teams Archives - Fractured Veil

Bigger Buildings and New Mutants

Sprint 27 is here and in addition to covering a few goals carried over from 26, our biggest tasks are: upgrading to UE 4.20.2, speeding up iteration time, upgrading trueSky to fix some of our lingering weather issues, and addressing any bugs from the last sprint.

We made a big push to get our first quest ready to play. Centering around the Communication Tower, players explore the surrounding area fighting off dangers, gathering loot, and completing quest goals. As this picture of the tower with a little morning mist shows, the area is looking great.

However, Lahaina is a big place, and we’re moving on to bigger buildings, namely the Municipal Veil Station, and the Thorcon Power Plant. Being a little bit more play ready, we’re working on building out the areas around the Thorcon. We plan on making it the temporary social hub for the game, and are working on filling it up with useful items for players, as well as making it an interesting place to explore. The team has a few concepts for the surrounding areas, and are working to improve materials for our procedural building system.

The Veil Station still needs a lot of performance improvements before it can become the main hangout for players. We’re working on a number of updates and improvements inside to help performance, while we work on grunging up the exterior to properly represent 60+ years of neglect and encroaching jungle.

We found some of our mutants to be a bit too tough so we plan on balancing combat a bit. Right now, you can shoot so many arrows into a Trophy Hunter that they look like a bipedal porcupine before running up to you, and ripping off your face. The team is going to adjust their damage and health values a bit to make fighting more fun, but still challenging.

We’re making some improvements to mutant models and animations, and are improving the existing AI in the game to help fix a few bugs we uncovered. We’ve upgraded ranged AI to help players take full advantage of natural cover, and all the hard work we put into buildings to hide behind. We’re adding another type of Trophy Hunter for players to deal with, as well as a whole new group of terrors to encounter in the areas we’re working on.

With the new and improved horrors of the jungle to deal with, we’re making some weapon improvements too. We’re adding a number of audio features like reloading sounds, and fixes to attenuation and ricochet sounds. We’re fixing a bug where a players M4A1 will move around independent of their hands. This is a great feature for shooting around corners, but we’re not really into phantasmal riflery. We’re adding impact decals for gunshots to make things look more realistic, and misses will sometimes kick up a little dirt now as well.

Lastly, we’re fixing some social player items and game features too. The ability to block players has just been completed, so you can now easily ignore the annoying or needy with the click of a button. Inventory stacks can be split into manageable piles, and we’re fixing a bug to make sure medkits will heal poison now. While it can be fun and tingly for the first few minutes, nobody likes to stay poisoned for however long they have left. We’re adjusting how far away the sound of jumping carries, and are making sure that all the ammo boxes now contain ammo, which isn’t the case currently. We’re also adjusting how easy it is to see campfire smoke at a distance, so you can provide other players with a live action version of your favorite scary campfire story, or just make new friends. Whatever you’re in to.

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

September 14, 2018

Playing With Friends and Building Neighborhoods

We kicked the week off with a number of group play improvements and features. We’ve worked out the last of the bugs interfering with the ability to heal others. Splints can be quickly applied to party members to get them up and running again when you’re in a hurry, and bandages now affect all injuries in a certain area. You can even force feed and unconscious friend to bring them back from the brink, stave off starvation, or role play an unsettling foie gras obsession. We also did some work to make it easier to find friends to join your group, and should have a player blocking feature in place soon, so you can ignore that player who keeps asking to feed you.

Our creatures got upgraded too. We continue to work on their AI, to make them cunning and dangerous opponents. We’ve completed the first pass at group attacks. The Trophy Hunters now have good basic group attack strategies: running at angles, utilizing cover, and avoiding bunching. We added a few different types of specialized individuals in large groups. Players can expect stronger/faster leader types with special attacks, and monsters with ranged attacks now.

We added some new audio for NPCs and creatures, but the monster audio is a little lackluster. We talked about making their growls more bone chilling, and less sleepy, as well as other options. The team started a list of audio improvements, and is prioritizing it now. We adjusted our loot drop scenarios to make sure they are focused on areas with buildings or structures, to make the scramble for gear more fun as well.

We continue to make crafting improvements. The latest round of weapon attachments are in and ready, without the sizing troubles we ran into with the last group of scopes and suppressors. We made some drag and drop refinements, added some more item description info, and a few useful tooltips. We talked at some length about rewarding players who want to experiment with crafting recipes to make something unique. The team discussed the best way to encourage those who want to make substitutions to their recipes, or just throw a bunch of stuff together to see what happens.

The Git rollover nears completion, with most of the artists moved over now. Jesse continued to make layout improvements. We looked at a new batch of wireframes and navigation options. The web team discussed new prompts, and context menus to help players along, and improve user flow, while Jared ran down, and fixed a few lingering bugs.

Our map rebuild continues to march forward. One of the biggest points of focus over the the last couple of sprints, work on populating the game map ran into a few hiccups this week. The Thorcon Power Plant wasn’t playing well with the area around it, and was broken in a few places, so we pulled it to fix the problems. We also found a bug that was causing trees and creatures in some areas to float above the ground. While areas of reverse gravity could lead to some interesting 3D gun combat, it’s not what we’re looking to do. In addition, we noticed that right now the foliage doesn’t move in one consistent direction like it should when the wind is blowing. Rather, the plants move in different directions, and speeds. Leaves and limbs writhe independently around you like you’re stuck in the jungle after drinking spiked Kool-Aid. We’re working on fixing the foliage, and the wind before someone freaks out.

Despite the few bugs, we are making good progress overall. We’ve aged the roads around Lahaina to show how much can be reclaimed by the jungle after decades of neglect. In this shot, you can see from the air the faint outline of some of the roads that once ran near the beach.

We continue to add ruins and landmark buildings to the map section by section. Unlike the power plant, we had no problem with the Communications Tower or the Lahaina Armory, and are placing structures as we move along. Below you can see an area waiting for a few buildings that survived the fracture.

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

July 31, 2018

Building Houses and the Roads Most Traveled

As the end of the week approaches, the team continues to focus on group play features. We’re making a few ui improvements to the inventory to better highlight what items you have equipped, or loaded in your quick bar. We’re making it easier for you to find online friends or House members who might be interested in running through the jungle with you. However, we know that not every match, or group is made in heaven, so we’re adding a way to kick members out of your team. In addition, we’re adding blocking tools so you won’t have to deal with them, or anyone else who is bothering you, again.

The team is pulling in some new audio elements to various parts of the map. We’re working on areas by the water to make sure the beach sounds great, and different from what you hear once you’ve crossed the tree line. A few of the game’s unique buildings have been placed on the map, namely the Thorcon Power Plant, Communications Tower, and the Lahaina Armory. We’re making sure each one of these structures has its own sound, so you can tell what building you’re in just by listening to your speakers.

Much of last sprint was dedicated to stripping down the map and rebuilding it. With that work mostly done, a large part of sprint 25 is dedicated to populating the map, and finishing the roads and trails. Below you can see a section of the map where the ruins of a neighborhood will soon go.

We’re using the automated building system we created to procedurally build the houses and structures that survived the global catastrophe, and fill out the map. The system allows us a wide range of customization so players won’t have to look at slightly different versions of the same 2 or 3 houses all over. Having already imported all the existing roads in Lahaina, we’re using a similar procedural path tool to make sure that any new trails are connected to the existing network, and don’t needlessly twist and turn. We still have to rough up the roads, and buildings to show the damage the fracture did to everything, but below is a shot of how good everything is looking already.

As you can see from above, we’ve made some improvements to weather and lighting. The rain and fog is getting some more attention, and we continue to work on our night time lighting, tweaking the brightness of stars, and making sure buildings don’t excessively illuminate the surrounding areas. We talked a bit more about giving certain creatures in a group different abilities and tactics, like being able to use missile weapons, or other ranged attacks, and we continue to improve their AI to make them more dangerous.

Everyone is finally moved over to Git, much to Terry’s joy, and we fixed a longstanding spawning bug. The web team made some layout changes, and did a little ui work to improve user flow. Lastly, the art team is busy making a 3D model of our repair/refurbish machine. Used to clean and repair clothing and armor, the machine saves players from the dangers of torn body armor, and the embarrassment of being killed while wearing dirty unmentionables.

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

July 19, 2018

Group Play and Gear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 17, 2018

Maps and Mechanics

This week marks the beginning of sprint 25, and the team is busy filling in the new map, as well as finishing up some features, and hunting down bugs found in the previous sprint. After stripping down the previous map, and rebuilding it literally from the ground up with topographical data of Maui, we’ve started to place some of the game’s unique buildings. The Thorcon Power Plant, and the Lahaina Armory will be added to the landscape this week, and if all goes well, we plan on moving staging and production to the new map. We’ve fixed some of our weather problems. Rain, fog, and storms look better, and we’re working on the lighting, ensuring that the game looks good morning, noon, and night. Below you can see the VNN drone’s eye view of the Communication Tower as the sun goes down.

The team wrapped up a lot of work on the group play system too. The healing others mechanic is getting some attention. We’re adding medkits, and the ability to target specific limbs, so you can fix a friend’s injured leg and get out of trouble when your about to be overrun. Much of the party ui is being finished this week too. We’re adding a blocking feature to safeguard you from annoying players, and a way to remove players from your friends list in case you decide they no longer have the kind of qualities you look for in a survival buddy.

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

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

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

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

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

July 10, 2018

Throwing Things and Headshots

The team started the week by fixing a number of weapon attachment bugs. Previously, a player trying to use the sights on a weapon felt like they were in a truck speeding down a dirt road. We addressed the ADS (aiming down sights) jiggle, so iron sight fans can take a steady aim. However, that exposed a number of other attachment issues. We’re fixing the overlapping scopes, improperly sized suppressors, and other broken add-on problems as they arise.

Guns weren’t the only weapons that got some attention. Last sprint we added a throwing mechanic for weapons, and expanded what items could be thrown to include the resource harvesting tools. We’ve added a number of animations including ones for your axe, and pick. A few of us spent time this weekend: throwing axes into creatures, pulling them out of their bodies as we ran past, and hurling them again at any remaining monsters who gave chase. It may not be the best way to stay alive, but it is a lot of fun! All that throwing weapons into heads led to a conversation about adding a staggering effect when something survives taking a flying axe to the face.

We continue to iterate on the HUD, fix bugs, and add minor tweaks to make it as useful as possible to players. The team made some improvements to the Friends and Party systems to make it easier to find your friends, and keep tabs on the people who have agreed to help you survive the horrors of the jungle. We made some more improvements to the healing system, so it’s easier to keep your friends alive when things go bad for your group too.

The web team is spending some time improving user flow, and ui. We’re adding some hover animations to help users navigate through the page, and tweaking a few layouts. Jesse demoed the latest iteration of a company intro trailer, and it looks fantastic. We gave our feedback, and started talking about what audio elements we want to include.

One of the major points of focus this sprint has been on map improvements. We’ve rebuilt the entire game map for both development and performance improvements. Last week we brought in all the topography data available about the Lahaina area, making accurate shorelines, valleys, and mountains. This week we finished importing a layer that contains all of the roads, so the art team can build a makeshift network of crumbling highways, and overgrown residential streets based on the actual roads of Western Maui.

While rebuilding the play area, and adding foliage, we ran into a few (software) bugs. For some reason certain plants will no longer produce fruit, and none of the trees can be harvested for wood. We have some people fixing those problems now before the lumber shortage tanks the already fragile post-fracture economy, or some interprizing furniture maker becomes the island’s first end table billionaire.

While Terry tackled some package editor issues, the team made some improvements to creature AI. Our monsters don’t run in perfectly straight lines anymore, helping to shield them from sustained bursts of automatic fire. We plan on adding some additional defensive movements and tactics soon, but it’s a start. In addition, we’ve added some new animations giving the terrors new interactions with players as they try to tear your throat out, and a host of new reactions when they notice prey in their area.

Lastly, we’ve done some additional illumination work, and are focusing on water improvements too. The ocean has never looked better in the game, and we’re trying to find the right balance of light at night, to let players to sneak through the foliage, and still allow the stars to subtly illuminate the jungle. Here are a couple shots of beach areas after the sun goes down.

We’ll be back later with more updates.

June 27, 2018

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

Buildings, Boxes, and Birds

As we begin the final week of Sprint 23, everyone is busy finishing up projects, and hunting down bugs. The web team has upgraded to the latest versions of Webpack and React, and are fixing some lingering layout issues. We’re improving our autocomplete feature to make it a bit smarter, and making some improvements to player/friend search as well.

We completed some more work on the crafting ui, and discussed adding a few more recipes to the already impressive list of apocalyptic arts and crafts projects available to players. The team fixed a bug on the loading screen, and updated the settings ui to make things easier to find, and adjust your game-play preferences. The HUD received some attention with a few new updates to make things less cluttered, and improve your field of view.

We’ve updated the team ui, fixed a few bugs, and included some new functionality into group play. A number of group features were added like messaging and auto-rejoin. In addition, we’re making it easier to find your friends and House members to help you rampage across the countryside, or whatever you’re in to. We’ve adding a few new weapon animations as well. Running a spear through your enemies, or throwing a club at their head has never looked better.

The team made some improvements to our second loot drop scenario. Players can claim buildings to defend against hordes of mutants and other survivors, in order to cash in on the prize when time runs out. We talked some more about the overall game economy, and distribution of loot and wealth. We’re spawning most of our loot in containers and boxes now, instead of just sprinkling weapons and goods across the map, exposed to the elements.

The team is almost finished with lighting and audio improvements in the respawn area, and our Hawaiification work continues with artwork, graffiti, and new furnishings in the underground haven. We have a basic recycling system in place for some items like empty beverage and food containers, and the art team is working on animations for turning trash into a usable resource.

We’ve made some AI improvements that have not only made things more interesting to fight, but have led to a huge increase in performance. We’re replacing many of the birds in the game currently to make those increases even greater. We talked some more about the map, and finalizing a backbone of surviving highways and trails to keep players moving. We want to make sure that players have a reason to travel over the entire map, and not get caught in a bottleneck, or congregate in one area.

Finally our lighting, weather, and foliage work continues to improve performance, and make the landscape look as amazing as possible while you struggle to survive. As you can see from the shots below, endeavoring to persevere has never had a more beautiful backdrop.

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

June 5, 2018

Blue Skies and Deep Mines

To wrap up the week, we’re making some minor adjustments to the Veil News Network (VNN) drone camera. Showing off major structures, and points of interest in real time inside the game, the VNN live stream is a great way to see what’s left of Lahaina, and what’s happening around the game world. Our first pass on the drone HUD is complete, and is looking good. We talked a bit about future view options with things like infrared or low light, and adding different bits of information to the HUD as the drone makes its rounds flying above the island.

We talked about a few new items that we could add to the merchandise selection down the road, a number of different Manimal products in particular. This led to a discussion about the current state of crafting in the game. We talked over ways players could learn new recipes, and the possibility of rewarding those who like to experiment on the crafting bench. In a related topic, we’re adding more recycling options to items in the game. Currently, when you’re done drinking a beverage, you can recycle the can for a small amount of metal. We plan on increasing that list this week, so players will be able to reuse a number of objects for basic materials. However, we still have no plans to allow players to recycle troublesome House members for their meat. We’re not monsters.

Our spawn area is getting some attention. We’re adding the finishing touches, and discussed leaving a few more survival items lying around, to give players a reasonable chance of making it on the surface. We’re adding some audio support to the area, as well as other spots across the map. Soon players will be able to enjoy the sound of buoys softly clanging in the waves, while being chased down the beach.

We looked at some concept art of the entrance of our cave area, and talked about what and who we’d like to add to the upcoming spelunking spot. We continue to make progress on AI work. We’d like to give the unfortunate creatures twisted by the fracture, a fair shot at taking down players with sound tactics and battle strategies, instead of charging in straight lines to their doom. We’re expanding the mutant loot lists as well, so you never know what things you’ll find on them other than really old lint, shiny bits of plastic, and strips of chewed meat.

We continued our work on Team play too. We’re wrapping up any lingering bugs with our loot drop scenarios, (currently we’re having some AI troubles. The waves of enemies who are supposed to test the defenses of players in one scenario, tend to walk around like they are at a meet and greet, instead of charging the gates and breaking down doors.) and we’re finishing up the Team ui soon. We ran into a couple stamina related bugs that we should have fixed soon. Right now, a player’s stamina doesn’t regen properly if they are crouched or prone.

Lastly, we’re doing a complete materials review across the game. We’re stripping out all the remaining placeholder foliage for performance issues, and making sure it is replaced with the correct plants. We continue our lighting and weather improvements too. We’re adjusting the ozone to allow the blue skies to be a bit more blue, and make the stars shine a bit brighter at night. Below you can see just how good the morning sun looks in the game.

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

May 24, 2018

Tag: teams