newsfeed Archives - Fractured Veil

Item Quality and Creating a Channel Lineup

The web team continued their work on the Veil News Network (VNN) this week. The service designed to provide players almost-real time updates of in-game announcements and events, is coming along nicely. We’ve made a VNN section on the home page to provide more in-depth coverage of the stories scrolling by on the newsticker, and host a number of videos. We’ve discussed a number of channel options for different video feeds, video length, and having a library of previously recorded material for use in promos, and when we’re experiencing “technical difficulty”.

Jesse is still working through some layout issues and a few bugs on the VNN page. The team is working on navigation controls on the video feeds, and improving animations on the bumper and stinger videos. We’ve created a weather bar to sit alongside the live videos as well. Now players will know the relative humidity while they’re being chased down the beach by one of the twisted horrors born from the fracture.

The web team worked on more than creating a news network this week too. Jared focused on getting a promo/coupon code system working for game packages and merchandise. The layout needs a little love yet, but the basic system is working well. We’re working on a way to incorporate the referral system with promos, as well as some CSS, 3D, and pagination work on the page too.

The team is also currently hard at work making game items a little bit worse with every use. The days of running ammunition through your Haikili rifle until the barrel turns a nice cherry red with no impact on its durability are over. We’re incorporating the item deterioration system in every usable item, including clothing and armor. We recommend using the delicate cycle if you plan on getting stabbed or shot a lot.

We looked at concept art of a few new areas of the map, and discussed incorporating the real-life geography and structures of Lahaina, as well as the story elements in the game. We talked about a number of interesting scenarios and places to explore, and how to best “spread the wealth” around to avoid bottlenecks and crowds.

Night and day work continues, along with a lot of environmental effects to add a bit more realism to the wildest of our wild places. With trueSky working well, and the lighting improvements, the forests and beaches of Lahaina are looking fantastic day and night. We’re continuing our performance work in our large buildings as well. The Thorcon Plant, the Veil Station, and the Communication Tower are all on the list. The Tower is up first and as you can see from the shots below, it’s getting a facelift along with the performance work. It’s never looked better and will be a joy to have a firefight in.

We’ll be back with more updates next week.

April 12, 2018

New Animations and News You Can Use

This week has seen a lot of UI work across many different areas. We’re finishing up some documentation, and adding the ability to drag and drop items in the inventory. The latest pass at a complete HUD update is finished, and a complete fullscreen UI update continues. We’ve added an alert whenever you drop an item, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally dropping your ammo like a newb, and we’ve reskinned the settings UI. We still need to add shadow/light scalability settings, but everything else is in place and ready to go.

Our ongoing work to increasing performance marches on. We’ve finished our map breakdown, and replaced almost all of the old buildings in the map with better performing structures using our programmatic building system. It’s a good idea to slow down, and carefully examine the ruins when you find yourself in the middle of an old neighborhood, but we want that to be a tactical decision, and not one made by an overworked GPU. The team is adding audio support in numerous areas to make things sound as good as they look. Terry has finished trueSKY integration and is still hammering away on Wwise.

The Web Team has the first pass at a Veil News Network (VNN) ticker up and running on the front page. Jared has it updating every 10 minutes currently. Jesse did some refactoring work, and is fixing an issue with icons not displaying properly. It’s using test data now, but soon players will be able to see major events, announcements, and news about the game in near real-time.

There are a few features we need to add yet and some bugs to work out. We plan on: adding filter and rollover options to adjust the scrolling speed, working on performance, hunting down a bug that causes the newsticker to stop when changing tabs, and working on readability. With the first pass done, we talked a bit about future features including video alerts, and the potential ramifications of an ingame crime reporting system. Until we work out some sort of island-wide witness protection program, reporting a crime could be dangerous to your health.

Lastly, we’re doing a little AI work this week. Some animals continue to charge into the ocean when you get near, and as we talked about before, sometimes the bears demand a good belly-rub before they attack. The underground respawn area is done for now as well. It offers a perfectly damp and dirty place for you to get your bearings, and pick up some useful basic equipment before you go charging back into the fray. We finished up some much needed animations too. Here are a couple shots of what it looks like when you go prone, and assess a situation with different versions of your Haikili rifle out.

That’s it for now. We’ll be back later this week with more updates and screenshots.

March 7, 2018

Newstickers, Grunge, and Greywater

As we near the end of the week, the web team continues their push to create our real-time, in-game news system the Veil News Network (VNN). We hope to make VNN an interactive tool for players to keep track of important events and happenings regarding their friends, Houses, and the world they’re playing in. Jesse demoed a first run at an active newsticker design, and it’s looking good. Jared is building filters so players will be able to see only news regarding Houses or Players, and we discussed other filtering options. I’m not sure we’ll get as specific as having a setting for animal only news, to keep you updated on all the latest raccoon gossip, but we’ll break it down with some useful granularity.

We discussed a few bugs that we found already, and we’ll be spending the next few days in squashing mode. We’re working on icons specific to certain types of stories passing through such as alerts, weather warnings, and breaking announcements. We decided we’d have a permanent “weather desk” section with the current weather conditions somewhere alongside the newsticker. Jesse is working on the design and layout now, and Jared is working on creating an rss feed for your convenience.

With so many components coming together, we had a discussion about the direction we’re going, possible future uses, and potential problems with the VNN service. We talked about the issue of keeping the news specific to different game worlds, how often the news should refresh, and creating a realistic news cycle in the game. The team went over some different options for classifying stories, and adding visual cues to certain types of stories on the front page.

In non-news related news, Jesse is doing another pass on the Manimal can design after the proofs came back a little distorted from the distributor. He’s also still working on finalizing a kula coin design (our premium currency). You’ll see both on the merch page soon.

The art team is focusing much of their time on adding a number of needed animations. We’re adding them for a number of harvesting tools, including the pickaxe so you’ll finally be able to live out your favorite murderous miner fantasy. The Nuuskin booths in the respawn area, and spawning itself will get some animation love, and so will shooting in a prone position. Right now when a character goes prone to steady their shot, they end up lifting the front part of their body off the ground, taking on what we’re calling the “Cobra Pose” when the bullets go flying. While it’s enough to make even the most die-hard back muscle enthusiast jealous, it looks a little weird, and seems hard on the hip flexors, so we’re going to fix it.

Finally, we’re adding some touches to the sewer respawn area. We plan on including a few more Hawaiian touches to brighten the room, and make your brief stay more comfortable. In addition, we thought the room in general could use a bit more grunge, and we dirtied the water, to make the experience a bit more authentic. The stream passing through the room is now the questionable grey we had always intended as you can see below.

March 1, 2018

Combat, Community, and Callouts

The web team focused on building out the Veil News Network (VNN) system over the weekend. Jared has the news API wired in, so we can sort through game data to eventually post real time updates about game events. We talked through some options for parsing the data efficiently with a number of tags and templates. Jared had a few rough examples of news alerts about player deaths with the player name, where they died, how they died, and their House affiliation. We discussed ways we could display the newsfeed on the front page, and ways we could personalize the service with alerts and notifications when something has happened to you, your friends, or your House.

Chris, as usual, tried to talk about sending out emails, like an old person. He was muted though and decided to push the discussion until next week. Do people Want emails about their house/friends/characters? Post in the forums if you have an opinion.

With the introduction of new weapons and body armor in the game, we’re running around shooting anything that moves, including each other, to work out any kinks. We found a few recently with the bow. We need to add some animations, because right now arrows just launch themselves like a semi-automatic gun with no string pulling when using the standard bow. We’re also disabling shooting a bow when a character is lying prone to keep things more realistic. We haven’t created a bow that can veil arrows into your enemies without pulling the string yet.

Work continues on the sewer respawn area. With new audio support and some texture and lighting work, the place is looking like the perfect spot for you to take a minute and reflect on what you did to put yourself in this situation, and come up with a better plan for staying alive in the future. Here’s a look at how it’s coming along.

Jesse has finished a new callout for Houses, and is working on the Community section overall. He’s doing some style work to make sure House requests and invitations stand out more and are properly differentiated. We’re making search fields more prominent, adding more information to your friends list, and adding a few more callouts to help expose features to players. Jesse will be updating Bootstrap and Font Awesome later this week.

Lastly, the Thorcon power plant, one of our largest buildings, is ready for exploration. The interior is a great place to run around or hide from your enemies, although we don’t recommend a lot of discriminant fire inside.

I’ll be back with more later this week.

February 13, 2018

Streaming Video and Spawning Loot

The team started the new year with a new sprint, some bug hunting, and a little ui work to existing systems. Jared is tracking down a few bugs in the upcoming timeline view for game stories on the blog. You’ll be able to read the numerous tales about the game world, and key individuals in chronological order very soon. We’re tracking down a unicode bug, and working on decreasing load times to make the page more responsive as well.

We’re adding a new package between “Princess Bernice” and “Makaha” for those of you who want to support the game, and get some cool stuff. Jesse is busy uploading images of all the merchandise and generating 3D images of everything in the store. We ran into a bug that is making images not render occasionally, and are chasing it down. We made a few changes to our all-over t-shirt design and are including our new Paddle Creek Games logo.

Our item spawning system is close to being completed. We’re just making sure all the new loot: skinning knife, axe, pickaxe, grenades, armor, clothing, and various ranged and melee weapons, are loaded and being dropped in the proper areas, at the proper rates. We’re adding some ui improvements to the inventory screen, and introducing some new alerts too. We talked about some new bits of walking audio coming down the pike, which will make it harder for bloodthirsty players, and the horrors of the forest to sneak up on you. In addition, we talked about tweaking some of the sunset colors a bit and increasing walking speed. It turns out Chris has some very specific ideas about slow walks on the beach.

The art team continues working on sectioning the map and adding detail to our large buildings. Despite needing some lighting work and a bit of grunging up, the shot below shows how well the inside of the Thorcon power plant is coming along.

We talked at length about our upcoming real-time game newsfeed feature, and discussed how we’d implement the service. Jesse showed off a few options for “Veil News Network” video overlays and some color options. The team discussed different streaming options and using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). Having put together a nice streaming system over the holidays, Chris has been on a video sharing mission. He’s put together a number of videos working out the kinks in his rig. The video below is from one of his lengthy staring at the water session, where he contemplates the perfect walk along the beach.

Click here to display content from YouTube.
Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy.

Always display content from YouTube

That’s it for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates and pictures.

January 4, 2018

Tag: newsfeed