House Archives - Fractured Veil

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.

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.

February 5, 2019

Building a Social Hub and Hunting Bugs

Nearing the end of the week and the current sprint, the team is focused on fixing as many bugs as possible, and adding some last minute polish to already existing systems. We uncovered a number of bugs and pain points while running around the wilds of Lahaina that have been resolved.

We fixed a bug with the bow playing whizzing sounds at incorrect distances and angles. The bow no longer will get stuck in the fatigued state, which was making shooting arrows difficult to say the least. We found that sometimes our aiming down site (ADS) transition animations were unreasonably slow after sprinting. Chances are you’re going to need to aim as quickly as you can after running away from the things lurking in the jungle’s dark places. We discovered that some of our harvesting and impact sounds were overlapping and cancelling each other out. This made it theoretically possible that a player wouldn’t hear a fight if they were harvesting wood. Lastly, we fixed a bug that would cause a party leader to get stuck when putting together a team, which was less than ideal for group play.

In addition to fixing all those bugs, we tweaked a few things and made some improvements to make game play more enjoyable. The team smoothed out the homemade bow pull back and undraw animation sequences as well as improved some un-nocking animations. We added proper attenuation to a number of weapon sounds. The team updated building meshes with proper inversions, collision and simplifications to improve performance and address the multiple stuck door issues we’ve had. Doors are now swinging freely from the little rundown shacks on the beach, to the gigantic social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. We also added more rocks throughout the game to help bump up the number of available resources for players to harvest.

The web team is busy finishing up their sprint work too. The new navigation on the front page is done and we’re nabbing any bugs as they appear. Jesse is completing work on front page callout/announcement slide templates, that we can use for future contests, events, and game messages. We’re working on a number of messaging initiatives to help clearly explain how our Houses work, as well as the referral system. We also discussed where we could use some tooltips, and incorporating a general site search feature on the front page.

With our trueSKY issues (mostly) fixed, and having a sky above Maui again, we looked at our day/night cycle, and briefly discussed the pros and cons of adjusting the length of our days. The art team is busy working on the art for the new banking system which will allow players a private and secure extension of their inventory to stash away goodies, crafting components, and any junk they can’t part with but is too heavy to carry. We talked a little more about all the neat places we could put these banks since we don’t need to include a drive up window. The team made some improvements to our AI by adding a fleeing module that will allow NPCs to flee to a location that offers cover if they’re being peppered by the slings and arrows of outrageous players.

We looked at a number of concept drawings of the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. The art team put together a number of possible options for the reactor room and other places inside complete with: living quarters, stands offering food, water, and gear for the right price, and differing amounts of people seeking shelter, and shady characters. Their work was not limited to the interior of the massive building however. One of their goals this sprint was to fill out the areas surrounding the plant with interesting places to loot and explore. Below is one of these places, an abandoned farm with the remnants of an irrigation pipe running through it, a barn that is still standing for shelter, and numerous chickens for those quick enough to scoop one up.

That’s all for now. Check back the beginning of next week for the latest updates.

November 8, 2018

Marketing, Badges, and Bob

As the week comes to an end, the web team continues to work on our achievement system. Jesse is finishing up some wireframes for Jared to hook up and is busy designing badges befitting each achievement. We talked a bit about giving extra rewards to players who join or start Houses, fill out their account profiles, and invite friends. We’re in the midst of a front page update with new navigation and some tweaks to the layout. The team is adding space for callouts, announcements, and contests. Jesse showed off some wireframes and we discussed revamping other sections of the website.

One of those sections getting a new look in the near future is the story page. In addition to offering something fun to read, set inside the game world every few days, the game stories are meant to introduce the people, places, and things that made Lahaina the thriving area it was before the Great Fracture. Through emails, transcripts, and news stories, players can find hints as to what caused the accident that nearly wiped out mankind, learn about places worth investigating, and a little about what happened to those who lived through the cataclysm. The team discussed ways to make that more clear, and how to organize all of that information so it is more useful for players trying to survive, and rebuild civilization.

With the game approaching the point where we’ll invite a few alpha testers to run around and face the terrors of the jungle soon, we’re focusing more heavily on marketing. We discussed a few different contest ideas, and fun ways to get players involved. We’re grabbing more videos of our mutants, weapons, and places, as well as extended gameplay sessions, and Jesse is busy chopping them up for promo videos and GIFs. We posted a brief introduction about us and the game, with a few shots of the island, and some of our concept art, and got some useful feedback.

One of the things we shared was some early animations of Big Bob Abramo, one of the first mutants that we fleshed out. Many of our upcoming creatures are based, at least in part, by Hawaiian mythology, but Bob and his troop of cannibals were born from a number of concept drawings. Once a meat-obsessed restaurateur, and real estate mogul in Lahaina, Bob was twisted by the fracture both mentally and physically. Don’t let his cane or the gout-ridden leg fool you, Bob is still quite limber and quick for his immense size. Cursed with unnaturally long life from their mutations, Bob and his crew of cannibals scour Lahaina for the slow or unwary to devour. Here’s a shot of Big Bob on top of the Communication Tower, running with his signature cane.

Terry and crew have worked through our crashing issues on staging, and are pivoting back to remaining weather and wave work. We have a new drone streaming the game world on our YouTube page, and it should be on the website as soon as we work out a few kinks. We still have to fix some pathing issues, as the drone will occasionally still dip too low or phase through a rock. Jesse is also working on a new standby video to use when we’re experiencing technical difficulties.

Lastly, we looked at some more concept art this week of places and natural features surrounding the Thorcon Plant and the Communication Tower. We discussed adding some natural boundaries in places like rivers, deep ravines, or sheer cliffs, to help funnel players around these areas, and the map in general. We talked about a number of buildings, and special areas that could draw players in and would be fun to explore down the road. We talked about where our ziplines go now, adding more lines over interesting geographical features, and to different locations. That’s it for now. I’ll be back next week with the latest news and updates.

October 18, 2018

Front Page Fixes and AI Improvements

The web team started off the week by releasing a whole new navigation system on the front page. Everything a visitor needs can be found on our much cleaner left-side navigation now. The group did lots of refactoring work and are busy hunting down any new bugs that pop up. Jesse added some new loading animations between screens, and Jared is putting together a heat map, so we can see what areas people are visiting most, and how they’re getting there.

We’re updating our notification and alert system so you can keep up to date on everything your friends and House members do, and a setting to receive virtually no messages; just in case your loved ones are worried that you’re spending too much of your day tracking the goings-on of people you play games with. Jared is working out an achievement system for the website to help users find everything available to them, and explore the various social tie-ins. With Jared busy coming up with an idea for a Friendster achievement, Jesse is working on a few new pre-recorded videos to show on the front page when the drone is down. He’s also doing a little work on a Paddle Creek Games page, for those of you who are interested in learning more about us.

While the web team is focusing on making things better for real people, everyone else has been working on game AI and improving the mutants. They’ve completed designs on a couple new types of survivors warped by the fracture, and are working on their individual AI to make their fighting style and tactics different from the Trophy Hunters.

We found a bug that was making our creatures swarm downed characters and pound them into mush, even if other players were still up and shooting. We can see how it might get frustrating for them to kill someone, only to see that same person again a few minutes later, but we’d rather they don’t spend their time beating a dead horse or player. We’ve also fixed a pathing bug that would send groups of creatures on strangely long journeys upon sighting a player, and keep some from climbing stairs. As you can see from this shot of mutants on top of the Communications Tower, they have no trouble getting anywhere now.

We’re doing a deep dive into our road and village generating system to make sure both are working as smartly and smoothly as possible, while being mindful of possible performance issues. Our campfires now produce enough smoke that they are visible at a distance, and players will now leave dirt footprints in some areas making it easier to see if a place has had recent activity, and which direction those visitors might have gone.

We continue to make audio improvements across the board, from player and creature noises, to weapon sounds, and clangs and thuds when you drop an item from your inventory. With the first pass at our crafting system nearing completion, we talked about making it a bit more complex. We discussed potential new recipes, recycling improvements, and ways we can encourage players to experiment with recipes.

We made some refinements to the map’s loot regions, making sure that players learn they are more likely to find certain items in certain areas, and encouraging them to move about the entire game area. The team continues to work on performance improvements in the Veil Station, building out the areas around the Thorcon Power Plant, and improving the weather. Here’s a look at the tower and mountains with some darkening clouds rolling in.

September 26, 2018

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

Building Houses and the Roads Most Traveled

As the end of the week approaches, the team continues to focus on group play features. We’re making a few ui improvements to the inventory to better highlight what items you have equipped, or loaded in your quick bar. We’re making it easier for you to find online friends or House members who might be interested in running through the jungle with you. However, we know that not every match, or group is made in heaven, so we’re adding a way to kick members out of your team. In addition, we’re adding blocking tools so you won’t have to deal with them, or anyone else who is bothering you, again.

The team is pulling in some new audio elements to various parts of the map. We’re working on areas by the water to make sure the beach sounds great, and different from what you hear once you’ve crossed the tree line. A few of the game’s unique buildings have been placed on the map, namely the Thorcon Power Plant, Communications Tower, and the Lahaina Armory. We’re making sure each one of these structures has its own sound, so you can tell what building you’re in just by listening to your speakers.

Much of last sprint was dedicated to stripping down the map and rebuilding it. With that work mostly done, a large part of sprint 25 is dedicated to populating the map, and finishing the roads and trails. Below you can see a section of the map where the ruins of a neighborhood will soon go.

We’re using the automated building system we created to procedurally build the houses and structures that survived the global catastrophe, and fill out the map. The system allows us a wide range of customization so players won’t have to look at slightly different versions of the same 2 or 3 houses all over. Having already imported all the existing roads in Lahaina, we’re using a similar procedural path tool to make sure that any new trails are connected to the existing network, and don’t needlessly twist and turn. We still have to rough up the roads, and buildings to show the damage the fracture did to everything, but below is a shot of how good everything is looking already.

As you can see from above, we’ve made some improvements to weather and lighting. The rain and fog is getting some more attention, and we continue to work on our night time lighting, tweaking the brightness of stars, and making sure buildings don’t excessively illuminate the surrounding areas. We talked a bit more about giving certain creatures in a group different abilities and tactics, like being able to use missile weapons, or other ranged attacks, and we continue to improve their AI to make them more dangerous.

Everyone is finally moved over to Git, much to Terry’s joy, and we fixed a longstanding spawning bug. The web team made some layout changes, and did a little ui work to improve user flow. Lastly, the art team is busy making a 3D model of our repair/refurbish machine. Used to clean and repair clothing and armor, the machine saves players from the dangers of torn body armor, and the embarrassment of being killed while wearing dirty unmentionables.

That’s everything for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates and screenshots

July 19, 2018

Filling In the Map

As we close out sprint 24 , the group is busy hunting down bugs, and adding finishing touches. We’ve been having some trouble with the Veil News Network’s (VNN) live broadcast on the front page crashing. We’ve identified the issue, and the team is putting in a fix that should keep the drone’s feed playing as it makes its way around the game map, highlighting key areas and capturing gameplay in real time. We’ve set a prerecorded fallback video in place as well, to ensure that the feed always displays a tour of post-fracture Lahaina, not static.

The web team fixed a few layout issues, and made some improvements to player and House cards. We worked on some icon improvements to make things look more consistent across the page, and made some animation improvements as well. Jesse completed the Paddle Creek Games bumper trailer, and it looks fantastic! He uploaded a version with audio last night, and the whole thing is a few iterations away from being ready to go.

The tech team is wrapping up the last of the weapon attachment bugs we discovered a few weeks ago. After fixing a really bad Aiming Down Sight (ADS) jiggle, we opened up a Pandora’s box of weapon add-on issues: bad sights, crooked scopes, and wrongly-sized attachments. We’ve worked through most of the problems, and just need to test the fixes in the game to work out the kinks.

Our 3rd loot drop scenario is finished, and ready for testing too. Players will have to take an item safely from one location to another, while being hounded by enemies, in order to claim valuable cash and prizes. If you think that sounds suspiciously like a quest, you’re right. We briefly discussed building on this to start a quest system in the very near future. Mindlessly rampaging through what’s left of Lahaina can be a very rewarding experience. However, there comes a time in everyone’s life, even a bloodthirsty gamer, when you long for some direction and purpose. Quests can help fulfill that need, even if it’s just bringing a bag of shark teeth, and some coffee to the armory in the morning without getting killed along the way.

Our monsters got a little smarter this week, as the team’s AI work continues. We are fixing a few of their battle tactics, and have added a bunch of new animations to make them, and their reactions look more realistic. We made some improvements to group play as well, including the ability to heal others in your party, and finding friends to fill out the ranks, or replace underperforming party members.

We made some crafting refinements, and are working out some drag and drop, and stacking issues. The HUD got a few ui tweaks, and layout updates to make it more helpful, and easier to use. We’ve fixed some lingering problems with the rain, and are working on the fog to make look better now.

Lastly, one of our biggest projects recently has been redoing the game map. We’ve stripped the whole thing, and started to rebuild the play area using topography data to make it look and feel as real as possible. We’ve finished importing the roads around Lahaina, and have replaced the foliage with more native plants, improving both performance and look. This week we’re clearing out the areas where our buildings and ruins will go, and started work on adding the effects of a global catastrophe to the roads and paths in the game area. If all goes as planned, we’ll start adding buildings next week, and filling out the map with key areas, and places to explore. Below you can see a bird’s eye view of the play area as it stands now.

July 6, 2018

Mapping the Lay of the Land

The team is busy making improvements to the group play system, and working out any remaining issues with integrating Houses and Friends in the game. While we want players to enjoy exploring the jungle, and ruins of Lahaina on their own, we want to encourage the idea that survival is much easier with a group. Like the proverb on the Community page says, If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We’re fixing a bunch of bugs to make finding friends and House members easier, and allow players to know when their friends are online.

When you’re battling strange creatures, hungry animals, and a secretive cult of homicidal dancers for survival, you’re going to get injured, and those injuries can quickly lead to death if you don’t get the proper medical attention. We have a number of ways to heal yourself currently in the game, and are getting closer to having a working party healing mechanic in place. We’ve added a few new items to help you patch-up your friends, and are working out the kinks involved with stabilizing a party member on the move. We even talked about adding a way to heal a buddy by throwing a consumable healing agent at their face.

We’re making improvements to how weapon attachments work, and adding a couple new options to aid in your survival, and make your gun look cool too. We have stability mounts, suppressors, and a variety of special sights available for the discerning gun owner. We ran into some trouble with a few sights being oversized, and not lining up on lower profile firearms properly. In addition, there was a major issue with ADS (aiming down sights) jiggle in some weapons that made us have to redo a bunch of work. We’re putting in fixes now so it won’t feel like you’re at the epicenter of an earthquake when your looking down your sights, and making good progress.

Our map work continued this week too. As we fill in different sections of post-fracture Lahaina, we are focusing on performance, and building on already existing construction and topography. There is a ton of open source data about the landscape, shore line, and mountains of Maui. We’re using that data to redo our height map of the area, making the game world more accurate and realistic. We’ve also imported all the roads and trails, and are working on integrating the major thoroughfares to keep players moving across the entire map, and leaving hints of where smaller paths once ran.

We’re making improvements to AI as well. We’ve fixed the trouble we were having with the birds in the game. They now avoid plunging head-first into objects, getting caught inside buildings, and hovering like tiny blimps. Our creature AI work is making progress, and we’re working on wave attacks logic that will keep them from running in straight lines, or in easy to target bunches. We’re adding a number of new animations to make them more realistic as well. We found a bug that would cause a monster to levitate and get stuck in the ceiling. While that made it much easier to avoid the teeth, and loot, it’s not ideal. We’re fixing that major issue, and few minor problems currently. Our goal is to have a creatures with lots of surprises, and good battle tactics down the road, but for now we just want them to avoid as many bullets and arrows as possible when attacking en masse.

Lastly, our lighting, weather, and environmental work marches on. We’ve made great improvements to the brightness of stars and the moon at night, as well as building illumination. This shot of the top of the communication tower at night shows off our progress so far.

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

June 19, 2018

Updating Sights and Sounds

The team started the week off doing some audio work in various locations around the map. We’ve made some improvements to the sounds of the jungle, and are working towards having a unique sound profile for all of the game’s unique buildings. We’re adding some new audio for weapons too. Guns, machetes, spears, and clubs aren’t just sounding better, they’re looking better. We’ve updated a number of melee weapon animations to make your hack and slash experience more visually appealing, and are including a lot of weapon throwing improvements as well.

The Veil News Network (VNN) camera drone is getting some attention. Now that we’ve smoothed out much of its path around the island, and removed the abrupt spinning turns, we’re focusing on the HUD. We’ve made a lot of improvements, and as you can see here the new HUD is looking great.

Our performance improvement work continues this week. We’re working on a number of improvements across the game map, and the Thorcon Power Plant in particular. The Thorcon is a great place to run around exploring, and we want to make sure your GPU thinks so too. We addressed some performance issues on the web page too. We made some loading and animation improvements across the page, and discussed some live feed options as well.

The web team fixed a number of lingering layout issues including: adjusting the background colors to many pages to increase text contrast, fixing some rendering problems on the Account page, and we made Player profiles match the look of House profiles. Jesse showed some wireframes for a streamlined player portal to handle nothing but character related items like: friends, House, wallet, and live stream in the near future. We found a bug that would cause your Friend screen to appear blank. Jared is hunting down the problem now.

Even though the Great Fracture devastated much of Lahaina, we still want players to be good stewards of what’s left of the land, so we’ve added the ability to reuse some items for crafting purposes after you’ve used them. For instance, you can break down a can for the metal now, instead of just throwing it on the trash pile. We continued to work on our second loot drop scenario, and made the horrors of the jungle lootable. Now you can find a number of useful items on their bodies, including food and drink. Just don’t think too hard about how many times the Green Lady has backwashed into that partially finished bottle of Manimal you found in her bag.

Team ui has been updated and is almost finished, so players will be able to explore with friends and strangers alike in the near future. We’re adding finishing touches to the underground spawn area, and are working on AI updates as well. The art team is hard at work filling out the map with places to investigate, loot, or hide, using natural terrain and existing structures as a guide. We talked again briefly about which existing roads we wanted to keep in the game to help encourage players to move around Lahaina.

Lastly, our material upgrades and global lighting improvements continue. As you can see from the screenshots below, the game is looking beautiful with the latest weather and lighting updates.

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

May 22, 2018

Hunting Bugs and Bouncing Clubs

We made a lot of progress on team ui, and a team page over the weekend. Jesse showed off some wireframes, and we talked over some potential user flow issues regarding playing with a group. We discussed numerous filtering options for finding Friends and House members who are playing the game, and quick ways to invite them to your group. We talked briefly about some of the mechanics involved with trading, and worked through some potential issues.

We’re finishing up some team related mechanics this week too. Soon, you will be able to heal team members, and others with healing items. You could splint your own leg previously, but we’re expanding the healing gear, and allowing players to extend medical help to others. We discussed some future goals for our crafting system, and the possibility of making specialty rounds down the road.

Progress on our second loot drop scenario continues. Players can now claim a building, and if they can keep control of it for a set period of time, a loot area filled with gear and survival equipment will open to the them. We discussed our ingame money, Rai, a few loot distribution goals, and the overall game economy. A few weeks ago we added the ability for a player to throw a melee weapon in combat. This week we added some animations to make it look better, and physics rules so weapons can now bounce around after you hurl them. There are very few things cooler than throwing a shark-toothed axe at someone, but bouncing one off of a pillar before sinking it into an opponents head is one of them.

The web team continued their work on a game map for the web page. We’re still having some trouble lining up key landmarks with the ingame map, but we’re making progress. We’re busy squashing bugs as they appear, and making some performance improvements to the page. We’ve optimized images across the site, and fixed some icon rendering issues.

It wasn’t just the web team bug hunting over the weekend either. We addressed a loading screen issue, and fixed a bug that was crashing staging. The HUD got a lot of improvements and tweaks as we close in on a final look and ui design. The Settings ui received a lot of attention and updates too. Changing your game preferences should be quick and easy now, even if your trying to play at work.

Finally, we’ve added audio support to a number of areas, but have a few more to go before every area sounds as unique as it looks. We added a few quality of life improvements to the game as well. A fire does more than just look pretty now. A player standing near one will warm up faster than normal, and it will even dry off your clothes much faster than usual. Our spawn area expansion and facelift is nearing completion. We could still use a few decorations to draw the eye away from the wet brick and mildew, but the spawn area is almost ready for newly restored players.

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

May 15, 2018

Tag: House