The web team focused on building out the Veil News Network (VNN) system over the weekend. Jared has the news API wired in, so we can sort through game data to eventually post real time updates about game events. We talked through some options for parsing the data efficiently with a number of tags and templates. Jared had a few rough examples of news alerts about player deaths with the player name, where they died, how they died, and their House affiliation. We discussed ways we could display the newsfeed on the front page, and ways we could personalize the service with alerts and notifications when something has happened to you, your friends, or your House.
Chris, as usual, tried to talk about sending out emails, like an old person. He was muted though and decided to push the discussion until next week. Do people Want emails about their house/friends/characters? Post in the forums if you have an opinion.
With the introduction of new weapons and body armor in the game, we’re running around shooting anything that moves, including each other, to work out any kinks. We found a few recently with the bow. We need to add some animations, because right now arrows just launch themselves like a semi-automatic gun with no string pulling when using the standard bow. We’re also disabling shooting a bow when a character is lying prone to keep things more realistic. We haven’t created a bow that can veil arrows into your enemies without pulling the string yet.
Work continues on the sewer respawn area. With new audio support and some texture and lighting work, the place is looking like the perfect spot for you to take a minute and reflect on what you did to put yourself in this situation, and come up with a better plan for staying alive in the future. Here’s a look at how it’s coming along.
Jesse has finished a new callout for Houses, and is working on the Community section overall. He’s doing some style work to make sure House requests and invitations stand out more and are properly differentiated. We’re making search fields more prominent, adding more information to your friends list, and adding a few more callouts to help expose features to players. Jesse will be updating Bootstrap and Font Awesome later this week.
Lastly, the Thorcon power plant, one of our largest buildings, is ready for exploration. The interior is a great place to run around or hide from your enemies, although we don’t recommend a lot of discriminant fire inside.
I’ll be back with more later this week.
