respawn Archives - Page 2 of 2

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

Please Do Not Pet The Wildlife

The web team spent some time fixing bugs that popped up during the Community Page update, and adding a few little improvements. We’ve: added pagination to the Friends section and others, fixed some layout issues, worked out some problems with social media links not working properly, and did some form validation work. We should have all the kinks worked out and the improvements done by the weekend.

The art team was busy improving the look of our underground respawn area this week as well. Designed to give players a moment of respite after death, instead of being thrown back into the meat grinder while you load, the space is really coming together. In addition to a stream of questionable water, and soothing industrial lighting, the sewer hideaway got a major upgrade this week with a Nuuskin machine. We still have to include some animations for it, but soon players will be able to enjoy being put back together cell by cell before running back to their doom. There’s no doubt that it really ties the room together.

We continued work on the Veil News Network (VNN) system for the game. San’s news API got a few tweaks and is now returning a bunch of play data that is pretty funny to read through. Jared is hard at work constructing a news template library suitable for any event, announcement, and occasion, while Jesse works on a news ticker layout and ui. We plan on having the interactive news service offering personalized game news, and highlighting happenings across the island in real-time in the near future.

We did some work on merch and the merch store this week too. Jesse showed off some new t-shirts including an all-over Manimal design. Speaking of Manimal, we completed a can design so you’ll be able to “Slaughter Your Thirst” with the extreme taste of Manimal in real life soon. Jesse is finishing up a coin design, and we talked over a few other shirt, poster, and merch ideas too.

We took a look at the latest HUD overlay, and listened to a few options for player death sounds, ranging from a subtle electronic humming when your player dropped, to a deep booming when you crashed to your death. As our work chopping up the map, and replacing old buildings to increase performance nears its end, we had a long conversation about rebuilding it. We talked about specific building placement, what things were necessary, and which were more aspirational at this point in the game. With all the work we’ve put into building systems, modeling, and writing stories, it’s going to be a joy to create a post-fracture Lahaina that is exciting, beautiful, and most importantly, fun to play in.

Lastly, San discovered that we have a big bear problem. While he was running through the brush looking for team members to fill with arrows, he came across one of the resident bears. However, Instead of charging him and ripping off his face immediately, the bear took a moment to lay down, apparently asking for belly rubs. Not having his rubbing hand hot keyed, San was a bit too slow, and the bear got up and mauled him. Still, we’d like to keep the wildlife from begging for attention before they go into kill mode. Here’s a look at the lounging animal in question.

February 22, 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

Power Plants and Heads-Up Displays

The web team is wrapping up the week by chasing down a few remaining bugs, and adding the last touches to House customization. Jared is busy hunting down an issue that is hiding House info from non-logged in users, and Jesse is finishing some styling work. However, the House Settings page is ready. There are a number of color, image, and banner options available to make your House unique, and give it a cool look.

We’ve added some help text in a few areas that we thought could be a little more clear, and Jesse is improving some callouts. We plan on adding some new images to the front page, and changing some of the slides as well, to call attention to the work we’ve done on Houses. A front page facelift will be coming soon.

Refinements continue to the respawn area, and Thorcon power plant as well. We’re adding some new audio support to make sure that players can appreciate the soothingly sweet sounds of the sewer, and you can hear the vastness of the inside of the power plant. The Thorcon images below give you an idea of how nice the inside of the plant is looking.

We’re introducing a few new weapons, and body armor into the game as well. We found a few issues with arrows floating in air when they get stuck in trees, and arrows disappearing after being shot out of the compound bow, but both are easy fixes.

We pressed on with building the Veil News Network (VNN) – an ingame streaming news service that would alert players to important events, daily activity around Lahaina, and even personalized info and data. We played around a little with the News API San wrote, and came up with a few templates for news stories and events. We discussed ways we could parse the data, and other templates to cover specific stories, announcements, and events in a real-time manner. There’s a lot of work to do yet, but we’re off to a good start.

Speaking of a lot of work, the latest iteration of the HUD is finished. We need to do a little work on the aiming reticle and map yet, but it is looking great as you can see.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back next week with more screenshots and updates

February 8, 2018

News You Need and Subterranean Safe Spaces

The first full week of sprint 20 saw the web team finish up preliminary work on customizable House features. Players can now go to their House Settings page to: write their House charter, setup application instructions, load a House banner, pick their House colors, Integrate VOIP and streaming services, and assign a background image. We’re nabbed a few minor bugs as they arise, but players should be able to add some unique touches to their Houses now. Jesse is finishing a House callout page, and we discussed adding various email notifications, alerts, and overlay options during the next customization upgrade.

Houses aren’t the only things getting a makeover this week. We’re working on a complete HUD and fullscreen ui update as well. Our goal is to make a less cluttered view of Lahaina, with easy access to systems and equipment that a player needs to use often, or in an emergency. Things are looking great so far.

We talked at length about our in-game drone cameras, and setting up the Veil News Network (VNN) to keep players up-to-date about events in the game. Jared is hooking up our news API so that we’ll have real time data about player locations, kills, and actions in the game. We talked about a few different game tie-ins, real-time announcements, and integrating players and Houses. Our goal is to have a semi-interactive service that keeps track of everything going on in the game, and highlights the most important events, with some fun announcements thrown in. VNN, the news you need, the details you deserve.

The team is working out a few last kinks in the automated item spawning system so players will find more than disappointment in boxes, crates, and hidden spaces around the island. We’re continuing work on improving performance as well, by breaking down the map, replacing a few old structures, and updating the roofs of the programmatically built buildings around Lahaina. We’re working on adding some audio support to a few locations as well. Hopefully, it will be so clear, you won’t know if you’re listening to a nature documentary, or if a family of raccoons took up residence in your walls.

Finally, work continues on the sewer respawn zone. The subterranean safe space will give players who have just experienced a fatal assault a chance to reflect, and not be instantly hacked to pieces or shot while loading. As you can see from the shots below, it’s pretty nice as far as apocalyptic sewers go.

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

February 6, 2018

Better Houses and Power Plants

To finish out the week, the art team has been hard at work completing the new underground spawn area. Designed to allow players a safe place to respawn, away from itchy trigger fingers looking for loading characters, the place is coming along nicely. We’ve added a few shelves, tables, and a ladder leading up to the surface. If you added a guy skipping class while obsessively playing Mario Kart in the corner, it could be a picture of my first college apartment.

We found some issues with our shipping system this week. Shipping to certain areas was broken, and we ran into some eyebrow raising shipping estimates. Jared fixed the API so everything is now working as it should, and we’re adding tests to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. The web team is digging into a few other problems that popped up with the shopping cart as well.

Jesse and Jared are finishing up the last of the work on House banners. They look great, and most of the work is focused on editing tools, and making the customization process for Houses and banners as streamlined as possible. This led us to a discussion about making easy to understand, step-by-step tutorials to explain the more complex systems in the game. While everything is covered in the FAQ, there are a few things that could use an additional clear explanation.

Jesse worked on a green screen streaming overlay for the game. After watching a show from their office for a while, we discussed ways we could use it other than embarrassing Jared. We covered possible Veil News Network (VNN) uses, other possible marketing applications, and a number of Jared based spinoffs.

We discussed a few new weapons coming down the pike, firearms in particular. We want to have information about each weapon that matches as closely as possible with their real life capabilities. However, the reality is that many firearms have numbers that match very closely, particularly with guns of a similar style and function. We talked about the possibility of slightly tweaking some statistics to make a hierarchy of weapons in the game.

Lastly, after a lot of detail work the Thorcon plant is going into the game. Below you’ll find a couple of the latest shots of the interior. This place is huge and should be a blast to explore.

We’ll be back next week with more updates.

February 1, 2018

Safe Rooms and Personalized Houses

With sprint 19 coming to an end, we’re all pushing to finish up last minute work, add some polish to a few systems, and hunt down lingering bugs. Work on the player compass continues, and we’re doing another art pass to make it pretty. The team is finishing up some final work on the player HUD to get it ready to use before the end of the week. Everyone is working down the bug list so we can start the new sprint without any lingering problems.

Jesse and Jared continued their House customization project, and are checking things off the todo list. Jesse has added a number of lighting effects and various improvements to House banners to make them look more realistic. We’ve added a system that automatically changes text color depending on how bright a player makes his House colors, for better readability. The web team is trying to work out a nasty autofilling bug in the shopping cart too.

The latest body armor is almost ready to go. Charging into the middle of combat against overwhelming odds isn’t the smartest thing to do, but if it’s your thing, then you’re going to want to have some armor. We’re finishing up the newest talents as well. Players will soon have 12 special abilities/bonuses to choose from, letting them create characters who specialize is crafting, medicine, sneaking, and a wide range of other play styles and roles.

We have a player map almost ready to go as well. You should be able to work out a rough estimate as to where you are, and how to get to the next quest, or place to loot soon. The team plans on having a version up and running in a few days. We’ve added a number of new animations as well, including swimming, so characters won’t zoom through the waves standing up anymore.

We’re finishing up a few improvements to the crafting system and we’re giving some love to the inventory as well. The attachment system for items is done. If you’re a fan of tactical lights, bayonets, scopes, suppressors, and built-in bipods you’re in luck. The last of the kinks are being worked out of our item spawning system too. We’re nabbing a few last minute bugs, but soon the loot will flow like lava across the ruins and dangerous places of Lahaina.

There was a lot of PVP playtesting this past week as well. We ran around and filled each other with arrows, ran mountains of ammo through guns, and swung machetes through limbs from dawn to dusk. As expected, we found a number of issues to straighten out in order to make going on a murderous rampage as fun as we think it should be.

With all that killing going on, we focused on finishing up our new respawn area. Designed to allow players a moment of respite after being killed and while loading, the new underground respawn area is coming along nicely. In the shots below, you can see that it has everything you could want in a sewer/storm drain safe room, namely brick walls and a soothing stream of questionable water.

We’ll be back later this week with more updates.

January 31, 2018

Maps, Mockups, and Armor

To finish out the week the web team is hard at work smoothing out any remaining kinks in the upcoming story timeline view. We’re addressing a handful of layout issues, and Jared is still working on overall performance and speeding up load times on the site. They’re reworking the “view more posts” button so stories load in a more intuitive way. In addition, the team added some much needed admin tools so we can quickly edit stories and announcements now, as well as change some layout options, directly from the website.

We dug into our current map, and talked about some different design options, and discussed exactly what we wanted out of it in terms of utility. Jesse continued work on the HUD, and integrating the many components: compass, map, alerts, quick bar, and chat window, without making the view feel overly crowded. We added a marker on the quick bar to make it easier to see what item/s you currently have equipped, and we’re adding some more specific audio assets to buildings.

We did some diving into body armor options and discussed an overall look. Guns, spears, and weapons in general get a lot of attention because it’s fun to blast or slash things, but armor can keep you alive. We looked at some military designs as well as equipment used in extreme sports, and talked about what things would have been readily available in Lahaina after the fracture. We looked at a number of different back and spine protectors available on the market, and talked about how much they looked like space armor from sci-fi movies in the 80’s.

With most of the work done on the timeline, the web team will be focusing on player and House customization next. Jesse shared some wireframes showing off different options for a house banner and player customization system. Before we got too far into the project, we discussed how detailed and how many options we want available to players. We talked about having automated color scheme tools that would pick complementary color palettes for characters vs. leaving everything up to players. Either way, we want players to be able to designate roles inside their Houses by color, add some uniqueness to their profiles, and set up a red-shirt brigade of expendables if they wish.

We continued working on our respawn experience and the areas that players will find themselves in after they die. Chris rolled up his sleeves and dug into the Unreal tools to make a mock-up of what he was thinking for a storm drain/sewer system respawn area. With a few caveats about being a newb, and being unfamiliar with all the tools, he pieced together an admirable respawn mock-up. We talked about specific design needs, and whether or not we’d want these areas to be connected to the larger sewer system at some point down the road. Whether or not Chris has been bitten by the design bug, and starts creating level mock-ups on the weekend for fun and profit remains to be seen.

The art team continues their work on sectioning up the map and adding detail to the remaining large buildings. While there is some lighting work left to do, you can see from the picture below just how huge the Thorcon power plant is.

We’ll be back with more next week.

January 11, 2018

Communication Goals and Coming Back From The Dead Quickly

We didn’t spend the entire holiday grilling food and shooting off fireworks. We did a lot of work too. Here’s what we were up to.

We did a lot of work on our alert system and its ui. This got us talking about our communication goals in the game. We broke down player states into 4 types: Offline, Idle, Participating, and Playing. Our goal is to not only have things you can do in the game when you’re not actively playing, but to have a communication system that serves users in all states. Whether you’re just chatting with members of your house, waiting for your friends to login, or (and this is a big theoretical at this point) operating some defensive system while carpooling to work, we want you to be able to choose through a list of available channels and talk with a click of a button.

We did some work on friends lists and discussed the importance of hooking up privacy settings. Nobody likes being bothered by some random person who bandaged your character at some point and has boundary issues. Having working privacy settings will help those especially needy to move on and bandage other people.
We talked about the need for click tracking and a heat map to help us see what navigation users seem to like or use the most. We always appreciate feedback but understand not everyone feels like telling us that they like or hate something we’ve done.

San did a bunch of patcher/launcher work. Loading the game has never been faster. We continued working on our game tutorial and did some more environmental work. We’ve made some updates to how we display our 3D models that you have to see and began some audio work. Soon the forest will be filled with better sounding birds and our Kükenroot will finally sound like a proper Kükenroot. We even did some work on respawning. We were getting tired of having to restart every time we died and figured you would too. Soon the time between falling off the radio tower and being able to climb back up, to jump again, will be greatly reduced.

July 6, 2017

Tag: respawn