House Archives - Page 3 of 5

Combat, Community, and Callouts

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.

February 13, 2018

Power Plants and Heads-Up Displays

The web team is wrapping up the week by chasing down a few remaining bugs, and adding the last touches to House customization. Jared is busy hunting down an issue that is hiding House info from non-logged in users, and Jesse is finishing some styling work. However, the House Settings page is ready. There are a number of color, image, and banner options available to make your House unique, and give it a cool look.

We’ve added some help text in a few areas that we thought could be a little more clear, and Jesse is improving some callouts. We plan on adding some new images to the front page, and changing some of the slides as well, to call attention to the work we’ve done on Houses. A front page facelift will be coming soon.

Refinements continue to the respawn area, and Thorcon power plant as well. We’re adding some new audio support to make sure that players can appreciate the soothingly sweet sounds of the sewer, and you can hear the vastness of the inside of the power plant. The Thorcon images below give you an idea of how nice the inside of the plant is looking.

We’re introducing a few new weapons, and body armor into the game as well. We found a few issues with arrows floating in air when they get stuck in trees, and arrows disappearing after being shot out of the compound bow, but both are easy fixes.

We pressed on with building the Veil News Network (VNN) – an ingame streaming news service that would alert players to important events, daily activity around Lahaina, and even personalized info and data. We played around a little with the News API San wrote, and came up with a few templates for news stories and events. We discussed ways we could parse the data, and other templates to cover specific stories, announcements, and events in a real-time manner. There’s a lot of work to do yet, but we’re off to a good start.

Speaking of a lot of work, the latest iteration of the HUD is finished. We need to do a little work on the aiming reticle and map yet, but it is looking great as you can see.

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

February 8, 2018

News You Need and Subterranean Safe Spaces

The first full week of sprint 20 saw the web team finish up preliminary work on customizable House features. Players can now go to their House Settings page to: write their House charter, setup application instructions, load a House banner, pick their House colors, Integrate VOIP and streaming services, and assign a background image. We’re nabbed a few minor bugs as they arise, but players should be able to add some unique touches to their Houses now. Jesse is finishing a House callout page, and we discussed adding various email notifications, alerts, and overlay options during the next customization upgrade.

Houses aren’t the only things getting a makeover this week. We’re working on a complete HUD and fullscreen ui update as well. Our goal is to make a less cluttered view of Lahaina, with easy access to systems and equipment that a player needs to use often, or in an emergency. Things are looking great so far.

We talked at length about our in-game drone cameras, and setting up the Veil News Network (VNN) to keep players up-to-date about events in the game. Jared is hooking up our news API so that we’ll have real time data about player locations, kills, and actions in the game. We talked about a few different game tie-ins, real-time announcements, and integrating players and Houses. Our goal is to have a semi-interactive service that keeps track of everything going on in the game, and highlights the most important events, with some fun announcements thrown in. VNN, the news you need, the details you deserve.

The team is working out a few last kinks in the automated item spawning system so players will find more than disappointment in boxes, crates, and hidden spaces around the island. We’re continuing work on improving performance as well, by breaking down the map, replacing a few old structures, and updating the roofs of the programmatically built buildings around Lahaina. We’re working on adding some audio support to a few locations as well. Hopefully, it will be so clear, you won’t know if you’re listening to a nature documentary, or if a family of raccoons took up residence in your walls.

Finally, work continues on the sewer respawn zone. The subterranean safe space will give players who have just experienced a fatal assault a chance to reflect, and not be instantly hacked to pieces or shot while loading. As you can see from the shots below, it’s pretty nice as far as apocalyptic sewers go.

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

February 6, 2018

Better Houses and Power Plants

To finish out the week, the art team has been hard at work completing the new underground spawn area. Designed to allow players a safe place to respawn, away from itchy trigger fingers looking for loading characters, the place is coming along nicely. We’ve added a few shelves, tables, and a ladder leading up to the surface. If you added a guy skipping class while obsessively playing Mario Kart in the corner, it could be a picture of my first college apartment.

We found some issues with our shipping system this week. Shipping to certain areas was broken, and we ran into some eyebrow raising shipping estimates. Jared fixed the API so everything is now working as it should, and we’re adding tests to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. The web team is digging into a few other problems that popped up with the shopping cart as well.

Jesse and Jared are finishing up the last of the work on House banners. They look great, and most of the work is focused on editing tools, and making the customization process for Houses and banners as streamlined as possible. This led us to a discussion about making easy to understand, step-by-step tutorials to explain the more complex systems in the game. While everything is covered in the FAQ, there are a few things that could use an additional clear explanation.

Jesse worked on a green screen streaming overlay for the game. After watching a show from their office for a while, we discussed ways we could use it other than embarrassing Jared. We covered possible Veil News Network (VNN) uses, other possible marketing applications, and a number of Jared based spinoffs.

We discussed a few new weapons coming down the pike, firearms in particular. We want to have information about each weapon that matches as closely as possible with their real life capabilities. However, the reality is that many firearms have numbers that match very closely, particularly with guns of a similar style and function. We talked about the possibility of slightly tweaking some statistics to make a hierarchy of weapons in the game.

Lastly, after a lot of detail work the Thorcon plant is going into the game. Below you’ll find a couple of the latest shots of the interior. This place is huge and should be a blast to explore.

We’ll be back next week with more updates.

February 1, 2018

Safe Rooms and Personalized Houses

With sprint 19 coming to an end, we’re all pushing to finish up last minute work, add some polish to a few systems, and hunt down lingering bugs. Work on the player compass continues, and we’re doing another art pass to make it pretty. The team is finishing up some final work on the player HUD to get it ready to use before the end of the week. Everyone is working down the bug list so we can start the new sprint without any lingering problems.

Jesse and Jared continued their House customization project, and are checking things off the todo list. Jesse has added a number of lighting effects and various improvements to House banners to make them look more realistic. We’ve added a system that automatically changes text color depending on how bright a player makes his House colors, for better readability. The web team is trying to work out a nasty autofilling bug in the shopping cart too.

The latest body armor is almost ready to go. Charging into the middle of combat against overwhelming odds isn’t the smartest thing to do, but if it’s your thing, then you’re going to want to have some armor. We’re finishing up the newest talents as well. Players will soon have 12 special abilities/bonuses to choose from, letting them create characters who specialize is crafting, medicine, sneaking, and a wide range of other play styles and roles.

We have a player map almost ready to go as well. You should be able to work out a rough estimate as to where you are, and how to get to the next quest, or place to loot soon. The team plans on having a version up and running in a few days. We’ve added a number of new animations as well, including swimming, so characters won’t zoom through the waves standing up anymore.

We’re finishing up a few improvements to the crafting system and we’re giving some love to the inventory as well. The attachment system for items is done. If you’re a fan of tactical lights, bayonets, scopes, suppressors, and built-in bipods you’re in luck. The last of the kinks are being worked out of our item spawning system too. We’re nabbing a few last minute bugs, but soon the loot will flow like lava across the ruins and dangerous places of Lahaina.

There was a lot of PVP playtesting this past week as well. We ran around and filled each other with arrows, ran mountains of ammo through guns, and swung machetes through limbs from dawn to dusk. As expected, we found a number of issues to straighten out in order to make going on a murderous rampage as fun as we think it should be.

With all that killing going on, we focused on finishing up our new respawn area. Designed to allow players a moment of respite after being killed and while loading, the new underground respawn area is coming along nicely. In the shots below, you can see that it has everything you could want in a sewer/storm drain safe room, namely brick walls and a soothing stream of questionable water.

We’ll be back later this week with more updates.

January 31, 2018

Guns, Guns, and More Guns

As we near the end of the week the team is busy finishing up the final stages of our programmatic building system, and addressing some problems with older models. Many of the old placeholder buildings, and some of the very first large structures, are causing some significant performance issues. We plan on deleting them from the map, so we can repopulate the areas with less resource draining structures from our building system.

Interior work continues inside some of our marquee buildings, namely the Thorcon plant, and the Municipal Veil Station. We looked at some early mockups of the new sewer/storm drain respawn area, and it’s looking great. In the very near future, after you die, you’ll be able to gather your wits in the safety and comfort of a dimly lit, underground room, with a lovely runoff water stream.

After looking at the potential health/safety concerns of the new respawn area, we got into a larger discussion about dangers in a post fracture world, other than beast, mutants, and gamers with too many energy drinks and too little sleep. The team discussed possible story lines, and game hooks involving such things as: natural disasters, industrial accidents, poisons, and pandemics. Just because the world has suffered through one apocalypse, doesn’t mean it won’t have to struggle through another.

The web team continued to hammer away on the House customization system and track down lingering bugs. Jared has most of the system components hooked up and is waiting for Jesse to give it a styling pass. The automated color theme system is just waiting for a round of testing before it goes live. When it’s up and running, players will be able to effortlessly put together a good looking color scheme for their House, and House members. We went over some navigation options, and addressed some potential issues with text visibility as well.

We looked at some new body armor mockups, and discussed the possibility of adding House logos as a cool way to customize your character. Finally, the art team showed off their work on one of our first game-specific guns. With the attachment system working, there will be plenty of configurations, and options available to play dress up with your rifle. Below you can see a number of great looking possibilities.

January 25, 2018

Armor, Banners, and Arrows

A few critical bugs regarding Houses popped up over the weekend, so the teams started by squashing them and a few other lingering problems. Charters, and members should now show up on the House page, and a bug that made banners move oddly was addressed. Having just about finished the first tier of customization, Jesse showed off some mockups including a theme gallery which would automatically choose complementary colors and make sure that the chosen colors and text work together. We talked about the next step of an image uploader for custom banners or crests and the pitfalls of allowing people to add images. We want to make sure things stay on the decent side, so Chris and I volunteered to scan images for the naughty and abhorrent. I’m sure everything will be fine as long as we have some emergency eye bleach within reach at all times.

We did some more work in regard to inventory and crafting as well. For all you bayonet fans, weapon attachments are done, and we’re finishing up drag and drop for them. We have the same drag and drop system inside the inventory now as well, to make moving all your sweet loot around easier. We found a few bugs that need work yet, but for the most part we’re just adding a little polish before it’s done.

We added a little shine to our ecommerce system too. The web team made all the forms and fields look consistent, and upgraded the address book so you should be able to autofill your billing and shipping address after you’ve made your first purchase. However, we still need to switch out the old logo for the new, in several places on the page.

Work continues on the new map, and integrating the building and item spawning system. The shots below show how easy it is to create a neighborhood on the fly now.

The new HUD is coming along nicely and should be ready soon. We’re adding armor in the next few days, and are nearing completion on the compass so players will never get lost. We’re still have to add a few images and alerts, but the design is coming along nicely. We’re adding support for the new storm drain respawn area so players won’t have to stay down there and create a new society. We’re not interested in making Sewer Sims.

The team continues to work on the talent system. We have most of the 12 new talents in, but need to build out new systems for a few yet. The remaining animations for things like swimming and crossbows, should be done by the end of the week too. Finally, we have a lot of playtesting to do to work out the kinks. Some of us have started already by running around and shooting each other with bows and arrows, because if you can’t shoot your friend in the head with multiple arrow at 10 yards while playing a game, what’s the point in playing. As San says, “The compound bows are fun as f@#k!”

January 24, 2018

Looking for a Quiet Little Place To Respawn

The team is finishing out the week with expanding the options for player talents. A dozen new options were added to help players forge their characters into better crafters, hunters, medics, or a wide range of other roles. Adding the new talents exposed a few ui bugs that we still need to work through, but we hope to get them fixed soon. We’ll be spending the weekend play testing the new talents to make sure their balanced too.

Inventory work continues as well. We’re still updating attachments and working through alerts. Tactical lights, bayonets, and scopes are just on the horizon. The team is finishing up item info for crafting and recycling, so you get some idea about how to build basic items, and what an item might break down into.

The web team kept chipping away at issues with the timeline view on the story page. Searching for a specific tag, and selecting stories by dragging the pointer along the timeline are both working now. New admin tools ha been added to the web page to make a few things easier for us, and we addressed a bug on the Friends page too. We talked about some potential layout issues with the upcoming settings page, and worked through some navigation questions as well.

Our latest iterations of a map and compass tool are done, and waiting for an art pass. It may not be as good as a car GPS, but players should be able to navigate the wilds of Lahaina without having to stop and ask the cannibalistic menehune for directions anymore.

Jesse and Jared are still plugging away at House and player customization. They’ve done some ui work to make House and player fields consistent. We’re adding a search feature on the House menu to help players find their friends, and are moving house settings to the side navigation to clear up some space. Jesse continued his work on making an easy to use automated color scheme system. When it’s finished you’ll be able to choose a couple colors, and let the system put together a great looking color theme for you. You’ll also be able to coordinate colors for all the different roles in your House, choose banners, and upload images.

Animations for a few weapons and swimming should be done by the weekend, so players won’t travel through the water like they’re strapped to the head of a painfully slow torpedo anymore. We looked at a few different body armor options, and discussed not only what we liked, but what might reasonably be available in a post fracture Lahaina. Our new underground start location should be in by the weekend to protect respawning characters. We want to avoid players being ganked while they load, and near immortal bullet sponges, that keep appearing in combat just long enough to act as a meat shield for their friends. We plan on doing some PVP testing to help dial in the armor, and make sure the new respawn area is working as intended.

Finally, this week will see the last of the work on the Thorcon power plant and large Veil Station, before we place them in the game. While there has been a lot of time put into adding detail to the interiors over the past few weeks, the Thorcon got some polish to the outside recently as you can see below.

I’ll be back next week with more updates.

January 18, 2018

Streaming From a Closet and Adding Some Color

The web team continued working through bugs found in the timeline view, on the story page over the weekend. We worked through many of them, including a way to navigate more smoothly through years that don’t have stories associated with them. We talked through some sidebar layout issues, and made improvements to how the “view more posts” button works. However, we still have a few kinks to work out when a user is searching through tags.

We talked about the need for a HUD/interface system for trading between players, and buying items from vendors, whether they be NPC’s or machines. We discussed the need for secure trading, and how that experience would be different from a buying screen a player would see, when interacting with a vendor. We pointed Jesse in that direction, and he is working on layout designs now. In the near future, you’ll be able to trade ammo, rai (money), or an ice-cold Manimal with your friends without just throwing it on the ground, and worrying about one of the island’s raccoons running by and stealing it. There are enough problems in post-fracture Lahaina already, without having to worry about what might happen when the trash pandas finally get enough ammo.

Terry is still working through some Perforce issues, and San spent some time working through some bugs as well. He got an order of our shirts with a new softer fabric this weekend, and gave them his stamp of approval. The new shirts are so comfortable you might not want to take them off, but we recommend washing them on a regular basis if you plan on going out into society. Speaking of working at home, this weekend, Chris completed the process of converting his closet into a streaming room. With his streaming rig, dim lighting, close proximity to a functional bathroom, and working speakers, he’s one mini-fridge away from having an obsessive gamer’s paradise. (Fyi..It is a sizable closet.-Chris)

The art team kept plugging away at adding detail to our giant buildings. As you can see from the shots below, the Thorcon plant will be a great place to explore after a lighting pass.

Finally, we took a deep dive into House and character personalization. Jesse showed off some amazing mockups for customized Houses, with styled charter pages, maps, banners, and player roles. He’s working on a color scheme generator so you can quickly, and easily put together a design that looks great by just choosing a couple colors. We discussed what editing tools we need for House charters, and integrating the Veil News Network (VNN) news feed, and other streaming video into the House page as well.

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

January 16, 2018

Maps, Mockups, and Armor

To finish out the week the web team is hard at work smoothing out any remaining kinks in the upcoming story timeline view. We’re addressing a handful of layout issues, and Jared is still working on overall performance and speeding up load times on the site. They’re reworking the “view more posts” button so stories load in a more intuitive way. In addition, the team added some much needed admin tools so we can quickly edit stories and announcements now, as well as change some layout options, directly from the website.

We dug into our current map, and talked about some different design options, and discussed exactly what we wanted out of it in terms of utility. Jesse continued work on the HUD, and integrating the many components: compass, map, alerts, quick bar, and chat window, without making the view feel overly crowded. We added a marker on the quick bar to make it easier to see what item/s you currently have equipped, and we’re adding some more specific audio assets to buildings.

We did some diving into body armor options and discussed an overall look. Guns, spears, and weapons in general get a lot of attention because it’s fun to blast or slash things, but armor can keep you alive. We looked at some military designs as well as equipment used in extreme sports, and talked about what things would have been readily available in Lahaina after the fracture. We looked at a number of different back and spine protectors available on the market, and talked about how much they looked like space armor from sci-fi movies in the 80’s.

With most of the work done on the timeline, the web team will be focusing on player and House customization next. Jesse shared some wireframes showing off different options for a house banner and player customization system. Before we got too far into the project, we discussed how detailed and how many options we want available to players. We talked about having automated color scheme tools that would pick complementary color palettes for characters vs. leaving everything up to players. Either way, we want players to be able to designate roles inside their Houses by color, add some uniqueness to their profiles, and set up a red-shirt brigade of expendables if they wish.

We continued working on our respawn experience and the areas that players will find themselves in after they die. Chris rolled up his sleeves and dug into the Unreal tools to make a mock-up of what he was thinking for a storm drain/sewer system respawn area. With a few caveats about being a newb, and being unfamiliar with all the tools, he pieced together an admirable respawn mock-up. We talked about specific design needs, and whether or not we’d want these areas to be connected to the larger sewer system at some point down the road. Whether or not Chris has been bitten by the design bug, and starts creating level mock-ups on the weekend for fun and profit remains to be seen.

The art team continues their work on sectioning up the map and adding detail to the remaining large buildings. While there is some lighting work left to do, you can see from the picture below just how huge the Thorcon power plant is.

We’ll be back with more next week.

January 11, 2018

Tag: House