It’s taken longer than we expected to get some of our major system updates done and to be honest, once they are finished, the world is still under construction. We’ll be testing features and new systems for many months ahead, but hopefully we’re narrowing in on the window when we can open up the game to new testers again.
Mahalo to our current testers who help us find what needs fixing every week and providing great ideas for the game. We love your feedback so keep it coming! Here’s a list of everything you found and we fixed since the play session last week.
Aazlor – Spawned with stamina I had at death
zaccsi – Need icon to show that you are burning
Larry – Big Bob AI clips out
You can learn more about the game and get all the latest updates by going to our Discord server or checking out our Steam page.
Early in development, we focused a lot of our efforts in bringing the lush wilds of Maui to life and doing justice to the beautiful Lahaina sky. However, this week, we’re excited to share updates on hidden places beneath your feet that we’re working on. We know how much fun it is to explore and discover new areas in places you’d least expect to find them. Below are some pictures of a few of our new subterranean haunts. Make sure to read our latest update for a deeper dive into these new places.
We continued work on our building system this week, adding different textures to represent different types of building materials and fixing any collision problems. We’ve worked out a recycling system for any unwanted materials to make redecorating your cataclysm cabana a breeze, and we’re still working on some performance issues. We did a little testing to see just how high we could make a structure and came up with this collection of code violations below. It may not be an engineering marvel but it will keep the rain off your back and some portion of the mutants out.
Speaking of house mutants, we increased the number of mutants placed by our Mutant AI spawner. We’ve completed the feature that allows us to adjust the number spawned in different areas, and made sure that shacks, buildings, and towns throughout the map now have spawn points. Players can expect to find more than just loot in the ruins across the map now.
We fixed some issues with zipline sounds not playing, and continued to add audio to locations across the game area. We added some new campfire sounds so players can not only spot fires at night, but they can hear them if they’re close too. Here’s a shot showing off the lights from the Com Tower, the moon, and a loot drop event at night.
Lastly, the team is making good progress with our river tool and the water is looking great as you can see below. What you can’t see in the screenshot is that Grant figured out that he could take off his hat, hold his breath, and lay completely submerged in the river. It made for a great “Missing In Action” style ambush.
This week the team remained focused on filming our trailer and improving some of our automated systems. We’ve added many personal touches to the numerous ruins that dot the landscape to help indirectly tell the story of the people who once lived in Lahaina and the world before the Fracture. In addition, we began work on the building system that players will use down the road to make their own structures. We have a good amount of work ahead of us before players will be able to build their own apocalypse dream homes, but we’ve been working on textures and designs. Here’s a look at what thatched building materials might look like inside and out.
As usual, there were several bugs to fix this week too. We nabbed a bug with container widgets not showing item descriptions and addressed an issue where the torch VFX were sometimes not showing up if a player already had another item in their hand. The best bug of the week, however, has to go to one that saw players falling through the Earth when spawning. We fixed the bug right away although for some of us it seemed like a lost opportunity to wait 84 mins and 24 secs to see if players would come out the other side of the planet and then fall back through to Maui.
We’ve talked a lot about our procedural building and road systems but we’re also working on a water system to generate rivers, creeks, and streams across the map. In addition to other environmental cues and features like cliffs and smoke, rivers not only give players access to much-needed water but can act as a natural funnel to get players moving around the map. Below is a look at a couple of these water features around the area we are shooting the trailer.
Still fighting off turkey hangovers, and the colds you always get at group events, we dug back in this week where we left off before the holiday. A lot of material and lighting work was done on the landscape as the team builds out the areas between the game’s main hubs, as well as along the coast. We made a number of day/night improvements and added ruined buildings and neighborhoods to allow players something to explore or set up an ambush between social hubs. We plan on taking another pass to add story elements, unique play features, and specific buildings to explore and loot, once we have theses areas connected.
We reworked the indoor lighting of the Armory, Communication Tower, and the Thorcon Power Plant after it had been disabled due to a truSKY issue. Players shouldn’t need to light an extra torch inside anymore to read their favorite book. Last week we found a huge part of the Thorcon reactor that we had somehow misplaced in a folder somewhere along the way. We’ve made a pass over it to match the rest of the interior, and will hopefully get it installed before the inspectors arrive. Meeting all codes and having the correct paperwork after the fracture is serious business. We’re also taking another pass at the look of the player bank, making it fit better with the game’s aesthetic.
Our hero buildings weren’t the only thing that got a revamp. For a while now we’ve discussed the damage balance issues we’ve had with weapons. The game’s craftable bow and hatchet were among the most powerful weapons for a while, but that’s about to change. We did a full pass on weapon damage and made quite a few changes to more realistically represent the ballistic damage of your typical firearm round. We also adjusted a number of gun stats including firing speed and fixed a melee weapon distance bug. Daggers will no longer have the same reach as spears, and you’ll need to get a little bit closer to a enemy to put your hatchet in their head now.
Speaking of bugs, the team fixed a few already this week. We boosted the interval between loot drops to 30 mins to avoid overlaps in delivery quests. Nobody is a fan of two of aunt Ruth’s jello salads at the Luau, one is more than enough. We fixed an issue with first person animations being used when using a weapon in third person. Also, we corrected a problem with damage highlights showing up on players when they weren’t healable. Medical co-pays are expensive enough, without phantom injuries showing up on characters.
The team made some harvesting adjustments and took a thorough look at the crafting cycle as it currently stands. We’ve made resources much more available and the amount a player can harvest per attempt has been greatly increased for some things. We looked at a few other games to see how they handle resource availability and the speed of their crafting cycle to help figure out that sweet spot, where the best craftable gear is attainable through diligent work, but not too easy. We also want players to be able to create useful gear throughout the crafting process, and not feel like the crafting grind is just a time waster. It’s a tricky balancing act, but we have a game plan in place, and know that we’ll end up making many more passes until we iron out all the bumps.
Lastly, we spent a little time on one of the most important parts of the environment and player survival, our animals. There are many things players have to battle or overcome in the game. In addition to the mutants, and blood thirsty players who just want to get as many kills as possible before their lunch break ends, the environment and animals play a huge role. Wolves and bears are a physical danger to players, while other animals can provide much needed food or leather, and some exist simply to make the landscape look and feel as authentic as possible. We have more about our animals on this imgur post with a few short clips of them in action. Below you’ll find a screenshot of a pack of wolves taking down a deer that is worthy of hanging in any bunkhouse or lodge, a shot of a bear making its morning rounds, looking for a player foolish enough to sleep in the open, and a few other shots of animals in the game.
It’s Thanksgiving week, and that means for many of us our heads are filled with thoughts of delicious food, and being trapped in conversations with those weird relatives you only see on the holidays. Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of work to do in the game, and we’ve been busy.
The web team has been focused on hunting down bugs, making user flow improvements, and doing some messaging work. We got some great feedback from a few users, and Jared is working on fixing the issues they found. We took a look at some problems in the account creation process, and are doing some QA testing as we work to smooth them out. The team focused on creating some new email templates to share specific parts of the page, and special announcements as well.
Jesse is making some small changes to the House creation process before moving on, and making some improvements to the House themes we offer. We talked a bit about ways we could allow users to personalize their houses as well as add personal touches to the game. We want players to be able to make things feel like their own, but we’re mindful of the limits we have to put in place to keep gratuitously offensive material out.
AI improvements continue this week, and our cover system is finished. Now the terrors of the jungle will move out of the way of gunfire, and utilize surrounding objects to mitigate the amount of lead they’re catching. We like our mutants both horrifying, and smart enough to move out of the way of a moving train.
Speaking of smart mutants, we’re working on a new AI for Big Bob to make him our most dangerous opponent yet. We’re giving him the ability to put other mutants in a sort of hivemind state in which he controls their actions and tactics. This allows him to properly soften and tenderize players before he charges in, and adds them to his food diary. We’re also beefing him up with a bunch more health to better reflect just how much of Big Bob there is to get through.
Finally, we took to imgur again to talk about the progression of our lighting work and environmental improvements. Throughout the development process, we’ve strived to make the beautiful deadly wilds of Lahaina look and feel as realistic as possible. To us the environment is another tool to tell the story, and set the mood for the game. We want the hibiscus waving in the wind to be vibrant and calming, just as much as the dark places in the jungle to be foreboding. We talk about the technical issues involved with making a dynamic looking world, and what we’ve done to make normally flat looking terrain pop, and add just the right amount of light to those dark places. Below you can see a couple shots of just how good Lahaina is looking, but to get a better appreciation check out these before and after imgsli shots.
The team is busy decorating the interior of the Thorcon Power Plant this week to get it ready for players, and the holidays. We looked over some concept art again, and picked out the bits we liked for the game’s social hub. We talked about the proper set decoration to give the interior the feel of something rebuilt after a global catastrophe, but still with some Hawaiian flair. We discussed how many or few inhabitants players would find inside, and what sorts of things would be available for purchase.
We looked at some work being done to the exterior too. We’re weathering the structure to show the wear and tear that over 60 years of neglect would take on the power plant. We discussed adding aircraft warning lights to the highest parts, and the other tall structures that survived the fracture in Lahaina. The team fixed the last of the stuck doors inside and out as well.
There’s a zipline from the Communication Tower heading towards the Thorcon now. It doesn’t deliver you to the plants doorstep, but it takes you a good distance, and you can’t miss the giant building looming just ahead of you when you get to the end. The team is busy building out those areas between as well. We’re adding farms to explore and gather resources, mysterious houses standing by themselves with an abundance of junk to root around in for crafting materials, and many other good places to check out, get attacked, or set up your own ambush if you’ve decided it’s easier to take what you want instead of sifting through rubble.
We continued our AI improvements to make the horrors of the jungle less mindless. We fixed a bug that would see some of the game’s mutants get stuck on terrain. We also smoothed out some of their charge or retreat paths so they can get to players more quickly, or cover if things aren’t going their way. We also discovered that a bug crashing the staging server was due to the newest harvesting system we implemented. We’re fixing that now so the world doesn’t stop every time you chop down a tree.
The web team is busy finishing up the front page facelift, fixing bugs, and doing some marketing work. Jesse is making some minor adjustments to our announcements/call to action templates and finished a contest slide just in time for our first one. We’re giving away a brand new XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. The contest lasts for the next 30 days. You can enter by joining our discord server, creating a player name, following us on twitter, and a whole lot more.
While some of us were working on giving stuff away, others were talking about nerfing a few weapons. Currently the hatchet and the handmade bow are the most powerful weapons in the game. Much to the chagrin of all of our primitive weapon enthusiasts, that’s going to change. We thought it made more sense if a 150 grain bullet traveling at 2,700 ft/s did a little more ballistic damage than something a player whittled out of wood, even if it was tipped with a shark tooth. We’re looking at weapon damage across the board, as well as NPC and animal health values to avoid near omnipotent raccoons, and players killing each other over devastatingly big sticks.
Lastly, we’ve worked through a number of our trueSKY issues and improved our lighting in the game. It’s never looked better. As you can see from these shots below, the daytime sky and clouds look fantastic, and the trail is hard to miss at night now that we have torches lighting your way.
The art team has been busy this week stylizing a bunch of items in the game and roughing up buildings. We looked at a number of different flare gun models, building interiors, and lots more loot. We discussed improving the pipeline for these themed items and building performance. The team has made great strides in this area, and our procedural building system is creating ruins that are up to 50 times more performant than before.
We took a long look at crafting and resource gathering, and decided that resources were too hard to come by so we’re cranking up their availability, and how much players harvest when banging on rocks and chopping at trees. With all the resources about to pour into player inventories, we talked some more about a player bank. Designed to allow players to unburden themselves and embrace their inner pack rat, the bank will act as a secure extension of their personal inventory. We discussed how it would work, how and when players could access it, and what it would look like.
We have a number of weapons in the game, most of which a player can craft themselves, but the bow is one that we’ve focused on a lot. We’ve made many improvements to bows in the game, and improved them a little too much. They are a bit overpowered right now. We plan on nerfing them a bit so the island isn’t filled with a bunch of overzealous archers, dropping everything in sight.
Most of our time this week has been devoted the biggest dangers on the island, the mutants. We took to Imgur with an overview and brief history of the terrors of the jungle. Players need to find food, water, and shelter in the game while avoiding being ambushed by other hungry players, but the biggest obstacles to their survival are the mutants. Below you can see some early concept art before we decided what direction we wanted to take.
We called our first mutants Trophy Collectors. Victims of the terrible SSHAM plague, Trophy Collectors remember little about their previous live, but retain an unnatural cunning and need to collect body parts from their victims as trophies. We tried to avoid just creating zombies with a different name. We wanted our mutants to have personality, tricks, and more ways to kill you than just teeth and claws. We gave certain Collectors ranged attacks and AI that allows them to “herd” players towards their melee attacking friends. All of them have complex group attack AI, and battle tactics sure to make them a challenge.
Big Bob Abramo is our first individual mutant, and the leader of the cannibals. A meat obsessed Lahaina real estate mogul and restaurateur before the fracture, Bob and the cannibals were twisted by the collapse of the Veil, and cursed with an unnaturally long life and hunger. Below are some early concept iterations of Bob before he was looking his best.
Players need to properly dispose of their kills when Big Bob and the cannibals are around or they will smell the blood and come running. Cannibals who find a corpse that wasn’t properly burned will feed on it, giving them a big speed and attack buff for a duration as they hunt down players, looking for some fresher meat. Don’t let his size or his cane fool you. As you can see below, Bob is still fast enough to be a danger to anything he hungers for.
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As we approach the end of the week the team completed some lighting work. We’ve put a lot of thought into nighttime lighting in the game. We want to make sure that buildings, trails, and other points of interest are noticeable at night, but we don’t want to shred the cover of darkness for players creeping around trying to go unnoticed. To that end, there are a number of lamps, lanterns, and tiki torches, in the game now. They offer just the right amount of light to keep you on the right path, and get an idea of what’s in an area, without making it impossible to hide in the shadows. With the exception of some of the torches flaring up like they’re loaded with jet fuel, we’re happy with the end product, and plan on making the torches a little less vigorous.
We looked at, and discussed a few more options for things surrounding the communications tower. The team has talked about a number of buildings and/or geographic features we could add around the zipline center of Lahaina. We went over some barrier and debris options that could be used to help defend the area until we decide if we want something more substantial there. The team is making another general pass over items and buildings to make them more stylized for the game, and Hawaii in general as well.
The web team continues work on the navigation revamp, and designs on a call to action/contest section. Jesse designed some new icons for use on our social media pages and made improvements to what we already had. We found a bug that would show the wrong navigation colors in some of the preset House themes. That should be fixed in the next few days. Jared is still working through the issues with the live drone feed on the front page. Until they are cleared up, you can always watch the drone’s-eye view of Lahaina on our YouTube page. We talked some more about how to improve the story page, and let visitors know what the game is about. It should be getting a major facelift in the near future.
We made a number of improvements to our mutants this week too. We’ve gussied up a few of the cannibals to highlight their bad skin, matted hair, and blood-stained lips. We fixed a bug that would cause them to sometimes react twice to being shot or sliced, making them suddenly start to twitch. We improved animations to make their upper body move towards the origin of a sound they detected. Previously they’d just lurch in strange looking ways towards a noise. We also taught them that discretion is the better part of valor, and installed a fleeing AI module that allows them to run away when grievously injured. Instead of fighting to the end if they’re getting slaughtered, the terrors of the jungle will be able to run away, and lurk again another day.
We made a lot of progress on the Throcon Power Plant too. We continue to build out the surrounding areas, but this week we specifically focused on the inside of the building. The interior got a fresh paint job, and we discussed the level of inhabitation and stuff we wanted inside. We looked at some concept drawings ranging from: keeping it rather barren with a few sleeping mats here and there, to something more akin to the inside of a big box store on Black Friday. We eventually decided on something near the middle, offering players someplace empty enough to explore a bit, but still indicative of a common meeting place and social hub. Below you can see a couple images of the new and improved reactor room, with players in one shot so you can get a feel of the size of the facility and reactor.
The team has made a number of inventory improvements this week. We have a completely new ui on your inventory screen. Things have been streamlined and rearranged to make better use of space, and make it easier for players to quickly change gear and grab items. Information about each item is easier to pull up, we have new selectors for the inventory and quick bar, and everything is semi-transparent. You now have a chance of seeing a creature charging at you, if you stopped somewhere to organize your hat or knife collection.
The art team put together an extensive decal library to quickly age and mark up buildings, especially ones made with our procedural building system. We have decals for wood, concrete, stone, and metal, covering a wide variety of things like: scratches, dents, mold, moss, rust, water streaking, and even dulled colors. This should allow us to add the right amount, and specific type of weathering, to any building and save some artist time in the process.
We took a look at a few refinements done to our newest batch of mutants. We talked about what models and items we need for the areas we’re building out around the Thorcon Power Plant to make them complete. We dug deep into our old model and art folders to start an unused asset inventory. We found quite a few things that were put on the back burner for one reason or another, and planned out where these items could be used in game. The team made a list of what models were ready to go and which still needed a little work before being game ready.
The web team remains focused on putting together promo and game videos. We’ve been hard at work cutting up and editing existing videos for GIFs, and spent a fair amount of time coming up with captions. We discussed a number of possible videos in the future: highlighting important aspects of the game, differentiators that highlight the beautiful danger of post fracture Lahaina, and things that are just funny to watch.
In addition to putting together blooper reels and getting glamour shots of some of our most horrific mutants, the web team is working on the upcoming achievement system. Jared is setting up the backends and compiling a list of web specific achievements ahead of ingame ones. Jesse has been working on layouts and the ui, as well as designing reward badges for each achievement.
We’ve fixed a number of bugs discovered while running around shooting things that moved in the jungle, and each other. Medkits will now heal virtually any status effect that your player gets, including poison, but you’ll still need to make a fire to get yourself warm and dry if you’ve been standing in the rain, or went swimming. Ammo boxes will have ammo inside them, as one would expect of an ammo box. You will no longer find that some crafting recipes are empty, leaving you to wonder what items were supposed to be there. Double click looting should work soon as well, so you can quickly strip everything of even remote value from a corpse or bag. This should be very useful if like me, you’re a loot hoarder, and only begrudgingly drop items once you can barely walk from the crushing weight of the junkyard on your back.
Our march toward UE 4.20.2 hit a bit of a snag last week when the staging build suddenly found itself without any sky. There’s no doubt that it makes the game look much more ominous, and might be a good storyline for an alternative world down the line. However, one of Chris’ mantras is always that we make things look more Hawaiian. While a skyless dark world is scary, we didn’t really see a Hawaiian connection. In fact, none of us could remember ever seeing a picture of Hawaii with the sky a dark formless void. It’s usually pretty sunny. We’re working on bringing the blue back currently, but here’s a shot of “Dark Lahaina”.
Since our first type of mutant, the Trophy Hunters, are prowling the forests looking for parts to add to their collections, we decided to give them a little individuality. They already have a couple different types with special abilities, such as one who has ranged attacks, but until now all basic types look the same. While giving them each name tags may have been an easy solution, we decided to go down a different road. We’re working on a number of different variances to make them look more like individuals transformed into creatures, and less like they’ve escaped from a clone factory. We’re adding things like: subtle shading differences, different garb, scarring, tattoos and body markings to let each pack member be their own best mutant.
The team is adding a number of AI improvements including fixing the distance you can be from a creature before it notices you, and attacks. Currently, there are a few things that you can almost bump into before they are stirred to action. We’re adding some new animations to improve the look of some actions, and adding some better audio fx to monsters. Since the first pass at the Trophy Hunters is almost done, we looked at a few new types of jungle horrors for players to contend with. We talked a bit about what parts of the map these new dangers would lurk, and some basic tactics and abilities.
With all the new mutants in the pipeline, players are going to need friends/party members to help keep them alive. The web team circled back to the friends system and is working on ways to make it easier to find and invite people to watch your back. Jesse showed off wireframes highlighting some onboarding improvements. We talked at some length about the referral system, and the best way to explain that you earn premium currency (kula) when a friend uses your link to join, and cash when that friend makes a purchase.
The team discussed the upcoming Communication Tower quest. We’ve worked out the basic story line and the goals for players to complete. The art team is busy adding a few new items to the area, and are finishing up last minute details to the buildings around the tower. We’re adding new audio cues, and talked about sounds for future quests. In addition, we’re including a new visual indicator for areas of interest in quests, and using the same marker for our loot drop scenarios.
We fixed a few bugs keeping our campfires from being all they could be, and are including a few more styles of boxes/containers/crates to hold loot. Right now when you find a pile of stuff, it is almost certainly in a military style container. However, It wasn’t the look of the loot boxes that was troubling Chris, it was the inability to smash them once emptied that was the problem. He always asks if we can shoot/smash/break and recycle it when we look at something new, and boxes are no different. The team is working on a way to accommodate this need to break things down into their core components, including containers, so Chris can get back to dismantling his box of fidget spinners.
One of the 3d artists is busy finishing roofs to a number of buildings before moving on to the mammoth task of fixing some of the visual issues, and collision problems we’ve run into with the Municipal Veil Station. We’ve discovered a few door problems with the Thorcon Power Plant too. Doors inside would somehow allow players to clip through walls and go outside, and some would open vertically like a reverse drawbridge. Even the large main doors had some trouble, and refused to open. We’re looking into it now, and hope to have the issues fixed soon.
Of course we continue to make improvements to the weather and wind, as well as the foliage and landscape as we fill in the map. In this shot below you can see deer who is feeding on our amazing looking ground cover with the mountains in the background.
That’s it for now. We’ll be back next week with the latest updates and screenshots.
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