map Archives - Page 4 of 6

Mapping the Lay of the Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 19, 2018

Loot Drops and Weapon Shops

We started off Sprint 24 by discussing our third loot drop scenario in the game. The first involves players scrambling to a designated area after a flare goes off, to grab a crate of goodies before anyone else. The second finds a group holding a building or area against multiple waves of attackers for a set period of time. When the timer runs out, the group is rewarded with a hidden cache of weapons, survival items, and food. Our latest opportunity for players to grab a pile of loot, involves safeguarding an item’s transport from one location to another, while encountering a number of obstacles. Once the item makes the journey safe and sound, in the allotted time, the players will be awarded a prize. We briefly discussed adding some non-traditional impediments to the journey, like poorly written directions, or children who demand to stop to use the bathroom every five minutes, but decided to stick with the usual group of bloodthirsty creatures and bandits in the end.

Our AI works continues in three specific areas: waves of combatants in loot drops, birds, and monsters. Not only are we making our monsters smarter, but we’re making them work better in a group. Currently, our creatures don’t have much of a game plan other than ripping your face off. That’s a pretty simple plan, which is usually best, but our goal is to have monsters with a little more method to their madness. We want our mutants to work well together, and at least cover all the entrances to a building that they know players are hiding in.

Progress on party mechanics continues, and we talked about some things we’d like to include down the road. We added some new items to help heal injured players, and worked on the player healing player system as well. Soon you won’t have to leave slow, injured team members behind unless they’re really annoying. Speaking of friends, we’re updating the Friends system ingame to make it easier to find your buddies while running around Lahaina.

The team did some crafting work as well. We moved forward with a design for a wash bench, and are refining the icons for items being repaired, rebuilt, or recycled. We talked through the best way to split and stack items in your inventory, and did some work on weapon attachments. The HUD got a few tweaks and updates, and we talked through some additional things we’d like to add in the future.

We discussed plans for a new armory, Lahaina’s premiere place for everything sharp and shooty. We talked through what the place should look like, and where it would be located on the map. The team started a performance pass on the Veil Station, improving lighting, textures, and material changes inside. Terry set up some mirrors and is working on source control changes, while the art team makes audio improvements to various parts of the map, ensuring that the post-fracture world sounds as good as it looks.

Lastly, improvements to the environment and weather continue as we build out the map. We’re making overall performance improvements to the wilds, adjusting lighting (especially at night), fixing the fog, and making changes to the rain. Below you can see just how good the beach looks, while taking your morning stroll with your favorite machete or shark-toothed weapon.

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

June 13, 2018

Updating Sights and Sounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 22, 2018

Performance Improvements and Cloudy Days

To finish out the week, the web team is completing performance improvements on the web page. Jared has made some caching improvements, images have been optimized across the page, and we’ve made some changes to the Story Timeline view, in order to make it quicker to scroll through. We talked some more about a secure player to player trading system, and what things we need to avoid when creating such a mechanic. We also briefly discussed new merchandise options, and what things we’d like to see available on the Shop page in the near future.

The team made some melee weapon and crafting updates as well. We looked at some options for destruction effects for trees being chopped down for wood, and rocks splitting apart for metal and minerals. Soon players will see a tiny explosion of rock when their pickaxe work bears fruit. We added a few more weapon animations and improvements, so spears look great when you throw them, or thrust them into the horrors of the jungle up close. Chris did run into an interesting bug however, when his hands started to produce a blurry aura, like they were about to go into stealth mode, but got stuck midway through their transformation. We’re addressing the issue, and will get a fix in soon. Here’s a screenshot of his sneaky hands on the bottom right.

Our AI work continues to make creatures fight and act more tactically, and we’re wrapping up ui improvements to the Settings page. The team is still working on ui for leveling up your character, and a way to claim buildings for one of our loot scenarios, as well as some other potential applications down the road. We had a longer discussion about ways other games handle currency: weight, where it is kept (taking up an inventory slot or not), how much you lose upon death, if any, and how much other players should be able to loot from your lifeless corpse.

The art team showed off a number of concepts for specific areas on the map. We talked about how to best use existing structures, and the landscape to funnel players to and from different areas, and where we need to add a clearly visible path. We discussed natural and manmade structures that would have survived the fracture, and would make good “hero” areas, where players could either get supplies and quests, or rampage through and explore. We discussed different options for work/wash/crafting benches and we talked about whether we want to go with a futuristic looking design or something a little more jury rigged.

The team is working on map, grass, and foliage improvements across a wide range of Lahaina, and we’re making some lighting improvements in those areas too. Our large buildings: The Communications Tower, Municipal Veilstation, and Thorcon Power Plant, are all getting some attention. We’re working on some performance improvements there in order to make them better able to handle large groups, without making your GPU fan spin like a top. Lastly, while the weather in West Maui is mostly beautiful, it has been known to get a few cloudy days and some rain. We haven’t been satisfied with the way things look on a cloudy day, so we’re working on a few things to make the game look beautiful, even when the sky is grey. Below you can see a screenshot of the beginning of that silver lining work.

We’ll have more updates next week.

May 17, 2018

Hunting Bugs and Bouncing Clubs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 15, 2018

Drone Improvements and Getting Parties Started

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 10, 2018

All Over The Maps

To finish off the week, the web team is working on a few performance issues, and cleaning up a few bugs that have popped up. They’re focusing on image optimization across the page. House and merchandise images are all being resized, and Jesse is addressing a couple minor layout issues. In addition, work on a company Paddle Creek Games page has begun.

Jesse and Jared are making progress on a game map for the web page too. Jesse showed off a height map that he’s been working on, and we talked about ways to line it up with the ingame map. This map can be synced with game weather, and time of day. We have to place a few key places, and buildings yet, but we’re making good progress.

The art team was busy adding and updating a number of animations. Bows look good whether you’re standing tall, or crouching in the bushes now, and you can now longer bend your back like a contortionist to shoot arrows if you’re prone. We added new pickaxe animations to make harvesting minerals look more realistic, and make even the most cantankerous mining enthusiast happy. Our materials switch continues as well, with more furniture and fixtures getting a facelift. Below you can see before and after shots of an engraved table.

Progress has continued on our underground respawn area. Meant to be a safe sewer sanctuary from the terrors of post-fracture Lahaina, the one room area has grown into a sprawling three room compound to relax and regroup. We don’t want to throw players right back into the same situation that killed them in the first place, so the respawn area is the perfect place to collect your wits or rally the troops. We also looked at a few different concepts for roadside areas perfect for ambushes, and emergency caches.

The team talked about the interactive “machines” we’re adding in the game: fireplaces, work benches, and washing machines. We talked about how these would work to craft or repair items. Buffs and debuffs to items, (specifically weapons), were discussed, and we talked briefly about how much different types of repairs would cost. This led to a conversation about the game economy in general, and ways to avoid out-of-control inflation, and crashing the market. Should the washing machines be full on oxy-clean dispensing, blood from cloth removal machines? Good question. Or not. Maybe that’s a bad question.

A bunch of ui work was done this week too. We took a deep dive into the live VNN camera overlay. We added some polish to the team ui, and discussed other features and bits of information that might be useful to people playing in a group. Inventory screens, and the HUD got a few fixes, and tweaks too.

Finally, it wasn’t just the web team working on maps this week, the art team is working on the ingame map as well. We talked about ways to make it a useful tool for players, and what other features, (like a special team map), we’d like to integrate down the road. We looked at a few design options, and how the map would work in the game. Below you can see one of our favorite designs so far.

May 3, 2018

Throwing Machetes and Holding Territory

This week the team is finishing up our first pass at a crafting system. We’ve fixed some issues we had with crafting timers running too long, or not resetting, so item production should flow in Lahaina once again. We’re adding a repair/wash feature so you’ll be able to fix chips in machetes, clean gummed up firing pins, and scrub the Shrig blood out of your cargo shorts, extending the life of all your gear. We talked about a design for a repair bench, and the possibility of having a group crafting system in the future.

We did some performance improvements to the player inventory, and started work on a tier 2 loot drop system. While our first loot drop scenario is a scramble to get to the gear first, this second option is about holding an area for a set period of time. A flare will go off letting players know what area needs to be defended. Creatures and players will attack the area until the timer goes off, and a loot chest or hidden cache will open for the successful defenders. We added a way for players to throw melee weapons to help them fend off invaders, and because throwing a shark-toothed koa axe at someone’s head is awesome.

San added new camera rotation algorithms, and a few other improvements to the VNN live feed on the front page. The drone coverage has never looked better, and gives a great view of many places of interest in the game. Jesse added some improvements to the animations on the video overlay, and we discussed adding a few more bits of information to what it already displays.

Lots of other animations were included to other parts of the game too. Various player movements including: going prone, a number of weapon actions like stringing a bow, and racking the slide of a gun, and new ladder animations were added this week. We discovered a great bug this weekend too. When you kill a rabbit in the game and try to harvest its meat or fur, it explodes and reforms again. While an endless supply of small exploding animals sounds like a good hook for some sort of rodent throwing warrior class, it’s not a feature that we want to keep in the game, and has no basis in Hawaiian history or culture.

The web team made some improvements to the Shop page. We optimized images for all products and packages, improving performance, and Jesse fixed a few lingering layout issues. We then turned our attention on making a 3D game map for players. We talked about different layers that we could add to show different types of information like House, and friend locations, as well as landmarks and key buildings.

Audio improvements continue throughout the game, and we’re doing some AI work to ensure that the horrors of the jungle aren’t just terrifying, but smart too. We’ve made several HUD updates to make things look and play better. In addition, we’ve updated the Settings ui so you can personalize the game to you liking. Finally, with the first iteration of our programmatic building system up and running we talked about what we’d like to improve next. As you can see below, buildings on the beach are looking great.

As always, we’ll have more updates and pictures later this week.

May 1, 2018

The Sound of Combat and Digging Into Designs

As the week comes to an end, the web team is busy adding final touches, and improvements to our real time Veil News Network (VNN) game camera. Jesse added an animated logo that fades in and out, as the camera takes a tour of points of interest across the island. We talked over a few improvements, like making the live stream indicator sticky, and future features as well. The drone camera is a great way to see what’s going on in the game, and gives a basic guide to the lay of the land.

Speaking of the lay of the land, we talked some more about creating a 3D game map. We are already using a topographical map of Lahaina as a base in the game, with a few minor changes to roads, and areas that have been reclaimed by the jungle. We talked about things we could do to make the map work without burning up your GPU, and what things would be important to highlight, (main trails, large buildings, and possibly bases down the road).

We did a lot of audio work this week too. We’re working through some issues we’re having with Wwise, but have made good progress. Every area, and large building will soon have its own specific ambient noise to add authenticity to the wilderness, and the right tone to exploring the creepy abandoned structures. In addition to these general noises, we’re adding specific audio components to a number of things like: gun reloads, arrows being knocked, footsteps, and other various weapon noises. We want players to be able to feel the joy that can only come from hearing ammunition being loaded into a magazine, and the wet thud of a club smashing heads in combat.

Jesse continued his work adding more Hawaiian touches on our logos, and other game elements. We took a deep dive into the traditional symbols and art of the islands, particularly on the history of tattoos for inspiration. Traditionally, body art consisted of geometric designs like squares, triangles, and crescents with an occasional figure. One of the most prominent symbols are shark teeth, called niho mano. Each island has their own style of niho mano, so you can tell where someone is from, or where they got their tattoo, just but looking at the style of shark teeth inked into them. Using that as a guide, Jesse is working on a stylized logo that incorporates Maui specific symbols.

The art team continues their materials improvements too. We’ve converted over most of the old home furnishings like chairs and tables, and are now focusing on things found outside the home like signs, fire hydrants, and sporting equipment. All of our totems will be getting a facelift too. We’re also making a final pass at images for basic components from recycling. Elements like phosphorus and potassium, as well as wood, minerals, and metals will all get some attention. We’re fixing some minor issues we’ve run into with a couple different gun sights, and have finished the first phase of our programmatic building system. Not only does the system give us a big performance boost, but it allows us to make custom buildings quickly and easily, whether they are a one room shanty, or something much larger. As you can see in the shot below, the beach shack has never looked better.

We’ll have more updates and pictures for you next week

April 27, 2018

Lights, Cameras, and Filming the Action

This is the last full week of sprint 21, and much of the team’s work is focused on rooting out bugs, and adding some finishing touches to what we’ve been working on. One of the biggest goals this sprint was to get a team system up and running for group play. All of the backend work is done, and we’re just working on the ui now. Voip and team member map markers are ready to go. We’ve added the ability to teleport to a character using their name, and an ability to revive a downed team member so nobody has to be left behind when your situation turns dire.

We’ve added a few new recipes to the crafting list and some new gun parts. Just about everything you can find is craftable now. We fixed some of the harvesting bugs involving large trees and rocks holding onto their wood and minerals, and revised the weights of some harvestable items. Players no longer have to worry about breaking their backs if they’re carrying more than three feet of twine.

The web team continued working on the Veil News Network (VNN) news feed, videos, and live streams. We ran into a bug that was freezing the live stream in some cases, and Jared is digging into it. Jesse continues working on the video layout and frame. We continued our discussions about where to display the video feed, and expanding an area on the website for VNN news. The team is putting together some cinemagraphs to fill in spots between videos, and some stingers to play between stories to make the service seem more real. “You won’t believe what common, everyday object is killing players along Front Street!”

To shoot the news you need, San has been busy working on robot camera drone automation, and hopes to have the command plumbing done in a few days. In the near future, we’ll have some rough camera controls to set position, queue up splines, set paths, adjust views, and other useful commands. It won’t be long before the VNN drones are capturing all the latest action live in Lahaina.

Terry finished the trueSky rebuild so many of our strange weather issues will hopefully be resolved. He did a lot of server maintenance, and is fixing some automerge issues too. Our animal AI is fixed, so all of mother nature’s creatures should act naturally now. We’ve had some issues with animals charging straight into the sea when they detect movement, and some of the predators rolling over like they’re asking for a belly rub before trying to maul you. We’re working on making the monsters smarter currently too.

Lastly, we’re adding a bunch of audio support across all areas of the map, finishing up some performance improvements, and working on some lighting upgrades. As you can see from the shots below, things are looking great morning, noon, and night.

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

April 3, 2018

Tag: map