House Archives - Page 2 of 5

Drone Improvements and Getting Parties Started

The end of the week marks the beginning of sprint 23, and the team is busy going down the list of new goals. San added a QR code to the Veil News Network (VNN) live stream. It shows the coordinates of the camera and time, so we can compile a searchable index of drone footage. This allows us to pull scenes from specific areas and times so we can put together videos like, “Today’s Bloodiest Kills On Baby Beach.”

Jesse showed off some mockups of the upcoming Live Feeds page. He’s working on a few layout issues, but progress is good on both Player and House streaming pages. Jesse added some neat wallpaper and background image options too. We’ve made some ui improvements, and are working on an improved drone HUD as well.

Jared fixed a number of bugs, including one that was serving broken images with invite emails. He added a feature that allows you to send a brief message with invites, and friend requests too. We’ve made significant progress on a House theme gallery, and it’s almost ready for production. It will allow House leaders to quickly choose various banner styles, and set a color scheme that looks great automatically.

We made good progress on a Party section for group play. Players can: filter a list of players for friends and House members, search for groups, or create a new party. We’ve added some party controls including kicking a member from a group, and appointing a new leader. Now your group doesn’t have to break-up when your leader’s boss catches them playing the game during work hours. We plan on adding a minimap on the page so you can see party member locations, and are working on some party ui improvements.

The web team continues work on a game map for the web page. We’ve created a height map of the play area in Western Maui, but ran into some trouble lining everything up with the ingame map. We talked through some possible solutions, and discussed some overlay options that would be useful for players on the website.

We added some new weapon animations. Spears will now travel beautifully through the air at their intended targets, instead of teleporting, and we fixed the aiming issues on our M1A for all you fans of iron sights. We talked over some SCM issues, and have a new plan for going forward with less headaches.

The art team is working on filling in the map with new structures, and areas to explore, section by section. We looked at a number of new concept drawings, and discussed the best use for already existing structures like bridges and overpasses. Finally, work on the new respawn area is marching forward. Most of the main structure is built now, so much of the work going forward will focus on styling, and “the Hawaii-fication” of the underground sanctuary. Below are a few of the latest shots.

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

May 10, 2018

Playing Well With Others

This week marks the end of sprint 22, and the team is busy adding finishing touches and hunting down bugs. We talked over issues with the live VNN feed and discussed what features we’d like to add next. We’re building out a “Live Feed” area in the Media section, and Jesse showed off some wireframes for different feeds and options. We worked on user flow for both House and player streams, and worked on a few different stream overlays as well.

We made a few more ui improvements to the HUD, and the Settings section. We fixed a few minor icon issues in the inventory screen, and we discussed the possibility of allowing players to access their inventory on the web page. The team discussed what that would entail, and to what degree a player would be able to do things with their items while not in the game. We also made a first pass at our ingame currency, rai, and talked about different ways players could find/earn rai in the game. Game economies are a tricky thing to get right. We talked about the flow of resources, and how that interplays with money. The last thing we want to create is an artificial shark tooth bubble on the island, and have the whole market collapse.

We made a bunch of animation improvements too. A bug that would keep a player trapped in a calf and shoulder burning ladder-limbo has been fixed, so players should be able to climb up and down with ease. We added numerous other player and weapon movements, and are fixing long-standing issues with how iron sights work. We’re adding an audio cue when an item breaks, so you don’t charge into combat with a broken machete, or a gun with a heat-warped barrel.

The art team continues work on the newly improved respawning area. As you can see from the shots below, players now have a bit more room to run around when coming back from the dead.

Jared did a bit of maintenance and is hunting down a few bugs in the shopping cart. We added improvements to a House theme editor, and did a bit of ui work to player and House cards. We started work on a “Party” section on the Community page for group play. The team talked about easy ways a player could let his friends know that they were available to play, and simple ways to invite others into a group.

Numerous performance and material improvements continue with really good progress, as well as AI improvements to animals and creatures alike. We want to make sure the horrors of the jungle act in horrific ways. Lastly, all the lighting and environmental work we’ve done is really paying off, as you can see in this shot of a dock, and the crystal clear water below.

That’s all for now. We’ll be back later in the week with more updates.

May 8, 2018

Arts and Crafts and Loot

The Veil News Network (VNN) live drone cam is up and running on the front page, giving you a view of what’s happening in real time in the game. We fixed some of the roller coaster like rotations, and it now avoids hitting the terrain to a greater degree. We discussed ways to expand camera drone coverage, and improving the feed, including: adding some more realistic information, temperature indicators, FOV adjustments, and other items. With that said, it looks good, and the fact that it isn’t prerecorded, but an actual look at what’s happening in the game, as it happens, is great.

Terry has been working through some merge and build issues this week, while the team has been focusing on crafting and recycling in the game. All items in the game now deteriorate with use, and provide different amounts of raw materials when recycled depending on their condition. Player’s machetes will now dull, armor will get worse every time you’re shot or stabbed, and guns get a little worse with every round run through them. We talked briefly about the inclusion of a possible repair system down the road, and how it might work.

Speaking of crafting, Chris has turned his house into the official Fractured Veil Arts and Crafts HQ with the addition of a 3D laser. He’s been cutting, engraving, and etching his way to mastering his new machine with some pretty good results as you can see below. We talked about some future projects, discussed how terrible burning acrylic smells, and Chris showed off his jury rigged exhaust system.

The web team has been doing some refactoring and testing this week. Jared is finishing up some final work with our email and notification system, and Jesse has been focusing on some ui improvements. We talked about some new House features we’d like to add down the road. We’ve been working on adding a few more Hawaiian style touches to various logos and assets. Jesse demoed what some of those would look like, as well as a few future layout plans.

Our group system is fully operational and got some ui love this week. Group members can now see how far away they are from each other, their respective health status, can respawn on a group members name, and can revive a member who has taken too much damage to be useful in combat. Our AI work continues to make sure the creatures in the jungle are dangerous enough, and we’ve tweaked a few animations to weapons and player movements.

Finally, the art team worked on some audio issues that popped up this week, various HUD and settings updates, and other performance related issues across the game map. We finished our first loot drop system to keep people moving around the island, and creating a reason to fight other than just a general urge to murder others. Our day and night cycle and lighting work continued as well. Here are a couple of shots at the beginning and the end of the day, to show how good it is looking currently.

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

April 25, 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

Survival Tools and Game Packages

This week the web team continues their ecommerce work. They’re working on improving the look and flow of everything in the Shop section. Jesse showed off a design that has each game package color coded to quickly and easily tell them apart, and a table style view highlighting each specific item, making it easier to compare what comes with each package. Jared is still hunting down a few bugs and layout issues, but the new look should be ready, along with a mobile layout, by the end of the week.

The spawn area is getting some attention too. While it may not be as beautiful and vibrant as the flowered wilds of Lahaina, the sewer starting area provides a safe and somewhat smelly place for players to collect a few basic items, and to respawn safely away from whatever might have torn them limb from limb. We’re adding some final details and audio support to make the slime and dripping water more authentic. We talked about what items should be available to players, and you can see in the shot below where we plan to drop a few survival tools.

The conversation about survival gear led us down a rabbit hole about the perfect item and survival food. We discussed: the pros and cons of including an emergency potato, whether or not there was a better food or tuber to have after civilization has been wiped out, how compact it was by natural design, and the many other uses the root vegetable offers. Luckily, before we spiraled into a completely potato themed meeting, San joined, added the potato clock to our long list of uses, and made us move on. However, if you think you have a better idea for a survival food, let us know in the forums.

Speaking of teamwork, we’re working on creating a team system. Our goal is to create a game that inspires group play and cooperation to survive. The team is working on a way for you to keep track of the location of group or House members, so you don’t get separated in a firefight, or during an ambush. We’re working on some campfire improvements that will help a team regroup and resupply, and a way to revive gravely injured players, so you won’t have to leave anyone behind. You can still ditch the carless or tactically unsound of course, but you don’t have to.

The web team is wrapping up the last of the work on the Veil News Network (VNN) newsticker version 1, as well. We talked about making it more factual until we figure out a good solution for randomizing the language of headlines, and worked out the last of the layout and overlapping issues. We discussed adding video and focusing on including a live stream link for specific highlighted stories in the next version.

Finally, with the last of the performance improvement work finishing up, we turned once again to adding new places to explore, and things to chase you when you get there. There will be a mine and an oil tanker in the game soon, and we took a look at some concept art of other Lahaina hotspots. Here’s a look at what Front Street could look like soon, although we’d change the graffiti to make it a little less death metal, and a little more island appropriate.

That’s it for now. We’ll be back later with the latest tuber news, updates, and screenshots.

March 20, 2018

Logging Lahaina and Breaking News

As we come to the end of sprint 20, the web team remained focused on adding improvements to the Veil News Network (VNN) feature, and squashing bugs. Scrolling across the front page with test data currently, VNN will provide players with near real-time news about the most important events going on in the game. We plan on adding filtering features allowing you to see news specific to you, your friends, and your House (providing your a member of one), in the near future.

Jared worked on the news story templates to make them clearer, and added some more to cover all the different kinds of stories we plan to include. We discussed at some length different ways to ensure that the automated system randomizes language sufficiently. We want to avoid the feed getting bogged down with repetitive stories and alerts. It’s a nontrivial problem, and we came up with a few ideas to improve the service. We have a way to go before it’s working as well as we’d like, but it’s off to a good start.

In addition to the functionality work, Jesse did a lot of work on the newsticker look and feel. He adjusted some of the text size and color to make things more readable to old eyes like Chris’s. He also adjusted the speed of the newsfeed so even non-speed readers will have a chance to read the alerts. Of course with every new project a few bugs pop-up, and VNN isn’t any different. We found a few overlapping/rendering issues that Jesse should have fixed soon.

The spawning area got a lot of attention as well. With the first pass at an underground spawning area complete, we talked at length about improvements, and the look and feel of the next iteration. The art team showed off a few concept drawings for a future restart area. We discussed what that place should look like, and what should be available for players before they return to the wilds of Lahaina. We looked at a number of variations of the technology that restore players physical bodies, the Nuuskin machines, too.

We continued work on adding new slides to freshen up the look of the front page. A few new callouts will be added to explain some of the more complex systems in the game, and highlight important features. While everything you need to know is in the FAQ, we want to make everything as easy to understand as possible.

Finally, there’s some good news for everyone likes to sleep all night and work all day. Your Lahaina lumberjacking dreams can finally become a reality. The animations for chopping down trees is done, the harvesting system is working, and we’ve worked out our lingering wood bug. Previously, when a player tried to chop down a tree, every tree in a huge radius would produce wood. While it was great for clearcutting enthusiasts, it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, and was ecologically unsound. As you can see from the shot below, there is no shortage of harvestable wood and vines for your arts and crafts needs, providing you know where to look.

We’ll be back with more updates, pictures, and the latest logging news later this week.

March 13, 2018

Newstickers, Grunge, and Greywater

As we near the end of the week, the web team continues their push to create our real-time, in-game news system the Veil News Network (VNN). We hope to make VNN an interactive tool for players to keep track of important events and happenings regarding their friends, Houses, and the world they’re playing in. Jesse demoed a first run at an active newsticker design, and it’s looking good. Jared is building filters so players will be able to see only news regarding Houses or Players, and we discussed other filtering options. I’m not sure we’ll get as specific as having a setting for animal only news, to keep you updated on all the latest raccoon gossip, but we’ll break it down with some useful granularity.

We discussed a few bugs that we found already, and we’ll be spending the next few days in squashing mode. We’re working on icons specific to certain types of stories passing through such as alerts, weather warnings, and breaking announcements. We decided we’d have a permanent “weather desk” section with the current weather conditions somewhere alongside the newsticker. Jesse is working on the design and layout now, and Jared is working on creating an rss feed for your convenience.

With so many components coming together, we had a discussion about the direction we’re going, possible future uses, and potential problems with the VNN service. We talked about the issue of keeping the news specific to different game worlds, how often the news should refresh, and creating a realistic news cycle in the game. The team went over some different options for classifying stories, and adding visual cues to certain types of stories on the front page.

In non-news related news, Jesse is doing another pass on the Manimal can design after the proofs came back a little distorted from the distributor. He’s also still working on finalizing a kula coin design (our premium currency). You’ll see both on the merch page soon.

The art team is focusing much of their time on adding a number of needed animations. We’re adding them for a number of harvesting tools, including the pickaxe so you’ll finally be able to live out your favorite murderous miner fantasy. The Nuuskin booths in the respawn area, and spawning itself will get some animation love, and so will shooting in a prone position. Right now when a character goes prone to steady their shot, they end up lifting the front part of their body off the ground, taking on what we’re calling the “Cobra Pose” when the bullets go flying. While it’s enough to make even the most die-hard back muscle enthusiast jealous, it looks a little weird, and seems hard on the hip flexors, so we’re going to fix it.

Finally, we’re adding some touches to the sewer respawn area. We plan on including a few more Hawaiian touches to brighten the room, and make your brief stay more comfortable. In addition, we thought the room in general could use a bit more grunge, and we dirtied the water, to make the experience a bit more authentic. The stream passing through the room is now the questionable grey we had always intended as you can see below.

March 1, 2018

Please Do Not Pet The Wildlife

The web team spent some time fixing bugs that popped up during the Community Page update, and adding a few little improvements. We’ve: added pagination to the Friends section and others, fixed some layout issues, worked out some problems with social media links not working properly, and did some form validation work. We should have all the kinks worked out and the improvements done by the weekend.

The art team was busy improving the look of our underground respawn area this week as well. Designed to give players a moment of respite after death, instead of being thrown back into the meat grinder while you load, the space is really coming together. In addition to a stream of questionable water, and soothing industrial lighting, the sewer hideaway got a major upgrade this week with a Nuuskin machine. We still have to include some animations for it, but soon players will be able to enjoy being put back together cell by cell before running back to their doom. There’s no doubt that it really ties the room together.

We continued work on the Veil News Network (VNN) system for the game. San’s news API got a few tweaks and is now returning a bunch of play data that is pretty funny to read through. Jared is hard at work constructing a news template library suitable for any event, announcement, and occasion, while Jesse works on a news ticker layout and ui. We plan on having the interactive news service offering personalized game news, and highlighting happenings across the island in real-time in the near future.

We did some work on merch and the merch store this week too. Jesse showed off some new t-shirts including an all-over Manimal design. Speaking of Manimal, we completed a can design so you’ll be able to “Slaughter Your Thirst” with the extreme taste of Manimal in real life soon. Jesse is finishing up a coin design, and we talked over a few other shirt, poster, and merch ideas too.

We took a look at the latest HUD overlay, and listened to a few options for player death sounds, ranging from a subtle electronic humming when your player dropped, to a deep booming when you crashed to your death. As our work chopping up the map, and replacing old buildings to increase performance nears its end, we had a long conversation about rebuilding it. We talked about specific building placement, what things were necessary, and which were more aspirational at this point in the game. With all the work we’ve put into building systems, modeling, and writing stories, it’s going to be a joy to create a post-fracture Lahaina that is exciting, beautiful, and most importantly, fun to play in.

Lastly, San discovered that we have a big bear problem. While he was running through the brush looking for team members to fill with arrows, he came across one of the resident bears. However, Instead of charging him and ripping off his face immediately, the bear took a moment to lay down, apparently asking for belly rubs. Not having his rubbing hand hot keyed, San was a bit too slow, and the bear got up and mauled him. Still, we’d like to keep the wildlife from begging for attention before they go into kill mode. Here’s a look at the lounging animal in question.

February 22, 2018

Building the News and Harvesting Resources

The week started off with the web team smoothing out some layout issues with the Community landing page, and hunting down some bugs. Jesse updated some layouts (mostly on the settings and referral pages). We’re adding icons for the House page and other sections so players can quickly navigate to all subsections of the community page. New form validation work continues, and Jesse continued his refactoring to clean up the code.

We continue to work on performance by chopping up the map, replacing buildings, and adding structure features with our programmatic building system. With so much construction work being completed and props to place, we got a new artist to help populate the map, and speed things along. Audio support keeps marching forward, and we learned all about delay and attenuation, while working on flyby bullet sound effects. It turns out that we probably won’t be able to completely rely on Foley effects, no matter how good we get at slapping gelatin, bending saws, and clapping coconuts together.

The underground respawn area continues to take shape, and we discussed placing certain resource gathering tools, like hatchets, there until we have more structures in place to explore. We worked out a harvesting system, allowing players to collect wood and other resources, and created a stacking mechanic to help players move resources around efficiently. However, we ran into a little problem with harvesting wood. When you took wood from a tree, every other tree on the map would lose wood as well. While we understand that everything in nature is connected, this is a little too connected for our tastes, and raised some concerns about what happens when we start skinning animals. There are enough horrors in the forest without hordes of inexplicably flayed raccoons looking for retribution.

We have our item spawning system up and running, and plan on a complete HUD update as well as some fullscreen ui work too. We added some armor and weapon animations. You can see below what it looks like now when you run around with your Haikili rifle out.

Lastly, we took a few more steps towards completing the Veil News Network (VNN) service. VNN will report on events within the game in real time, providing players with alerts about a variety of game events and announcements. We looked at a few more templates for types of news stories, and San made some improvements to the news API. Jesse began work on a news ticker ui and we had an in-depth conversation about the possible futures of the service. We discussed the ability to: sort news by player or House, the possibility of citizen reporters, and how players might use it in-game. We’re really excited about some of the cool player interaction possibilities VNN would offer.

I’ll be back later in the week with more pictures and the latest updates.

February 20, 2018

Hold Music and the Cost of Money

As we near the end of the week, the web team is pushing to complete the last of their work on the Community Page. The push on House customization is done for now. There’s a new prominent callout for Houses with links to the FAQ explaining what they are, and how they work. House founders can: load images, design banners, create charters, manage member roles, and pick a color scheme. Players will also be able to see when their friends are online, and what House, if any, their friends belong to. Friend requests and House invitations are now more prominently displayed. Jesse updated Bootstrap and did some refactoring work to keep things neat and tidy as well.

Work on increasing performance by sectioning up the map, and replacing old buildings with structures created with the programmatic building system continues. It takes a while, but the positive impact on gameplay will make it worth it. The last thing we want is for your GPU fan to kick into overdrive everytime you explore the ruins of a subdivision. A few last touches were added to the Thorcon plant interior too. Here’s a look at how it looks inside.

We talked some more about how the Veil News Network (VNN) would work in the game, and how best to display information on the website. We came up with a few new ideas regarding how we’re parsing the data coming in from the news API, and some additional templates for various types of stories. We discussed how we want to tie notifications into the VNN system to make sure it is fun and useful, without players feeling like our news drones are spamming them with weather reports.

We went over the last few items we need to finish up in regards to merchandise, namely challenge coins and Manimal cans. One of the requirements for our real-life Manimal distributor is that we have a business number on the can. So far, nobody has volunteered to use their personal number for the official Manimal info contact, but we did have quite a lengthy discussion about an appropriate hold message and music. Metal seems to be the consensus as far as music goes, but we didn’t decide on a specific genre: death metal, black metal, deathgrind, or other types of distorted screaming. If you have a suggestion we’d love to hear it in the Forums.

Our talk about merch led us to a discussion about rai, our in-game money. We discussed how other games handle money after you die, and how it affects your encumbrance. San brought up a couple interesting ideas about how players could manage money, especially very large sums, in the game. We talked about possible vault or banking systems, loss of money after you’ve been killed, and how those features could impact things like theft or extortion between players in the game.

Finally, with all the new weapons introduced recently, we’ve been pushing to include some body armor options for protection. Below you can see one of the latest iterations of a high-end armor to protect yourself from the slings, arrows, and bullets of outrageous fortune while running around Lahaina.

February 15, 2018

Tag: House