DEV

Dangerous Canned Goods and Bug Hunting

With sprint 26 coming to an end this week, the teams are busy adding the finishing touches to a number of tasks, and hunting down some remaining bugs.

The web team has corrected a number of issues on the page that have been hurting our SEO, and have implemented some improvements to give us a boost. They fixed a few rendering issues, and Jesse continues to push forward with onboarding improvements, and streamlining our referrer section. We want to make the sign up process as easy and intuitive as possible, as well as, explain the benefits you receive when you get your friends to sign up, and adventure through the wilds of Lahaina with you.

Jesse has also been working on the logo for the ingame shipping company responsible for the numerous boxes players find abandoned around the map, or hoarded inside buildings. We looked at various colors, and cover schemes, and had a blast coming up with absurdly funny taglines fitting the humor in the game.

Terry is busy finishing up some server documentation, and taking a break every now and then to do some debugging work. He is looking into the cause of an occasional crashing issue we’ve ran into, and working on a rendering problem with the ocean and the sky creeping until they have replaced everything else in your field of view. While I would argue that there is a solid 10 minutes of fun in the movie Waterworld, we’re not looking to make a homage game to the movie, maybe for the guy stuck at the bottom of the tanker, but definitely not the film as a whole. We discussed at some length the best time to start the upgrade to UE 4.20, and having Terry available to focus on any integration issues we run into.

With our first quest/advanced tutorial coming up around the corner, everyone has been: running around, shooting, jumping, crouching, crawling, harvesting, and building to find and fix as many bugs as we can. We’ve found a few including: ongoing zipline issues, echoing footsteps that persist beyond the underground spawn area, strangely sized doors inside buildings, and players being able to walk through some of the props around the map, but by far the most enjoyable is the can gun. For reasons unknown as of yet, if you eat food out of a can while you have a pistol equipped the two will sometimes merge. There’s no doubt that if you break out the peaches to host an emergency meeting, nobody would expect a gun as an accompaniment, cinnamon maybe, but not a pistol. Below you can see a short video of the infamous can gun complete with reloading.

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Our drone work continues with the team smoothing out, and finalizing its initial flight path until we build out more of the map. The drone will cover the game live highlighting the best action, places of interest, and the most beautiful places in post-fracture Lahaina. We discussed the possibility of specific drone streams in the future featuring certain aspects of the game like: combat, wildlife, main buildings, or even specific groups down the road.

Lastly, work on our first quest continues. We are making some last minute changes to the look of some of the buildings and vehicles players will be searching through for specific items. Some audio and animation improvements are in the pipeline, but most of our time this sprint has been focused on trying perfect the games lighting, especially at night. You can see in this shot of the Communication Tower entrance and the area immediately outside, how much that work is paying off.
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Check back later in the week for more updates and screenshots.

DEV

Lighting Paths and Cloudy Skies

The web team continues to dig into the player profile page making improvements, and streamlining the friends and referral process. Jesse put on his research hat this week, and looked into a number of other games, picking out what works, and what seems confusing. Using that knowledge we looked at a number of wireframes, and talked through changes we could implement to make the process as easy, and appealing as possible.

Jared is busy hooking up some of these improvements, and we talked through some other player interactions we’d like to foster. Various incentives for things like: completing your player profile, connecting your social media favorites to the game, and uploading shots or streams of your gameplay, were discussed. We came up with a good set of rewards and bonuses we can give players in the near future, but no FRV research hats I’m afraid. That’s Jesse’s thing.

We continue to push forward with a number of audio improvements across the board. We have new sounds for picking-up and dropping items depending upon their size and what they’re made of. I personally find the clang and slight echo of an axe dropping in the underground spawn area to be strangely pleasant, while my office mate feels the clang loses it’s appeal after the 50th drop in a row. However, we both agree that it sounds realistic.

It seems as though that the skies in the game are filled predominantly with one type of cloud, the cirrus. A few weeks back Chris pointed out the flaw in TrueSky, and we requested more: cumulus, stratus, cirrocumulus, nimbostratus, and a few others we could still remembered from that section of science class in high school. We’re working on adding some variety to the sky now, as well as making some improvements to their low hanging representatives, the fog.

While we continue to populate the game map with: buildings, roads, plants and structures, this week we started adding a few other things, namely boxes and bodies. Players can find a number of different types of containers to rummage through and loot. Ranging from a cargo container to a tiny shoebox, we have a container for you. We’re working on an ingame shipping company logo to give the containers some personality, and have the auto-looting feature up and running. Most of the bodies have been pretty well looted, and are there to add an ominous feel to the forest, and serve as a warning where they are plentiful. As far as I know, none are affixed with a shipping label.

Performance improvements continue with the Veil Station upgrade. In the near future we plan on using the station as the social hub of the game, instead of the Thorcon Power Plant, which is now the main gathering point for players. We’re making some improvements to our procedural building system in order to create pre-trashed buildings. Currently, we can add rickety decks and slight damage on the fly, but have to go back and grunge up siding and roofs by hand.

One of our main focuses remains completing our first quest scenario, centered around the Communications Tower. We have the storyline, and tasks worked out, and looked at a scene breakdown of the area: where players have to go, the obstacles they will encounter, and the items available to loot. We discussed marking objectives in the HUD as point of interest, and subtle lighting cues that will point characters in the right direction at night.

The team continues to make good progress in overall lighting in the game as well. We’ve spent a lot of time improving our volumetric lighting, and making sure that areas lit up at night act as a beacon for players, but still allow them to move around stealthily. You can see the fruits of that balancing act in this shot of a shack built in what used to be a parking lot.
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We’ll be back next week with more.

DEV

Finding Friends and Mutant Makeovers

Since our first type of mutant, the Trophy Hunters, are prowling the forests looking for parts to add to their collections, we decided to give them a little individuality. They already have a couple different types with special abilities, such as one who has ranged attacks, but until now all basic types look the same. While giving them each name tags may have been an easy solution, we decided to go down a different road. We’re working on a number of different variances to make them look more like individuals transformed into creatures, and less like they’ve escaped from a clone factory. We’re adding things like: subtle shading differences, different garb, scarring, tattoos and body markings to let each pack member be their own best mutant.

The team is adding a number of AI improvements including fixing the distance you can be from a creature before it notices you, and attacks. Currently, there are a few things that you can almost bump into before they are stirred to action. We’re adding some new animations to improve the look of some actions, and adding some better audio fx to monsters. Since the first pass at the Trophy Hunters is almost done, we looked at a few new types of jungle horrors for players to contend with. We talked a bit about what parts of the map these new dangers would lurk, and some basic tactics and abilities.

With all the new mutants in the pipeline, players are going to need friends/party members to help keep them alive. The web team circled back to the friends system and is working on ways to make it easier to find and invite people to watch your back. Jesse showed off wireframes highlighting some onboarding improvements. We talked at some length about the referral system, and the best way to explain that you earn premium currency (kula) when a friend uses your link to join, and cash when that friend makes a purchase.

The team discussed the upcoming Communication Tower quest. We’ve worked out the basic story line and the goals for players to complete. The art team is busy adding a few new items to the area, and are finishing up last minute details to the buildings around the tower. We’re adding new audio cues, and talked about sounds for future quests. In addition, we’re including a new visual indicator for areas of interest in quests, and using the same marker for our loot drop scenarios.

We fixed a few bugs keeping our campfires from being all they could be, and are including a few more styles of boxes/containers/crates to hold loot. Right now when you find a pile of stuff, it is almost certainly in a military style container. However, It wasn’t the look of the loot boxes that was troubling Chris, it was the inability to smash them once emptied that was the problem. He always asks if we can shoot/smash/break and recycle it when we look at something new, and boxes are no different. The team is working on a way to accommodate this need to break things down into their core components, including containers, so Chris can get back to dismantling his box of fidget spinners.

One of the 3d artists is busy finishing roofs to a number of buildings before moving on to the mammoth task of fixing some of the visual issues, and collision problems we’ve run into with the Municipal Veil Station. We’ve discovered a few door problems with the Thorcon Power Plant too. Doors inside would somehow allow players to clip through walls and go outside, and some would open vertically like a reverse drawbridge. Even the large main doors had some trouble, and refused to open. We’re looking into it now, and hope to have the issues fixed soon.

Of course we continue to make improvements to the weather and wind, as well as the foliage and landscape as we fill in the map. In this shot below you can see deer who is feeding on our amazing looking ground cover with the mountains in the background.
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That’s it for now. We’ll be back next week with the latest updates and screenshots.

DEV

Building Roads and Aging Buildings

Sprint 26 kicked off this week, and we’ll be focusing on getting things ready for players with items such as: Improving creature AI, filling in the map, implementing a way for players to bank or secure loot, creating a social hub in the game, and focusing on player growth.

We’re updating campfires to make them a more useful place to regroup your party, dry wet clothing, and make a meal. We took a brief tangent discussing the viability of pineapple s’mores, and other Hawaiian versions of traditional campfire treats. We discussed what we would like in a basic banking system and talked through questions like: Does money have weight? If so how much does it weigh? If not is there a cash limit? Is banking free? We haven’t made any decisions yet, but it was good to work through some of these questions.

We have the beginnings of a talent system in place, allowing players to specialize their characters to fill certain roles in a group, or just tailor to their liking (though there is no tailoring skill currently planned). These special abilities focus on things like combat, stealth, crafting, and medical expertise (Not tailoring). We need to play test the talents we already have, fine tune them, and fill in any holes we find (But not darning holes, no tailoring, remember?). We’re working on a talent ui currently, and trying to avoid the tangled-string-art (String? Seriously, no tailoring!) looking web of skills you see in so many other (non-tailoring oriented) games.

The web team discussed the alerts and notifications we already have in place, and what areas we could improve in. We want players to know when their friends, or people they enjoyed playing with, are online or near them. We also discussed the importance of having an easy way to disable those things so your game isn’t pinging you every few minutes. We also talked over a few ideas for game trailers and sizzle reels.

We had to face an uncomfortable truth this week when it came to clothing. It’s obvious that the fracture caused a severe food, water, and supply shortage for survivors in Lahaina, but we had unwittingly created a unique outfit shortage as well. A post-apocalyptic makeover show would be a huge failure on the island right now because there just aren’t any options for the all important “new threads” (Dammit! Again with the clothes!) segment. We talked about adding a variety of outfit choices with some waterproof options, as well as a good selection of hats and headgear to help keep players warm at night. Maybe we need a tailoring skill…

The group went over a few more ideas for new places to explore on the map, as well as locations from the game stories. The art team is working on concept drawings of a few of our favorites. We’re adding some final touches to our road and village generating system, and working out a few lingering weather bugs with TrueSky. We’re currently filling in the areas surrounding the communications tower and damaging/roughing up the building materials with moss/vines, discoloration, and cracks to properly represent decades of neglect.

We plan on using the municipal veil station as the main social hub for the game, but have run into some performance issues. The already poor frame rates would only get worse with every new player running around, so we decided to shift the main hub to the Thorcon plant until we get the issues worked out. The team is busy roughing up the outside of the power plant and armory, and filling up the interiors with decorations, furniture, and containers to root through. We’re also making sure there is a distinct path leading to these important buildings. Below you can see what’s left of a portion of the Honoapi’ilani Highway. Although the jungle has reclaimed much of it, highway 30 remains an important road even after the cataclysm.
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We’ll be back next week with more updates.

DEV

Staging Ruins and Upgrading Creatures

With sprint 25 coming to an end today, the team is busy adding a bit of polish, and finishing up goals. While filling in the map, and laying down a network of connecting trails is going to be an ongoing process, the handful of sections to the South that we’ve been focusing on are looking great. We’ve added buildings, places to explore, and paths to get there. We took some topographical liberty in a few spots, and added a line of cliffs to explore. We try and stick to a geographically realistic Lahaina in most cases, but this area is one long flat plain, and we felt that it needed a feature to break it up, and act as a landmark.

We noticed that there was very little minable stone in the area, so we’re adding enough new rocks to appease even the most rabid mineral enthusiast. The team discussed possible areas to build out in the upcoming sprint. We looked at a few concept drawings of post-apocalyptic fishing villages, bridge dweller enclaves, and abandoned military outposts, and kicked around some ideas about what to include next.

Our Trophy Hunter monsters received a major AI upgrade this sprint, and we watched a demo of the final, (for this sprint), product. They now have ranged attackers who: try to push players towards melee combatants, avoid line of site, and utilize surrounding cover for protection. There’s still some work to do, but they are miles ahead tactically from where they were. Here’s a shot of a group of Trophy Hunters coming out of the jungle, and looking for victims along the beach near the “Welcome To Lahaina” sign.
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We talked at length about various weather related bugs we need to address. We’re still having trouble with the rain which falls but doesn’t get a player’s clothes wet. Running full speed during the hottest part of the day doesn’t raise your temperature, and you don’t get cold at night. There only seems to be one type of cloud in the sky at any given time, and we need some help with wind physics in regards to the foliage. Right now leaves and limbs are moving to the beat of their own drummer instead of going with the breeze.

We’ve added a number of ravaged buildings and homes to the map for players to explore and seek shelter in. With the structures in place, the team has been busy adding furnishings, rugs, and knick-knacks that really tie a ruined room together. We’ve added some obvious loot crates/boxes inside and out, but we’ve also hidden useful items inside cabinets, appliances, and furniture. Rewards now await those brave enough to reach into the deepest crevices of a couch and root around in 60-year-old pet hair and cheese snack crumbs.

We still have some weathering to do to these old homes, but below you can see a couple of prime beach dwellings, with a few suspiciously placed crates sitting out in the open.
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DEV

Putting Lahaina on the Map

The team’s push to make crafting and player inventory improvements continues. We made some improvements to the drag and drop on the crafting screen, and found a bug that was displacing items. Jared is fixing it now. We also have splitting and stacking working well for players who have trouble leaving anything behind that they can fit in their bag.

We’re updating item info on your inventory screen so you can quickly delineate differences in similar looking items. We added some tweaks to icons to make they stand out better, and talked about making them more stylized in the future. Jesse made some layout improvements to mobile, and squashed a few lingering resizing issues.

The web team added some dialog boxes to a few different areas to help players navigate the page. While help tips can be useful the first couple times you navigate a site, we understand how annoying they can be, so we’re adding a setting to disable them too. Jesse has been working on navigation improvements, and we looked at the latest layouts. We discussed some new menu options, and ways to make user flow and experience better.

We’re still working on the bug that has interfered with our Veil News Network (VNN) drone. While that issue is being fixed, we’re moving ahead with a few ui improvements to the HUD. Designed to travel around the play area highlighting points of interest, and capturing action live as it happens, the drone can provide some useful information to players. We want to make sure that information is a clear, and concise as possible.

We continue our performance improvements to our landmark buildings. The Thorcon Power Plant is huge, and a great place to explore, but not if your frame rate is cut in half. The team is adding audio support to these buildings, and we have some new sounds for weapons and players too. It’s not as easy to run through the underbrush without making a sound now, and racking a round into your weapon makes a telltale noise too.

We’ve been testing out our loot drop scenarios to make sure the bugs are all worked out, and so far so good. We have a variety of fun challenges to offer players a chance to pick up some valuable loot until we include some quests. We added some visual cues to help players better see where they have to go to get their rewards, or deliver items to access secret caches.

Lastly, one of the biggest projects for the last couple sprints has been the stripping down, and rebuilding of the old map. We took away everything, and built the game area from the ground up with topographical data of the Lahaina area, all the current roads, and existing structures as a base. We’ve replaced all the foliage for better performance, and to get rid of non-native plants to make it look more authentic. With much of that work now done in staging, we’ve been able to finally push the new map to production.

While we continue to fill it in section by section, we discussed adding a few new areas to explore. We looked at concept drawings for cliff communities, abandoned bunkers, sunken waterfronts, forgotten mines, and other areas perfect for ambushes, and finding loot. The team talked about other places, and buildings we’d like to see down the road, while we make passes adding in plants, buildings, and paths. Below you can see some of the new foliage from a birds eye view, and the mountains from a clearing in the jungle.
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DEV

Lahaina Loot Boxes

The team did a lot of inventory and crafting work over the weekend, to make sure the arts and crafts scene in post-fracture Lahaina remains vibrant. They added some ui improvements, made some adjustments to the drag and drop between the inventory and crafting screen, and worked through stacking and splitting issues. We added a double press item deletion safeguard to make sure players don’t accidentally destroy an item when they are in a clicking frenzy. The team also expanded the official recipe list with a few new useful creations that will come in handy when exploring the wilds. We took some time to discuss mystery/experimental recipes as well, and how best to encourage players to experiment, and discover how to make things not written down

After finding and fixing a whole new round of weapon attachment bugs, we finally have the situation in hand. Scopes, stabilizers, suppressors, mounts, magazines, sights, and bayonets are all working as they should now. We still need the art team to make a final pass, ensuring that everything looks good, but the mechanics are working well.

With all the add-ons working for weapons, we took some time to make sure there was something worthy to shoot at, and made good progress with creatures and AI. Our creature AI got an upgrade, and we have the first pass at wave/group tactics done. The horrors of the jungle avoid grouping up in tight areas like halls and doorways, they move at angles instead of straight lines, and they make use of cover as the run through the jungle. We discussed making stronger versions of our Trophy Hunters and looked at a number of potential improvements like: ranged attacks, poison, healing, and buffing as well as just making unsually tough or fast individuals.

We continued work on group play, finishing up the ability to heal others in your group. We need to add a little ui polish, and a round of testing, but we’ve worked out all the previous bugs, and have the system up and running. Now your best shooters can stay shooting as you patch them up, and players too hurt to move can get back on their feet in a hurry.

We’ve made some improvements to looting too. The time it takes you to empty a container in now based on its size, (bigger containers take longer to pillage.) We are finishing up the visual effects and map alerts for our loot drops to make sure it’s easy to find where gear and goods have appeared on the map. We want you to spend your time gripped in a life or death struggle for those weapons and resources, not fighting to find them.

Terry is completing documentation for the Git rollover, and finishing setting up the East Coast mirror. We scratched a few longstanding bugs off the list, and started work on drone camera documentation. We looked at some of the improvements and fixes included in UE 4.20 and discussed an upgrade strategy that would give us the most benefit, without chasing down a tsunami of compatibility issues.

Finally, our map rebuild and restoration took a few more steps forward. After a few setbacks last week kept us from pushing the new map to production, we plan on doing it by Friday. All the world map code support is finished, and we continue to fill in the play area section by section. Below you can see the framework of some ruins along the beach, just waiting for an apocalyptic makeover.
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Check back later in the week for more updates.

DEV

Group Play and Gear

The team kicked the week off focusing on group play, specifically healing other party members. We ran into a few bugs right away. While we finally have medkits in the game, we discovered that their medical efficacy was the same as a kiss on a boo-boo (or less, really). We’re tracking down the issue, and hope to have it straightened out soon. Until then, you’ll just have to keep telling your teammates to “rub a little dirt on it,” when they’re injured.

We found that bandages where only healing one injury at a time, even if multiple injuries were on the same body part. For example: If a player had multiple bleeding arrow wounds in their arm, a bandage would only stop one wound from bleeding. We’re fixing that, so a bandage will address all injuries on a specific part of the body once applied.

We’re testing our loot drops to work out any remaining bugs, and make sure players have plenty to do once they’re done rampaging through the jungle for the day. The team has almost all the kinks worked out of the item delivery scenario, and had fun playing a version of apocalyptic rugby, tossing a small totem around while trying to get to the objective point. During this time, we discovered that you could stick your head through a tree to see what was on the other side. We’re big fans of hiding behind things, particularly trees, so we’re working on a fix.

We added a pinging alert on player minimaps, letting them know that some grabbable gear has been dropped in the world, and its general location. Looting time based on the size of a container is almost done, so a big box will take longer to pick through than a small bag. Now, someone who runs through your camp won’t be able to grab everything your group worked hard for, before you get a chance to show them the error of their ways.

Crafting improvements continue, with some new ui elements, and dialogue boxes added to help streamline the process of building items, and answer basic questions like “I don’t arrive till late…how long will it go?” A lot of work has been completed on our monster AI. The horrors of the jungle now have senses to better see and hear players, as well as teeth and battle tactics to better eat them with. We just need to finish up by adding things like minimum fleeing distances, periodic damage checks, and group attack spacing, to make the creatures smarter and more dangerous.

We ran into a few problems moving everyone over to Git, but Terry and crew have the issues in hand, and we’re almost done with the transition. The new map is being pushed to production and the art team is busy filling it in. We’re starting on the Southern coast, and are working our way up, adding buildings and unique areas to the old network of roads, and foliage base already included in the map. We talked about changing a few of the geographical features of Lahaina to better highlight how the fracture changed not just society, but the Earth itself. The team discussed a few different possibilities, and we looked at some concept art of some exclusive post fracture cliff dwellings. Below you can see one the rare clearings in the jungle before it gets filled in with a structure of some sort.
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We’ll be back later in the week with more updates.

DEV

Maps and Mechanics

This week marks the beginning of sprint 25, and the team is busy filling in the new map, as well as finishing up some features, and hunting down bugs found in the previous sprint. After stripping down the previous map, and rebuilding it literally from the ground up with topographical data of Maui, we’ve started to place some of the game’s unique buildings. The Thorcon Power Plant, and the Lahaina Armory will be added to the landscape this week, and if all goes well, we plan on moving staging and production to the new map. We’ve fixed some of our weather problems. Rain, fog, and storms look better, and we’re working on the lighting, ensuring that the game looks good morning, noon, and night. Below you can see the VNN drone’s eye view of the Communication Tower as the sun goes down.
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The team wrapped up a lot of work on the group play system too. The healing others mechanic is getting some attention. We’re adding medkits, and the ability to target specific limbs, so you can fix a friend’s injured leg and get out of trouble when your about to be overrun. Much of the party ui is being finished this week too. We’re adding a blocking feature to safeguard you from annoying players, and a way to remove players from your friends list in case you decide they no longer have the kind of qualities you look for in a survival buddy.

The first round of weapon attachments are in, and we fixed all the bugs we ran into with oversized scopes and suppressors. Weapons now have a limited set of specific attachments for their type, bad news for fans of bipod compound bows and laser sighted machetes. The next round of weapon attachments including extended mags, and stability grips, are being worked on now. The group is finishing up the last few bugs in our loot drop scenarios, but need to test them in the game to make sure they are fully functional. We talked a bit about loot distribution across the map, and adjusting loot and looting times based on container size.

Monster AI moved a few steps forward. We continue to work on the first iteration of wave/group combat, so the horrors of the jungle don’t bunch up, or queue in a doorway when the whole group attacks at the same time. We added better senses to our monsters this week, so they can not only attack on sight, but zero in on anyone stomping through the underbrush too. We talked about adjusting senses up and down to make theoretical cave dwellers with limited sight, but phenomenal hearing and sense of smell, as well as other combinations.

We’re almost done moving everyone over to Git, and discussed at length the pros and cons of moving over to UE 4.20. We’re fixing some issues that leave players in limbo when spawning in, and the Veil News Network (VNN) drone is getting some final touches to make it fully functional. Nelson is working on a few HUD tweaks to improve look and functionality.

Lastly, we’re adding a few new animations, and making some icon improvements to better highlight equipped items. The art team is working on completing a final Wash Bench design, so players can fix clothing, and change the color/look of certain items. Last sprint’s audio work is wrapping up, with weapon updates and some new character audio being added. We’re giving our monsters a voice too, so we can finally ask the age old question, “if a trophy hunter screams in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

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

DEV

Filling In the Map

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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