DEV

Lighting the Sky and Chopping Down Trees

We’re well into sprint 31, and there is a lot planned. This sprint will focus on: Harvesting improvements, finishing up crafting tier 4 (including new ore resources and resource refining), advanced terrain work, filling out more world spaces, adding two new AI types, some drone refinements, completing player persistence, and more. You can always see specifics about the goals for the current sprint and previous ones on our sprint page.

The team finished work on banking persistence so players can store their most important items to safeguard them in the event of their untimely demise. We’ve also added crafting/recycling persistence so all your hard work building things, or breaking them down, is not in vain.

Speaking of breaking things down, the team is starting work on something that Chris is especially excited about, making trees fall when you chop them for wood. We’re still working out some collision and audio issues, as well as a bug that would cause harvested trees to still remain on the map. However, we should have a complete tree felling experience soon for all you lumberjack enthusiasts. (And that’s OK!)

We’ve also made some great trueSKY improvements recently. This has allowed us to work on the moon and stars and optimize some of our environmental lighting. You can see below how good things are looking during the day or the darkest night.
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Lastly, don’t forget that you only have 22 days left to win a XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB in our contest. There are multiple ways to win including joining the Fractured Veil discord server, reserving your player name, or answering a question (just one, this isn’t a survey). The contest ends February 13th. It’s not a bouquet of roses, but a GPU isn’t a bad Valentine’s Day gift.

DEV

Creating a Social Hub For the Holidays

Sprint 30 has just begun, but this is the last full week before the holidays, and all the travel they bring. Here’s a look at what we’ve accomplished so far, and what we have planned for the rest of the sprint.

We’ll be focusing a lot of time on our resource and crafting system tier 4. The game will see the addition of scrap metal, and different ores that players will be able to pound out of rocks, including a variety of metals and sulfur. We plan on adding the enigmatic element 127 to the resource gathering loop. The fuel that makes veil travel possible and fuels the Thorcon Power Plant will become an important energy resource, and might add a little zing to crafting recipes down the road.

We continue to work on the design for a craftable device to locate 127 on the map. In addition, we discussed where a player might find the element and ways to balance the risk/reward for carrying large quantities. The team made some campfire improvements as well, and made some stacking adjustments for items players cook-up or craft.

We’ve made a lot of improvements to the live streaming drones flying above our version of Lahaina, and that work will continue in this sprint. Recently the drones have had a ton of improvements ranging from smoother pathing and movements, to different FOV and lighting upgrades, including night vision. They avoid trees and buildings now, and can even follow animals and players, providing the people are doing something to catch their attention. Our goal is to further refine their decision making process allowing us to target certain areas, things, or actions. We’re also working on a new HUD that provides both information for players, and gives off a slightly ominous “all-seeing” vibe to the autonomous cameras.

The team will also continue their AI work, specifically on a general “commander” type, and a unique profile for our beloved mutant cannibal leader, Big Bob. We want to refine the mutant’s group tactics and make them all team players when it comes to tearing players to shreds. We’ve recently added the ability for mutants to know all the cover points in an area, and select the one best suited for them, instead of picking an area at random around them. There’s no sense in running twenty feet away, taking fire the whole time, to hide behind a rock, when there’s a perfectly good shell of a car just a few feet away. We briefly discussed a few unique options and actions for Bob down the road to separate him from other commander type AI’s.

There’s a lot of tech work and upgrades this sprint too. We’ll be doing some MYSQL and persistence work for a wide variety of things including: stat persistence, locations discovered, blocked players, player banks, and quickslot ordering. We’re also working on an in-game crash and bug reporter. Players are a step closer to being able to start putting together a crafting nest egg in the game, as the art and system work is done for player banks. We just need a little backend work for persistence, and the hoarding can begin. We discovered a bug where players would see their own deaths again when spawning near their old corpses. Having to relive your death in your mind is bad enough, but we thought being forced to physically watch it again was excessively cruel and fixed the problem.

Lastly, we continue our work inside and in the areas around the game’s social hub, the Thorcon Power Plant. We’ll be looking at some concepts for the power plant’s interior before finishing up the the look and the materials inside. We’re working on designs for smelters, interior improvements, and safe zone areas too. While we made some great trueSKY, materials, and foliage improvements across the map already, we plan on making another global lighting and post processing pass this sprint. Here’s a couple of screenshots highlighting how good the lighting and environment is looking currently.
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That’s it for now. We’ll be back later this week with more updates.

DEV

Resource and Animal Management

Still fighting off turkey hangovers, and the colds you always get at group events, we dug back in this week where we left off before the holiday. A lot of material and lighting work was done on the landscape as the team builds out the areas between the game’s main hubs, as well as along the coast. We made a number of day/night improvements and added ruined buildings and neighborhoods to allow players something to explore or set up an ambush between social hubs. We plan on taking another pass to add story elements, unique play features, and specific buildings to explore and loot, once we have theses areas connected.

We reworked the indoor lighting of the Armory, Communication Tower, and the Thorcon Power Plant after it had been disabled due to a truSKY issue. Players shouldn’t need to light an extra torch inside anymore to read their favorite book. Last week we found a huge part of the Thorcon reactor that we had somehow misplaced in a folder somewhere along the way. We’ve made a pass over it to match the rest of the interior, and will hopefully get it installed before the inspectors arrive. Meeting all codes and having the correct paperwork after the fracture is serious business. We’re also taking another pass at the look of the player bank, making it fit better with the game’s aesthetic.

Our hero buildings weren’t the only thing that got a revamp. For a while now we’ve discussed the damage balance issues we’ve had with weapons. The game’s craftable bow and hatchet were among the most powerful weapons for a while, but that’s about to change. We did a full pass on weapon damage and made quite a few changes to more realistically represent the ballistic damage of your typical firearm round. We also adjusted a number of gun stats including firing speed and fixed a melee weapon distance bug. Daggers will no longer have the same reach as spears, and you’ll need to get a little bit closer to a enemy to put your hatchet in their head now.

Speaking of bugs, the team fixed a few already this week. We boosted the interval between loot drops to 30 mins to avoid overlaps in delivery quests. Nobody is a fan of two of aunt Ruth’s jello salads at the Luau, one is more than enough. We fixed an issue with first person animations being used when using a weapon in third person. Also, we corrected a problem with damage highlights showing up on players when they weren’t healable. Medical co-pays are expensive enough, without phantom injuries showing up on characters.

The team made some harvesting adjustments and took a thorough look at the crafting cycle as it currently stands. We’ve made resources much more available and the amount a player can harvest per attempt has been greatly increased for some things. We looked at a few other games to see how they handle resource availability and the speed of their crafting cycle to help figure out that sweet spot, where the best craftable gear is attainable through diligent work, but not too easy. We also want players to be able to create useful gear throughout the crafting process, and not feel like the crafting grind is just a time waster. It’s a tricky balancing act, but we have a game plan in place, and know that we’ll end up making many more passes until we iron out all the bumps.

Lastly, we spent a little time on one of the most important parts of the environment and player survival, our animals. There are many things players have to battle or overcome in the game. In addition to the mutants, and blood thirsty players who just want to get as many kills as possible before their lunch break ends, the environment and animals play a huge role. Wolves and bears are a physical danger to players, while other animals can provide much needed food or leather, and some exist simply to make the landscape look and feel as authentic as possible. We have more about our animals on this imgur post with a few short clips of them in action. Below you’ll find a screenshot of a pack of wolves taking down a deer that is worthy of hanging in any bunkhouse or lodge, a shot of a bear making its morning rounds, looking for a player foolish enough to sleep in the open, and a few other shots of animals in the game.
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DEV

Environmental Work and Lighting the Dark Places

It’s Thanksgiving week, and that means for many of us our heads are filled with thoughts of delicious food, and being trapped in conversations with those weird relatives you only see on the holidays. Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of work to do in the game, and we’ve been busy.

The web team has been focused on hunting down bugs, making user flow improvements, and doing some messaging work. We got some great feedback from a few users, and Jared is working on fixing the issues they found. We took a look at some problems in the account creation process, and are doing some QA testing as we work to smooth them out. The team focused on creating some new email templates to share specific parts of the page, and special announcements as well.

Jesse is making some small changes to the House creation process before moving on, and making some improvements to the House themes we offer. We talked a bit about ways we could allow users to personalize their houses as well as add personal touches to the game. We want players to be able to make things feel like their own, but we’re mindful of the limits we have to put in place to keep gratuitously offensive material out.

Everyone loves free stuff, especially cool free stuff. That’s why we’re giving away a brand new XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. The contest started last week but you still have plenty of time to enter before the December 15th cutoff. There are multiple ways to enter: join our discord server and say hello, following us on twitter, visit the website and reserve a player name, and many more.

AI improvements continue this week, and our cover system is finished. Now the terrors of the jungle will move out of the way of gunfire, and utilize surrounding objects to mitigate the amount of lead they’re catching. We like our mutants both horrifying, and smart enough to move out of the way of a moving train.

Speaking of smart mutants, we’re working on a new AI for Big Bob to make him our most dangerous opponent yet. We’re giving him the ability to put other mutants in a sort of hivemind state in which he controls their actions and tactics. This allows him to properly soften and tenderize players before he charges in, and adds them to his food diary. We’re also beefing him up with a bunch more health to better reflect just how much of Big Bob there is to get through.

Finally, we took to imgur again to talk about the progression of our lighting work and environmental improvements. Throughout the development process, we’ve strived to make the beautiful deadly wilds of Lahaina look and feel as realistic as possible. To us the environment is another tool to tell the story, and set the mood for the game. We want the hibiscus waving in the wind to be vibrant and calming, just as much as the dark places in the jungle to be foreboding. We talk about the technical issues involved with making a dynamic looking world, and what we’ve done to make normally flat looking terrain pop, and add just the right amount of light to those dark places. Below you can see a couple shots of just how good Lahaina is looking, but to get a better appreciation check out these before and after imgsli shots.
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DEV

Graphics Card Giveaway and Weapon Fixes

The team is busy decorating the interior of the Thorcon Power Plant this week to get it ready for players, and the holidays. We looked over some concept art again, and picked out the bits we liked for the game’s social hub. We talked about the proper set decoration to give the interior the feel of something rebuilt after a global catastrophe, but still with some Hawaiian flair. We discussed how many or few inhabitants players would find inside, and what sorts of things would be available for purchase.

We looked at some work being done to the exterior too. We’re weathering the structure to show the wear and tear that over 60 years of neglect would take on the power plant. We discussed adding aircraft warning lights to the highest parts, and the other tall structures that survived the fracture in Lahaina. The team fixed the last of the stuck doors inside and out as well.

There’s a zipline from the Communication Tower heading towards the Thorcon now. It doesn’t deliver you to the plants doorstep, but it takes you a good distance, and you can’t miss the giant building looming just ahead of you when you get to the end. The team is busy building out those areas between as well. We’re adding farms to explore and gather resources, mysterious houses standing by themselves with an abundance of junk to root around in for crafting materials, and many other good places to check out, get attacked, or set up your own ambush if you’ve decided it’s easier to take what you want instead of sifting through rubble.

We continued our AI improvements to make the horrors of the jungle less mindless. We fixed a bug that would see some of the game’s mutants get stuck on terrain. We also smoothed out some of their charge or retreat paths so they can get to players more quickly, or cover if things aren’t going their way. We also discovered that a bug crashing the staging server was due to the newest harvesting system we implemented. We’re fixing that now so the world doesn’t stop every time you chop down a tree.

The web team is busy finishing up the front page facelift, fixing bugs, and doing some marketing work. Jesse is making some minor adjustments to our announcements/call to action templates and finished a contest slide just in time for our first one. We’re giving away a brand new XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. The contest lasts for the next 30 days. You can enter by joining our discord server, creating a player name, following us on twitter, and a whole lot more.

While some of us were working on giving stuff away, others were talking about nerfing a few weapons. Currently the hatchet and the handmade bow are the most powerful weapons in the game. Much to the chagrin of all of our primitive weapon enthusiasts, that’s going to change. We thought it made more sense if a 150 grain bullet traveling at 2,700 ft/s did a little more ballistic damage than something a player whittled out of wood, even if it was tipped with a shark tooth. We’re looking at weapon damage across the board, as well as NPC and animal health values to avoid near omnipotent raccoons, and players killing each other over devastatingly big sticks.

Lastly, we’ve worked through a number of our trueSKY issues and improved our lighting in the game. It’s never looked better. As you can see from these shots below, the daytime sky and clouds look fantastic, and the trail is hard to miss at night now that we have torches lighting your way.
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DEV

Drone Cameras and Interviews

This is the first full week of sprint 29 and the team fixed a number of bugs while finishing up some polish work over the weekend. Some of this work led to a number of temporary hitches that were just too good not to share. First, for a short period of time the Lahaina beach disappeared and the landscape offered all the proof a flat Earther needed to confirm their beliefs. Soon after, we were making a lighting update when we were suddenly veiled to night vision world. While everyone agreed that it looked kind of cool, ultimately everything was a bit too green for our liking.
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We went to Imgur with another post about building the world and the structures in it. We discussed how we’ve tried to balance making the island lush enough to show what nature will do if left on its own for 60+ years, and still make players feel isolated and abandoned. We talked about how much time we’ve spent making an atmospheric system that lets us experiment with apocalyptic overtones to add a bit of dread to the normally cheery Lahaina. The team got a lot of good feedback, but we’d love to hear more of your thoughts and comments. Someone is almost always around to answer any questions and listen to your suggestions on our discord. Head on over and let us know what you think.

Our ongoing AI work continues in sprint 29. We’re improving our cover generation system so our mutants don’t stand in front of a wall of bullets when encountering a group. They’ll zig and zag instead of running in easy to hit straight lines, sorry no combat rolls yet, and ranged attackers will do their best to herd players in easy to claw groups. We’re adding a new “Alpha” AI for Big Bob allowing him to command other mutants to do his bidding while he shuffles into combat.

We’ve begun the third tier of our crafting and resource gathering system. Players will be able to skin animals and gather leather now, as well as find the volatile element 127 and convert it into energy to power equipment. While the fuel that powers the Thorcon Power Plant and made Veil travel possible is rare and dangerous, it might give a little kick to certain crafting recipes down the road. We’re adding more recipes for craftable gear and are taking a thorough look at resource availability. In addition to providing players with necessary ingredients, we want harvesting resources to help drive players around the map and encourage them to explore new areas.

One of the biggest areas of focus this sprint is going to be improving the camera drones that fly around the island filming what’s going on. We’re going to be doing some advanced movement work, and add audio recognition so they can detect things like a battle, and move towards it to capture the action. We have a lot of HUD improvements planned for the drones too, giving them a more authoritarian feel while still providing location details.

Speaking of drones, an interview we did with PCGamesN magazine recently digs into our work on the game’s eyes in the sky. We talked about what goes into making the autonomous drones work in the game and our plans for their future. Down the road we’d like to have a number of them, each with their own specialty and directorial eye, capturing and streaming all aspects of the game including: combat, wildlife, and social interactions. Check out the interview and learn more about our plans for the automated cinematographers here.

DEV

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

DEV

Torches and Teaser Videos

With sprint 28 wrapping up in a few days, everyone is finishing up goals and hunting down any remaining bugs. Terry continues working through trueSky issues, cooks, and crashes. We’ve worked through many of our recent weather and lighting problems and are focusing on making the water look perfect. We’ve fixed our fog and disappearing sky issues, and future Lahaina is looking great.

The team has made a number of lighting improvements, and have good looking lanterns and torches lighting the dark and dangerous places in the game. We’ve added a number of animations to make players and NPCs alike look more realistic when they shoot, climb, crouch, and run. We improved a bunch of 1st and 3rd person shooting animations in particular. Now when a player draws back their bowstring and holds it for a period of time, they will actually shake slightly.

We’ve made similar improvements to weapon audio and appearance. Our firearms have never sounded better, and melee weapons thud, thunk, and crunch in the game more realistically. We’ve improved our ranged AI using all weapons but bows as well. Now, players can count on select horrors of the jungle shooting back when fired upon.

With all the lead soon to be flying around Maui, we started working on a cover system for our NPCs. Currently some of them will stand in the middle of a firefight like tears in the rain. Beyond just taking cover behind an object, (which we’re teaching them too), we want our NPC’s to move when bullets are flying, find tactically beneficial places to be, and avoid running in straight lines. They’re not likely to pass voight-kampff yet, but maybe later…

We’ve expanded our crafting system with lots of new recipes. Players can now make virtually any bit of gear in the game if they have the necessary resources. Even the volatile element 127, the fuel that allowed Veil travel and powers the Thorcon Power Plant, is incorporated into our crafting system now. Players brave or foolish enough to experiment by adding a little 127 in the mix while they’re building something like ammo, might get a pleasant surprise in the near future, or blow up. You never know with these kind of things.

The drones patrolling the island and broadcasting what is happening around Lahaina, are avoiding trees and not traveling through the Earth anymore. We plan on adding a lot more improvements like audio detection next sprint. We finished up some ui improvements as well, with new tooltips, widgets, and translucent menus that make it easier to manipulate your inventory without getting ganked by something coming out of the jungle.

We’re finishing up performance work that has resulted in huge building improvements, much to the delight of our GPUs. Our procedural building system is now constructing beautiful and performant buildings like never before. Our work building out the areas surrounding the Thorcon continues and we’re finishing a first pass at its interior. We plan on adding a lot more to the inside of the power plant next sprint, reflecting that it will be the social hub for players.

We’ve completed the nuts and bolts of a player bank system and just need to finish the art, and decide where players will be able to access the extension of their personal inventory. We discussed a few possible looks, and talked at some length about how many or few drop-off locations should be available to the encumbered.

Finally, the web team is finishing the work on the new site navigation, in addition to call out and contest slides. We’re focusing on improving user flow and various marketing initiatives too. We’re working on a number of promo videos and GIFs, as well as sharing some more of our early concept sketches, as we spread the word about Fractured Veil. Below you can see one of the teaser videos we made with one of our Trophy Collectors welcoming you to Lahaina.

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DEV

Painting the Power Plant

As we approach the end of the week the team completed some lighting work. We’ve put a lot of thought into nighttime lighting in the game. We want to make sure that buildings, trails, and other points of interest are noticeable at night, but we don’t want to shred the cover of darkness for players creeping around trying to go unnoticed. To that end, there are a number of lamps, lanterns, and tiki torches, in the game now. They offer just the right amount of light to keep you on the right path, and get an idea of what’s in an area, without making it impossible to hide in the shadows. With the exception of some of the torches flaring up like they’re loaded with jet fuel, we’re happy with the end product, and plan on making the torches a little less vigorous.

We looked at, and discussed a few more options for things surrounding the communications tower. The team has talked about a number of buildings and/or geographic features we could add around the zipline center of Lahaina. We went over some barrier and debris options that could be used to help defend the area until we decide if we want something more substantial there. The team is making another general pass over items and buildings to make them more stylized for the game, and Hawaii in general as well.

The web team continues work on the navigation revamp, and designs on a call to action/contest section. Jesse designed some new icons for use on our social media pages and made improvements to what we already had. We found a bug that would show the wrong navigation colors in some of the preset House themes. That should be fixed in the next few days. Jared is still working through the issues with the live drone feed on the front page. Until they are cleared up, you can always watch the drone’s-eye view of Lahaina on our YouTube page. We talked some more about how to improve the story page, and let visitors know what the game is about. It should be getting a major facelift in the near future.

We made a number of improvements to our mutants this week too. We’ve gussied up a few of the cannibals to highlight their bad skin, matted hair, and blood-stained lips. We fixed a bug that would cause them to sometimes react twice to being shot or sliced, making them suddenly start to twitch. We improved animations to make their upper body move towards the origin of a sound they detected. Previously they’d just lurch in strange looking ways towards a noise. We also taught them that discretion is the better part of valor, and installed a fleeing AI module that allows them to run away when grievously injured. Instead of fighting to the end if they’re getting slaughtered, the terrors of the jungle will be able to run away, and lurk again another day.

We made a lot of progress on the Throcon Power Plant too. We continue to build out the surrounding areas, but this week we specifically focused on the inside of the building. The interior got a fresh paint job, and we discussed the level of inhabitation and stuff we wanted inside. We looked at some concept drawings ranging from: keeping it rather barren with a few sleeping mats here and there, to something more akin to the inside of a big box store on Black Friday. We eventually decided on something near the middle, offering players someplace empty enough to explore a bit, but still indicative of a common meeting place and social hub. Below you can see a couple images of the new and improved reactor room, with players in one shot so you can get a feel of the size of the facility and reactor.
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DEV

Banks and Branded Loot

This week kicked off the beginning of sprint 28. The team was busy finishing up final goals from the last sprint, and fixing any lingering bugs. The main focus of 28 will be: completing our UE 4.20.2 update, updating crafting, and tightening up the game’s resource loop. We also plan to: build out the areas surrounding the Thorcon Power Plant, improve the camera drone, build a Bank system, incorporate more of the fictional game companies, and make some AI improvements.

Terry and crew are close to finishing our move to UE 4.20.2 and are addressing bugs as they appear. Last sprint, we identified a number of issues with how buildings were being constructed by our procedural building system that were creating some performance issues. The team addressed most of them, but will finish fixing the rest this sprint. We’re working on collision and audio detection features for the game drone to keep it from phasing through objects, and ensure it catches any action going on in an area.

The team has worked out the issues we were having with the disappearing sky, and Lahaina has clouds, a sun, and plenty of blue above once again. However, we couldn’t help but take another couple screenshots showing how bleak everything looked for those couple days when Chicken Little’s fears turned out to be correct.
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The web team continues to work on the achievement system. We’ve compiled a list of achievements with their accompanying rewards, and Jesse is busy designing badges for each. We’re finishing up work on the ingame friends system, so you can more easily find friends you want to run through the jungle with, and blocking tools to keep people off your radar and your message stream.

After some time shooting and stabbing each other, and everything else that moves, we’ve decided to make some adjustments to damage and health values. We found a few weapons to be lacking in stopping power, and a few creatures a little too tough for our liking. Finding that right mix of the joy of wanton slaughter, with a sense of accomplishment by bringing down a tough opponent is tricky, but we’re getting close.

We’re beginning to build out the second tier of our crafting system, with more complex items and a bunch of new recipes. To support this, we’re making some changes to the game’s resource loop. We’re spreading more resources around the map for players to harvest, rocks in particular. In addition, we’re adding a few new resources like charcoal and sulfur. Our goal is that in addition to weapons, armor, and gear, players will soon be able to craft their own ammo, to help supplement the cartridges you can find spread out across the map and hidden in loot caches.

With all the new resources you can gather and new stuff you can craft, there’s going to be a lot of full backpacks and encumbered players running around; so we’re building a banking system for items. Players will be able to place their charcoal collections or anything else messy or heavy in a “Bank” to be saved for later use, and give their backs a break.

Lastly, Jesse and the art team have finished branding work for a number of ingame companies. SSHAM– Lahaina’s favorite canned meat product, Manimal– the most intense solution to an extreme thirst, and Alohagistics– the shipping company that promises your package will “get there eventually,” are just a few of the companies with products players will be able to find around the map now.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back later with the latest updates and screenshots.