes and embedding 3d assets to join the live video feed and newsticker. The team talked about different layout options, and ways to highlight the new section. This got us talking about using this template for various ingame companies in the future, giving them their own section on the front page. Jesse refined some of the layouts on the merch page and worked on resizing some logos too.

The art team continued work on creating a new spawn area. We’re keeping the underground/abandoned sewer motif, but are turning our one room studio into a spacious 3 room apartment, complete with a little hang-out area perfect for talking about your day, and sharing the location of clean water. It’s sure to be the envy of anyone being brought back to life after the fracture. They are working on a few concepts for other areas and buildings mentioned in the game stories as well. The armory is next on the list, and we should have some shots to share soon. Chris chose this moment to talk about the history of Titan I missile silo control domes, which one of the underground spaces resembled.

We continued our work on a group play system. The first pass on ui work is done, and we have team map markers in place, as well as VOIP. We want to encourage group play as much as we can, and are just about ready to start testing the system we’ve built. If all goes as planned, next week we will be happily running through Lahaina in small groups, avoiding the dangerous animals, and horrors of the jungle, while hunting each other down. We discussed including some sort of contested resources scenario, or a situation where teams have to hold the communications tower for a period of time. To be honest, it’s probably going to look more like a bloodbath than a tactical group effort to obtain a goal at first, but we need to test out every part of the team experience, even killing a whole bunch of people.

We did some more AI work, and San ran an experiment to see how much performance was impacted with multiple AI’s running around. The art team are making a materials change that looks much better, and saves on the GPU as well. With our TruSky issues worked out for now, there is some gorgeous weather in the game currently. However, as Grant would say they, “left the curtain on the sausage” until the end, when they showed off the latest lighting work in conjunction with a working weather system. You can see below how gorgeous our weather and day/night lighting work is in the game right now.

April 5, 2018

News Streams and the Roads Most Traveled

With the Veil News Network (VNN) newsticker working across the front page, the team is focusing on getting a live video system working for specific news events. We have a fixed camera live stream on our YouTube page with some terrific, (for some definition of terrific), Hawaiian elevator music for accompaniment. Jesse needs to rework the overlay to give access to the video controls, and make it responsive for people with smaller screens and mobile, but the view can be quite beautiful when the sun is rising.

We plan on recording a few videos of certain areas to highlight places to explore, and cover any holes in our live coverage. We talked about ways we could adjust and present the service to make it look and feel like a real news organization. The team discussed in depth how it currently has more of a public access/small local channel vibe to it, than a super-polished large news network feel. We’re going to make some slight changes in size, and placement on the front page in the coming weeks, but are pretty excited about how things are looking so far.

We continue to work on a system for team play, and Jesse showed off the latest stage of the team ui. Right now, it has an indicator when someone is talking, map markers that show the relative position of team members, basic information of cohorts, (for people not in your party only your name appears), and a noise indicator on the minimap. We want to be careful to not show too much information about other players crawling through the underbrush, or waiting to snipe a target however. So, we talked about ways to let more social players find new friends, and let the creepers creep.

We completed a big pass on crafting and resources this week. Virtually everything in the game is craftable now. We’re still having some trouble with very large trees and rocks giving up resources, but we hope to have it worked out soon. We also adjusted the weight of resources, as everything was way too heavy before. Now players can feel free to make enough twine to put together a shirt without becoming overburdened and an easy lunch for the wolves.

We are finishing up our shopping cart improvements this week as well. Every game package is colored coded, and has images of everything included now. We plan on having a table style view for comparing them ready for production soon.

Lastly, the art team showed off the latest concept drawings of the spawn area, and other parts of the map. We plan on expanding the spawn area from just one room to three, and we looked at the first iteration of an explorable mine area. One of the benefits of using an actual map of Lahaina is that much of the map layout work is done already. We discussed which areas, such as farmland, we need to alter for the game and which we can use as a template. We plan on leaving a few main roads for travel from one place to another, and converting some of the ones off the beaten path into dirt trails through the jungle. You can see below what the fracture, and 60 years of neglect has done to some of the residential roads in Lahaina.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back later with more updates.

March 29, 2018

Team Building and Bots

This week the web team turned their attention to the next step in our Veil News Network (VNN) service, live streaming the news. We’ll be focusing on “Travel and Leisure” stories at first since there aren’t a lot of people running around shooting, hunting, and looting yet. We talked about having a few “previously recorded” videos of noteworthy areas to support the live streams, and different ways to integrate videos for Houses and players. San will be revisiting the work he did on the drones and camera bots to get automation working smoothly. The video must flow!

Getting team play up and running is one of the biggest goals for this sprint. Jesse is working on some layouts and an overall ui for teams. For now we want to keep it simple, with information about player states, distance away, whether or not they’re transmitting VOIP, and other basic stats. We have a “knocked down” player state almost complete. Previously, when players lost too many shock points the screen would just go black, which isn’t a lot of fun. Now you’ll be able to crawl around screaming in agony until someone helps you, or drag yourself someplace safe to hide until the horrors of the forest move away. The goal is to have a simple ad-hoc team system in place next week.

We had a long discussion about player anonymity, and specifically in regard to groups. The team went over many possibilities on how players might identify other players around them that wouldn’t lead to knowing their exact location. After all, having your player name pop-up on the minimap while you’re trying to snipe others from an opposing House isn’t exactly ideal. We discussed using distance for getting different levels of player info: far away, you know players exist in a general area, medium, you know what House they belong to if any, up-close, you can see their player name….We also discussed how you could interact socially with unknown players when you are in a group.

The web team has a table style view of game packages just about finished. Jesse is adding the last of the merchandise icons and images, and the final layout bugs are being squashed. Soon you’ll have a quick and easy way to see what each game package includes, a brief description of each item, and a way to compare them all.

Lastly, we’re just about done with our initial crafting work. Players can harvest rock, wood, metal, and twine. Cloth can be made from twine, basic armor is craftable to protect your soft parts, and players can build a bow. There are so many craftable items now, that we’re adding a quick filter to help players find things faster. We’re making sure that there are plenty of things to harvest throughout the map, to keep players moving around. As you can see from the shots below, the beach has plenty of resources for players to take advantage of, as well as some beautiful scenery.

We’ll be back with more later in the week.

March 27, 2018

Building Better Buildings and Body Armor

As we approach the end of the week, the web team is making good progress on finishing up two projects: The Veil News Network (VNN) newsticker, and a table style view of game packages. We’ve fixed some overlap and spacing issues on the ticker, and have completed some styling work to make it more consistent. We plan to have links to live streaming video of news events, and a quick way for you to save pictures to your profile in the near future, but our first pass at VNN work is almost done.

The new game package view is almost wrapped up as well. Jesse showed off the latest color-coded iteration. Each item included in a package will have its own description and icon, making it easy to see what your getting with each purchase. We’re working on the icons currently, and making sure that the layout properly resizes for various screen sizes, and mobile devices.

We talked about upcoming 3d work and water effects to help add a bit of polish to the environment. The team discussed our item spawning system and the current state of the programmatic building system. They are both very close to the point where we can quickly customize playable worlds with any number of: structures/buildings, environmental items like trees and rocks, and loot controls, from what’s inside a warehouse full of crates, to how much food is in a refrigerator.

This led us to a discussion about a few of the large villages/areas we have planned for the future. We talked about the how fun a big village is, and how maddening trying to navigate a huge one can be. The last thing we want to do is create a place where it takes 20 minutes to run through a maze of stairs, ladders, and levels just to get a bottle of water or a handful of bullets.

The first version of our crafting system is fleshed out. There is a sizable list of items players can create to make their time in Lahaina more enjoyable and survivable. You can harvest: stone, cloth, metal, wood, and twine to build a wide array of weapons, armor, and gun parts. We fixed the bug that made the sky fill with wood when you chop down a tree, but discovered that a few rocks refused to give up stone or ore no matter how long you beat on them.

Finally, the art team is focusing on polishing up the entire map grid by grid, adding finishing touches and working out any bugs. We’re making sure that there is something of interest to explore, or a resource to gather in every area, keeping players moving around the entire map. As you can see from the shots below, we are making great progress with our global lighting and post processing work.

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

March 23, 2018

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