mutants Archives - Fractured Veil

I Don’t Want My Son Spending Valentine’s Day On Your Ship!

When Maleko told me that he wanted to enroll in your Love and Literacy program, I thought it was odd but that it couldn’t hurt. I was obviously wrong. I had no idea the kind of nonsense that you would be filling his head with. It seems like you people need a reality check. The world has order and rules again, it has to in order to make everything work. Love is fine but it doesn’t protect you on the road and it doesn’t make the water drinkable. Love doesn’t conquer all!

I knew something was different after his first week of classes. Maleko has always been a sullen boy, and I noticed a certain sparkle in his eye that had been previously reserved for lava sledding. My suspicions were confirmed we he started talking about a girl in his class called Nui. It was nothing but Nui this and Nui that around here. He told me that her parents grew breadfruit, and that she was a great story teller. I should have known something was wrong by the way he acted when I suggested that she come up to Pu’u for a visit. I missed it, but I blame you for creating an environment that fosters such nonsense.

His father and I laughed about his puppy love, and joked about how many marriages must come from your school. Reading nothing but romance novels on an old cruise ship filled with teenagers and young adults…it’s just like the people in that old movie, you’re just missing the iceberg. When he started insisting on ironing his clothes I knew things were getting serious. He had been spending so much time at your school and with Nui that we thought we’d surprise him by showing up to his morning class. We were the ones who got a surprise.

I didn’t really understand what I was seeing at first. There was my darling boy sitting on someone’s lap like a ventriloquist dummy. We walked around to face him and get a better look at who this person was and why he was sitting like that. When I realized that it was a hulking Kānaka girl my jaw dropped. It suddenly all made sense to me, but I didn’t want to believe it. This was Nui.

We all stared in silence for a few seconds before Maleko kicked his legs and yelled, “Put me down!” They both began to ramble and explain, but I couldn’t hear them right away. Nui was at least 2 feet taller than him and probably double his weight. All I could imagine was where we’d get a dress to fit, how the wedding pictures would look, and what his grandmother would say.

When I could comprehend words again, Maleko was in the middle of explaining that Nui’s parents weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of him either, but they understood that the heart wants what it wants. The “teacher” said something about how the power of love can overcome all obstacles and how inspirational their story was. I can’t believe you teach such rubbish!

It didn’t get any better. My innocent son informed me that the two were already engaged and that they were planning on having a Kānaka binding ceremony, whatever that is, on Valentine’s Day! Worse still, the school was sponsoring the event and letting them both stay overnight on the ship for their honeymoon.

Who do you people think you are? Nobody informed me of anything, and I’m the mother of one of these misguided kids. Your staff has been anything but helpful up to this point and my husband seems resigned to the idea that we’ll soon have a new daughter-in-law. But I don’t see how this comes out happy in the end. That’s all I want. I’m sure they think they’re in love, but is love really enough to make it through this world? Please, don’t let my son spend Valentine’s Day on your ship!

Iolana Mahelona

February 12, 2086

Unprecedented start to hurricane season has many worried

2047 is turning out to be the worst hurricane season in recorded history, and that has many Maui residents concerned and looking for answers. Less than two months into the season and the island has already weathered 2 tropical storms and a full fledged hurricane. The extraordinary string of bad weather has many worried that Veilcorp activity is to blame, while other islanders have slightly more spiritual concerns about the storms.

Tropical storm Iopa hit the islands hard on May 7th this year, a full month before hurricane season officially begins, but that was just the beginning. Hurricane Kika followed soon after with tropical storm Lana cresting land a few weeks ago. While the storms caused relatively little damage to populated areas, the frequency of activity this year has many worried. Now, with tropical depression Maka looming and Neki following and gaining strength quickly, residents are looking for answers and some relief.

The last time a category 4 hurricane hit Hawaii was back in 1992. On September 11 hurricane Iniki passed directly over the island of Kauai. By the time it had passed, the storm had killed 6, destroyed 1,400 homes and caused more than $1 billion in damage. None of the storms this year have matched that intensity so far, but meteorologists say that Neki is following a similar path and is growing rapidly.

Many believe that an infamous Veilcorp program is to blame for the increase is storms. Since it started solar production of 127 (unbiseptium) in 2046, the Icarus project has been a lightning rod for Veilcorp opponents. Many claim that the change in weather patterns can be directly tied to the notorious project.

Critics say that worldwide exposure to 127 has increased drastically since the project began and that it is too soon for any study to make a definitive finding one way or the other about its safety. They point to a marked increase in major storms and changing weather patterns worldwide since Icarus began as proof that the issue needs more attention. Locally, many are concerned that the increase in 127 is having an impact on native flora and fauna. Calls for an investigation by the Department of Land and Natural Resources have gone unanswered so far, but activists remain vocal.

The corporation says that concerns are unfounded and that there is no proof that the project has any effect on the weather, sea, or animals. They point out that Veil technology has relied on 127 since its inception over 20-years-ago, and that there is no evidence of any long-lasting negative effects.

Still others on the island worry that Veilcorp activity has caused a cosmic crisis and that the unusual weather patterns are a symptom of a spiritual sickness. One such believer is Sebastian Malu. A Barraloha instructor at the Kokua Wellness Center in Lahaina and the founder of the Eternal Cycle Church, Malu says that Veilcorp should have consulted an astrologer before beginning the Icarus project.

He says,

“It’s insane to me that nobody at Veilcorp realized that harvesting energy from the center of our solar system in a year in which Mercury was occulated by the sun and Saturn was experiencing its summer solstice was a bad idea. Add to that the fact that there were 2 partial lunar eclipses in 2046, followed by 2 total eclipses this year and it’s a recipe for disaster. Just look at how bad the storms have been so far and we’re just getting started. The hurricane season lasts another 4 months. I know it’s popular to dismiss the wisdom of the ancients but they were given a blueprint for life and had a rich understanding of the great cycles that we have all but lost. The Melchizedek pattern and the Great Wesak cycle came together in April and May last year. It should have been a time of discernment and higher vibrations, instead Veilcorp ramped up their parasitic activity and muddied the cosmic water for all of us. I’ve been warning all my students and parishioners that our mother and the universe will have to make adjustments in order to return to balance. I believe the storms we’ve seen so far are part of that process. It’s not a coincidence that Neki is on its way just in time for the lunar eclipse on July 7th. It’s going to take a powerful storm to wash away the stain Veilcorp has left, and I’m afraid that’s exactly what’s coming.”

Whether it’s just an unusual natural cycle, a product of Veilcorp experiments, or a cosmic cry for help, the storm season this year is already one for the record books. Many residents are already preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. Officials are tracking the storms closely and say they could reach land in a matter of days.

June 30, 2047

Player Fixes and Props

A big mahalo to all of our awesome testers for helping us make Fractured Veil better! Here’s a list of everything they suggested during last week’s play session that we’ve fixed or improved.

Zaccsi – No collision on fishing huts.
Aazlor and Zaccsi – Floating grass.
Chests take too long loading inventory.
Steelcrusher – Thorcon door sounds are too loud. Water is too scarce.
Elliot – Fixed bug with drone not being able to see construction buildings.
EspAion – Un/Equipping Ballistic helmet causes game to crash.

If you want to learn more about Fractured Veil head over to our Discord server.

This week the team spent a good amount of time adding props, resources, and buildings to the world. We adjusted the size of water barrels and added more of them to ensure that players aren’t completely reliant on rivers and streams for their hydration. We’ve implemented sign diorama spawning along roads, added lights and traffic lights to some areas, added props to various rooms in the Thorcon and Radio Tower, and placed the Veil Station on the map.

Last week we showed off some shots of our Lahaina cleaning crew, the cannibals. We thought it was only fair to focus on another one of our mutant family this week, so we picked the Trophy Collectors. These guys love throwing diseased body parts, collecting heads, and lurking in ruins. He’s a few shots of them hanging out in their favorite places.

May 22, 2020

Posters, Rivers, and Trick Shots

A new sprint started this week and for the next 30 days we’ll be focusing on updating the map, creating bots for testing, AI sieging, and fixing persistence. We also plan on adding some polish to the player construction system, updating older features, and of course plugging away at the bug list.

We tackled a few bugs already. We fixed an issue where players couldn’t hit weak points if they were standing too close and some issues with our procedural river system flagging shoreline as a river. We added audio for crafting/recycling failures so players will know if their shop projects are getting a failing grade and a flashing alert when stats get to 10% or less. The team added posters and pictures to houses as well to give them a more authentic lived-in feel. All the images so far come from individuals on the team. To be honest, some of them could stand toe-to-toe with anything you’d find on Awkward Family Photos but they do make the ruins more realistic.

Speaking of embarrassing moments we discovered a few more issues with the way the mutants were acting in combat. We found a bug where any AI who started to throw a projectile would throw it backwards if their target quickly ran behind them and we found that Big Bob would sometimes run in place. We’re all fans of trick shots and getting healthier but Bob has to stay big, it’s in his name, so we fixed the issues.

Lastly, we added navigating controls to the drone a while ago to help film trailers and video. Let’s just say flying the eyes in the sky around Lahaina isn’t as easy as you think. Below you can see what the drone can capture with a rookie at the controls.

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December 13, 2019

Creating a Pack Mentality

The team has been focused on AI improvements and has made quite a few this week. We want the animals in Fractured Veil to act as naturally as possible, and our mutants as smart as they are ugly. We started the improvements with animals.

Deer now make use of our dynamic AI grouping system. When a player spooks a buck it will start running and others nearby will join it; We also increased the time they will flee to make them harder to hunt. Our wolves got a few new skills as well. We added a howl mechanic that allows them to alert others nearby to food or danger and form a pack. We’ve added a “scent” feature to players that allow the wolves (and a few other nasty things down the road) to track you down like an angry parent when you’ve missed curfew. Finally, we adjusted their combat tactics a bit by employing “hit and run” attacks and having them charge at different angles instead of just sitting in front of a player, making them much harder to target and hit. All in all, a big wolf pack is one of the most dangerous things on the island now.

We are incorporating some of this grouping work into our mutants as well. It’s never been more important to properly dispose of your kills by burning them or risk creating a cannibal horde looking for fresh meat. We’ve beefed up Big Bob making him a big problem for a group, and virtually impossible to take out single-handedly. The Trophy Collectors just got deadlier too. We’ve adjusted the poison damage their fetid projectiles do, and made it easier for players to get poisoned when hit or standing in the noxious cloud left by their rotting ranged weapons.

As work on improving our road tool continues, we started to build a similar system for rivers, streams, and creeks. While the team still has some kinks to work out, we hope to have a system for procedurally generating waterways on the map soon. Below you can see one of our most complete roads going through the remains of a neighborhood, and a stream cutting through the jungle.

Don’t forget to check out our new Daily Update Twitter feed if you enjoy staying on top of our development process. We post updates and bug fixes there daily so you can stay on top of our progress

June 19, 2019

The Cannibals Are Coming

This week the team made some improvements to our cannibal mutants. An important part of the ecosystem, the cannibals help keep the landscape clean of player bodies. Without their bone crunching work, the beautiful wilds of Lahaina would soon be filled with piles of ganked characters after a few bloody play sessions. You’ll have to make sure to burn any corpses now to avoid attracting the islands cleaning crew. Remember, they’ll eat both the quick, and the dead.

We nabbed a number of bugs as well. Weapon tracers will now move properly instead of hovering in place like the world’s deadliest fireflies. We fixed an issue with the drone crashing when changing targets, a problem with them trying to focus on a target while they were too far away, and a nasty bug that would delete an item from your inventory when you double clicked on it. The most interesting bug of the week however has to go to a bit of audio trouble we had with trees. When a tree was felled, the sound of it falling would play continuously. While it did answer some age-old questions, we decided to fix it before the whole map became a cacophony of falling timber.

We’re starting to fill in downtown Lahaina and working on stuffing those areas with enough rubble and ruins to properly represent how densely packed it is in real life. We’re also making improvements to our procedurally generated buildings. We’ve set up the homes that survived The Fracture with dressers, fridges, cupboards, and other things that make a ruined house, a ruined home. We’ve hidden loot in the nooks and crannies, and increased the amount of items that can be spawned in each building, making it worthwhile to go scrounging inside.

Finally, the team has continued to work on making the comm tower one of the most desirable properties after the apocalypse. With a strong support structure and ample windows, this spacious building is sure to be a favorite for everyone seeking a little shelter. As promised last week, we’ve staged the upper levels to make it a players paradise. Complete with crate and pallet tables, extremely distressed furnishings, and plenty of natural light, you can see just how inviting the zipline hub is looking in the shots below.

May 16, 2019

Building a Better Bob and Handing Out Beta Keys

The team is in the middle of a huge audio and lighting pass. We’ve made some improvements to torch and campfire lighting and we’ve added slightly darker borders around crosshairs to help players see better when aiming at bright objects. We’re working on directional sound improvements so players can figure out where bullets are coming from, and combat sounds are muffled if you’ve taken cover inside a building. We’re adding ambient noises to a number of areas like: buildings, the beach, and noises that differentiate deep jungle from scrub land. We’ve also upgraded: bullet impact, footsteps, jumping, and tree falling sounds to round out the noises of the week. Things have never sounded better.

We spent some time improving our favorite cannibal overlord and all-round bad guy Big Bob Abrmo. The Maui meat mogul turned ravenous mutant got a boost to his projectile throw rate and an increase in the speed of the things he throws. He may be no Nolan Ryan, but Big Bob is bringing some heat now, and will make an even better combat closer than before. It wasn’t just Bob’s arms that went through a revamp however, we also upgraded his gouty legs. We fixed his occasional stutter step issues, and his tendency to find a spot he liked and stick to it instead of wandering around looking for food like he should. We also increased his charging speed. Don’t let his size or cane fool you, in a straight line Bob is more than able to catch most things when he’s excited.

We made some improvements to Bob’s supporting cast this week as well. We’ve increased the speed of body parts that Trophy Collectors throw at players, and we’ve made it easier for mutants to move through their own kind instead of getting bunched up Three Stooges style when taking action. The team tracked down and fixed a bug where a mutant’s line of sight could be blocked by items such as arrows. This made for a fun bug that would make mutant navigation erratic if they had enough arrows stuck in them at one time. It was fun to watch, but unfair to the poor mutants running into trees.

Speaking of fun, we are in the middle of our next contest. Five winners will be drawn, with the top two winners receiving a brand new XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB and a Beta Key to Fractured Veil. Third, fourth and fifth prize winners will receive a Beta key for Fractured Veil (not that Beta has started yet). There are multiple ways to enter, but only 3 days left before we pick winners, so enter now.

April 18, 2019

Character Customization and Thudding Clubs

The team is finishing up our big optimization and performance push, and moving into character customization work this week. Our first step was to introduce a female player model to the game. Right now it works just like it does in nature. You randomly spawn in as male or female, and in the future we will allow for more personal touches to your character. While we still need to make a few adjustments to the woman model, she works fine for testing purposes. We’ll be spending some time working through all the combinations of weapons and gear with both models to make sure that they work on the post-apocalyptic red carpet, and don’t break the game somehow.

We made some more drone improvements too. We learned that the flying camera’s attention span left a lot to be desired, and they would often stop filming characters or battles if they noticed a squirrel running around nearby. We’re making sure they understand that players are more important than small rodents, and we’ve removed their spotlights when they’re flying around during the day.

We’ve made a few changes to the game’s co-stars this week as well. Players will find an increased number of wolves running across the landscape, hunting down anything too slow to escape the pack. We also discovered a bug with some of our mutants not moving unless they were aggroed. This led to situations where the terrors of jungle would stack up inside each other like twisted Maui nesting dolls. While this might make for a memorable encounter, we want the horrors to respect their personal space.

Finally, our audio work continues this week with updated soundbanks and improvements to: weak points, things breaking, weapons, ambient noise, buildings, and directional sounds. The underground spawning area now sounds as dark and dank as it looks, and melee weapons like the ones below will clang off metal objects, thud off of wood, and smack against your enemies.

April 5, 2019

Contests and Camera Drones

The team finished up a lot of drone work, and made a bunch of improvements to the autonomous cameras that record the game action high above Lahaina. We’ve added improved decision logic to help them decide what’s worth following and what isn’t. We added a time limit to how long a drone can be in non-playable area before it heads back to find something worth recording. In the past, they would occasionally end up trapped inside a building or teleporting underground, but we’ve improved their stuck detection and teleportation logic, so hopefully there will be no more “subterranean exploration mode”. In addition the team added: Improved panning, lighting support, a new spotlight mesh to make them easier to spot by players, basic search patterns, sub. object focus when viewing multiple targets, and the spotlight can now move separately from the camera.

With the drones working better than ever, we took to imgur to talk about the game’s co-stars that share the spotlight with players, the animals and mutants. We made a lot of progress on AI last year to make the game’s enemies challenging and unique. We’ve added pack behavior to our wolves. If 2 or more happen to meet up they will form a pack and start hunting together. If a wolf finds prey or is aggroed it will howl for help, attracting all those around it. Our cannibals can smell blood from a fresh kill and will come to investigate, so players will have to clean up after themselves if they go on a rampage in the jungle. Below you can see some early concept art of one of our cannibals.

You’ll need more than your fists and wits to survive the dangerous wilds of Lahaina. While there are many different weapons in the game, players can always count on having one weapon/resource gathering tool in their inventory, a shark toothed pan. A tongue-in-cheek homage to the numerous shark toothed (leiomano) weapons in the game, the pan isn’t the best weapon, but it will do the job in a pinch, and is easy to clean with some coarse salt and elbow grease. Here’s a good look at what the pan looks like before being used in the field.

Finally, were giving away another XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. There are multiple ways to enter, including joining the Fractured Veil discord server and reserving your player name. It’s the perfect thing for viewing the deadly beautiful wilds of Lahaina. Our previous winner sent us some pictures of his prize installed in his system and ready to go. The contest ends February 13th just in time for Valentines day.

January 15, 2019

Building a Mutant Chain of Command

This week marked the end of the old sprint and the beginning of the new. The teams pushed to finish up some last minute details, and start on their new goals. One of the most important tasks recently has been creating a new commander type AI for bosses as well as unique NPC’s in the game, and we made a lot of progress.

Our new commander AI will allow groups of creatures to join forces and share: AI knowledge, decisions, and pathing. It will allow the commander to make tactical decisions for the group, and seek appropriate cover as a group if it turns out their target isn’t quite the easy kill they thought it was. Also, commander AI can add more followers to their group in case the ranks are getting a bit thin or they encounter some like minded horrors in the jungle. Our goal is to make our hulking brutes a bit smarter than the rest, and add a touch of dread to recruitment day in Lahaina.

While the tech team was busy making it easier for the mutants to organize and kill players, the web team was making it easier for players to navigate the website. They have had their heads down for weeks making user flow improvements, and working on messaging issues. In the coming days you’ll notice some tweaks to: the front page, how you login, the player dashboard, and a newly styled referrer page.

We’ve restyled a number of our social media pages too, and now have separate email templates for dev updates, special announcements, and story updates. In addition Jesse has slide templates for callouts and contests. Speaking of which, there’s just a few days left for you to win a brand new AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. There are multiple ways to enter, but not many days left before the December 15 cutoff date.

While Terry has been swamped with a flood of merge issues, editor problems, and failed commits, we finished up a few drone improvements just in time for the end of sprint 29. While the camera and pathing improvements are noticeable right away, one of the things we are most proud of is the AI improvements we’ve added. We still have a long way to go before the game’s autonomous drones are the voyeuristic cinematographers we have in mind, but they are getting there. Right now they can surreptitiously film wildlife and creatures in their habitat so well, that you expect to hear an Attenborough voice-over to start discussing the life cycle of the typical Maui mutant, and how their secret handshake differs slightly in various regions.

With much of the previous sprint’s work done, we looked forward to our goals for the next. Sprint 30 will focus on finishing up some more drone improvements, adding some polish to the commander AI, and advancing gameplay through improved harvesting & crafting. We’re introducing new types of ore and resources, as well as smelters, but more on that in the weeks to come.

Finally, with all the focus we’ve placed on animals recently, some of the team decided to add their own personal touches to a few animal screenshots. Below you can see some of our favorite treatments to one of our favorite scenes of the life and death struggle in the forests of Lahaina, enjoy!

December 12, 2018

Tag: mutants