VNN Archives - Page 3 of 4

Working on the Weather and Group Play

The web team continued their work on creating the Veil News Network (VNN) this week. Designed to keep players updated with the latest ingame news, and important events, the news service is making good progress. We’re giving VNN its own section on the website, and are working on some animated scenes and embedding 3d assets to join the live video feed and newsticker. The team talked about different layout options, and ways to highlight the new section. This got us talking about using this template for various ingame companies in the future, giving them their own section on the front page. Jesse refined some of the layouts on the merch page and worked on resizing some logos too.

The art team continued work on creating a new spawn area. We’re keeping the underground/abandoned sewer motif, but are turning our one room studio into a spacious 3 room apartment, complete with a little hang-out area perfect for talking about your day, and sharing the location of clean water. It’s sure to be the envy of anyone being brought back to life after the fracture. They are working on a few concepts for other areas and buildings mentioned in the game stories as well. The armory is next on the list, and we should have some shots to share soon. Chris chose this moment to talk about the history of Titan I missile silo control domes, which one of the underground spaces resembled.

We continued our work on a group play system. The first pass on ui work is done, and we have team map markers in place, as well as VOIP. We want to encourage group play as much as we can, and are just about ready to start testing the system we’ve built. If all goes as planned, next week we will be happily running through Lahaina in small groups, avoiding the dangerous animals, and horrors of the jungle, while hunting each other down. We discussed including some sort of contested resources scenario, or a situation where teams have to hold the communications tower for a period of time. To be honest, it’s probably going to look more like a bloodbath than a tactical group effort to obtain a goal at first, but we need to test out every part of the team experience, even killing a whole bunch of people.

We did some more AI work, and San ran an experiment to see how much performance was impacted with multiple AI’s running around. The art team are making a materials change that looks much better, and saves on the GPU as well. With our TruSky issues worked out for now, there is some gorgeous weather in the game currently. However, as Grant would say they, “left the curtain on the sausage” until the end, when they showed off the latest lighting work in conjunction with a working weather system. You can see below how gorgeous our weather and day/night lighting work is in the game right now.

April 5, 2018

Lights, Cameras, and Filming the Action

This is the last full week of sprint 21, and much of the team’s work is focused on rooting out bugs, and adding some finishing touches to what we’ve been working on. One of the biggest goals this sprint was to get a team system up and running for group play. All of the backend work is done, and we’re just working on the ui now. Voip and team member map markers are ready to go. We’ve added the ability to teleport to a character using their name, and an ability to revive a downed team member so nobody has to be left behind when your situation turns dire.

We’ve added a few new recipes to the crafting list and some new gun parts. Just about everything you can find is craftable now. We fixed some of the harvesting bugs involving large trees and rocks holding onto their wood and minerals, and revised the weights of some harvestable items. Players no longer have to worry about breaking their backs if they’re carrying more than three feet of twine.

The web team continued working on the Veil News Network (VNN) news feed, videos, and live streams. We ran into a bug that was freezing the live stream in some cases, and Jared is digging into it. Jesse continues working on the video layout and frame. We continued our discussions about where to display the video feed, and expanding an area on the website for VNN news. The team is putting together some cinemagraphs to fill in spots between videos, and some stingers to play between stories to make the service seem more real. “You won’t believe what common, everyday object is killing players along Front Street!”

To shoot the news you need, San has been busy working on robot camera drone automation, and hopes to have the command plumbing done in a few days. In the near future, we’ll have some rough camera controls to set position, queue up splines, set paths, adjust views, and other useful commands. It won’t be long before the VNN drones are capturing all the latest action live in Lahaina.

Terry finished the trueSky rebuild so many of our strange weather issues will hopefully be resolved. He did a lot of server maintenance, and is fixing some automerge issues too. Our animal AI is fixed, so all of mother nature’s creatures should act naturally now. We’ve had some issues with animals charging straight into the sea when they detect movement, and some of the predators rolling over like they’re asking for a belly rub before trying to maul you. We’re working on making the monsters smarter currently too.

Lastly, we’re adding a bunch of audio support across all areas of the map, finishing up some performance improvements, and working on some lighting upgrades. As you can see from the shots below, things are looking great morning, noon, and night.

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

April 3, 2018

News Streams and the Roads Most Traveled

With the Veil News Network (VNN) newsticker working across the front page, the team is focusing on getting a live video system working for specific news events. We have a fixed camera live stream on our YouTube page with some terrific, (for some definition of terrific), Hawaiian elevator music for accompaniment. Jesse needs to rework the overlay to give access to the video controls, and make it responsive for people with smaller screens and mobile, but the view can be quite beautiful when the sun is rising.

We plan on recording a few videos of certain areas to highlight places to explore, and cover any holes in our live coverage. We talked about ways we could adjust and present the service to make it look and feel like a real news organization. The team discussed in depth how it currently has more of a public access/small local channel vibe to it, than a super-polished large news network feel. We’re going to make some slight changes in size, and placement on the front page in the coming weeks, but are pretty excited about how things are looking so far.

We continue to work on a system for team play, and Jesse showed off the latest stage of the team ui. Right now, it has an indicator when someone is talking, map markers that show the relative position of team members, basic information of cohorts, (for people not in your party only your name appears), and a noise indicator on the minimap. We want to be careful to not show too much information about other players crawling through the underbrush, or waiting to snipe a target however. So, we talked about ways to let more social players find new friends, and let the creepers creep.

We completed a big pass on crafting and resources this week. Virtually everything in the game is craftable now. We’re still having some trouble with very large trees and rocks giving up resources, but we hope to have it worked out soon. We also adjusted the weight of resources, as everything was way too heavy before. Now players can feel free to make enough twine to put together a shirt without becoming overburdened and an easy lunch for the wolves.

We are finishing up our shopping cart improvements this week as well. Every game package is colored coded, and has images of everything included now. We plan on having a table style view for comparing them ready for production soon.

Lastly, the art team showed off the latest concept drawings of the spawn area, and other parts of the map. We plan on expanding the spawn area from just one room to three, and we looked at the first iteration of an explorable mine area. One of the benefits of using an actual map of Lahaina is that much of the map layout work is done already. We discussed which areas, such as farmland, we need to alter for the game and which we can use as a template. We plan on leaving a few main roads for travel from one place to another, and converting some of the ones off the beaten path into dirt trails through the jungle. You can see below what the fracture, and 60 years of neglect has done to some of the residential roads in Lahaina.

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

March 29, 2018

Team Building and Bots

This week the web team turned their attention to the next step in our Veil News Network (VNN) service, live streaming the news. We’ll be focusing on “Travel and Leisure” stories at first since there aren’t a lot of people running around shooting, hunting, and looting yet. We talked about having a few “previously recorded” videos of noteworthy areas to support the live streams, and different ways to integrate videos for Houses and players. San will be revisiting the work he did on the drones and camera bots to get automation working smoothly. The video must flow!

Getting team play up and running is one of the biggest goals for this sprint. Jesse is working on some layouts and an overall ui for teams. For now we want to keep it simple, with information about player states, distance away, whether or not they’re transmitting VOIP, and other basic stats. We have a “knocked down” player state almost complete. Previously, when players lost too many shock points the screen would just go black, which isn’t a lot of fun. Now you’ll be able to crawl around screaming in agony until someone helps you, or drag yourself someplace safe to hide until the horrors of the forest move away. The goal is to have a simple ad-hoc team system in place next week.

We had a long discussion about player anonymity, and specifically in regard to groups. The team went over many possibilities on how players might identify other players around them that wouldn’t lead to knowing their exact location. After all, having your player name pop-up on the minimap while you’re trying to snipe others from an opposing House isn’t exactly ideal. We discussed using distance for getting different levels of player info: far away, you know players exist in a general area, medium, you know what House they belong to if any, up-close, you can see their player name….We also discussed how you could interact socially with unknown players when you are in a group.

The web team has a table style view of game packages just about finished. Jesse is adding the last of the merchandise icons and images, and the final layout bugs are being squashed. Soon you’ll have a quick and easy way to see what each game package includes, a brief description of each item, and a way to compare them all.

Lastly, we’re just about done with our initial crafting work. Players can harvest rock, wood, metal, and twine. Cloth can be made from twine, basic armor is craftable to protect your soft parts, and players can build a bow. There are so many craftable items now, that we’re adding a quick filter to help players find things faster. We’re making sure that there are plenty of things to harvest throughout the map, to keep players moving around. As you can see from the shots below, the beach has plenty of resources for players to take advantage of, as well as some beautiful scenery.

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

March 27, 2018

Building Better Buildings and Body Armor

As we approach the end of the week, the web team is making good progress on finishing up two projects: The Veil News Network (VNN) newsticker, and a table style view of game packages. We’ve fixed some overlap and spacing issues on the ticker, and have completed some styling work to make it more consistent. We plan to have links to live streaming video of news events, and a quick way for you to save pictures to your profile in the near future, but our first pass at VNN work is almost done.

The new game package view is almost wrapped up as well. Jesse showed off the latest color-coded iteration. Each item included in a package will have its own description and icon, making it easy to see what your getting with each purchase. We’re working on the icons currently, and making sure that the layout properly resizes for various screen sizes, and mobile devices.

We talked about upcoming 3d work and water effects to help add a bit of polish to the environment. The team discussed our item spawning system and the current state of the programmatic building system. They are both very close to the point where we can quickly customize playable worlds with any number of: structures/buildings, environmental items like trees and rocks, and loot controls, from what’s inside a warehouse full of crates, to how much food is in a refrigerator.

This led us to a discussion about a few of the large villages/areas we have planned for the future. We talked about the how fun a big village is, and how maddening trying to navigate a huge one can be. The last thing we want to do is create a place where it takes 20 minutes to run through a maze of stairs, ladders, and levels just to get a bottle of water or a handful of bullets.

The first version of our crafting system is fleshed out. There is a sizable list of items players can create to make their time in Lahaina more enjoyable and survivable. You can harvest: stone, cloth, metal, wood, and twine to build a wide array of weapons, armor, and gun parts. We fixed the bug that made the sky fill with wood when you chop down a tree, but discovered that a few rocks refused to give up stone or ore no matter how long you beat on them.

Finally, the art team is focusing on polishing up the entire map grid by grid, adding finishing touches and working out any bugs. We’re making sure that there is something of interest to explore, or a resource to gather in every area, keeping players moving around the entire map. As you can see from the shots below, we are making great progress with our global lighting and post processing work.

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

March 23, 2018

Getting Groups Together

As the week comes to an end, the web team worked on making our ecommerce system better, and adding a few new features. Jared built a cron job to address an order processing bug that could leave some orders in limbo. Everything seems to be working now, and orders are being fulfilled through the store as they should. Jesse focused on cleaning up the packages page and highlighting the differences between them. He showed off designs for a table style view of game packages so players can quickly see what each offers, as well as a new and previously viewed products feature.

This was the first full week of sprint 21 and one of the things we’re working on is building a team play system. As the proverb goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Although it’s not strictly required, we want to do everything we can to encourage players to group up and cooperate to survive the dangers of post-fracture Lahaina. We’re working on: a team making feature, map markers so you can keep track of team members, a VoIP system, and a way for you to revive other players if you happen to let them get mauled by a shrig while you make your escape.

We’re also expanding our crafting system. The team is adding cloth and twine harvesting, rock harvesting, and have a smelting system on the horizon. We’re adding recipes for a number of basic craftable items too. Chris found an interesting bug when he was out cutting down trees for a little firewood. In addition to filling his pack with wood, the entire sky filled up with logs. We have talked about a number of strange worlds that might have been born from the fracturing of reality, but we never considered the possibility of Woodworld before. We talked about it for a while, but the only thing we could agree on is that there would be no trimarans under any circumstance. Ultimately, we decided to just fix the bug, but not before grabbing the screenshot below.

Of course we continued work on our near real-time game news service, the Veil News Network (VNN), as well. Jesse worked on some lingering layout and icon overlapping issues, while Jared continued working on ways to randomize the language used in the newsticker. Making language sound unique in an automated system is not easy, but we’re working on it, and continue to look into different solutions.

While the art team adds the finishing touches and animations to the underground respawn area, we looked ahead at a few different areas and places of interest. The game will soon have new weapon parts to modify your favorite gun, a mine to explore, and an old oil tanker. We looked at a number of intriguing concept drawings of downtown areas and buildings. Below is a look at what one of our luxury hotels might look like 60 years after civilization collapses.

We’ll be back next week with the latest updates and images.

March 15, 2018

Logging Lahaina and Breaking News

As we come to the end of sprint 20, the web team remained focused on adding improvements to the Veil News Network (VNN) feature, and squashing bugs. Scrolling across the front page with test data currently, VNN will provide players with near real-time news about the most important events going on in the game. We plan on adding filtering features allowing you to see news specific to you, your friends, and your House (providing your a member of one), in the near future.

Jared worked on the news story templates to make them clearer, and added some more to cover all the different kinds of stories we plan to include. We discussed at some length different ways to ensure that the automated system randomizes language sufficiently. We want to avoid the feed getting bogged down with repetitive stories and alerts. It’s a nontrivial problem, and we came up with a few ideas to improve the service. We have a way to go before it’s working as well as we’d like, but it’s off to a good start.

In addition to the functionality work, Jesse did a lot of work on the newsticker look and feel. He adjusted some of the text size and color to make things more readable to old eyes like Chris’s. He also adjusted the speed of the newsfeed so even non-speed readers will have a chance to read the alerts. Of course with every new project a few bugs pop-up, and VNN isn’t any different. We found a few overlapping/rendering issues that Jesse should have fixed soon.

The spawning area got a lot of attention as well. With the first pass at an underground spawning area complete, we talked at length about improvements, and the look and feel of the next iteration. The art team showed off a few concept drawings for a future restart area. We discussed what that place should look like, and what should be available for players before they return to the wilds of Lahaina. We looked at a number of variations of the technology that restore players physical bodies, the Nuuskin machines, too.

We continued work on adding new slides to freshen up the look of the front page. A few new callouts will be added to explain some of the more complex systems in the game, and highlight important features. While everything you need to know is in the FAQ, we want to make everything as easy to understand as possible.

Finally, there’s some good news for everyone likes to sleep all night and work all day. Your Lahaina lumberjacking dreams can finally become a reality. The animations for chopping down trees is done, the harvesting system is working, and we’ve worked out our lingering wood bug. Previously, when a player tried to chop down a tree, every tree in a huge radius would produce wood. While it was great for clearcutting enthusiasts, it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, and was ecologically unsound. As you can see from the shot below, there is no shortage of harvestable wood and vines for your arts and crafts needs, providing you know where to look.

We’ll be back with more updates, pictures, and the latest logging news later this week.

March 13, 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

Reporting Crimes and Minting Coins

The push to create the Veil News Network (VNN), an interactive real-time service that reports on major game events and announcements, continues this week. The news API is collecting more metadata, and Jared’s story template library is growing to cover a variety of happenings and events. Jesse is working on animations for a newsticker on the front page, and a VNN news overlay for videos.

We discussed possible latency issues once the ticker is up and running, making sure live alerts don’t feel spammy, and some interesting game tie-ins. We talked about a “citizen reporter” type system, in which players could report crimes. Think of it as a sort of neighborhood watch with a healthy dose of extortion, witness tampering, and murder thrown in to keep it interesting. San had some clever ideas about how players might eventually manipulate the news to their advantage as well that we’re going to keep an eye on.

Overall ui work continues as well. We’re finishing up drag and drop for items in the inventory, and adding alerts for dropped items, so you don’t accidentally drop something important like a claymore before you go out into the bush. We’re adding finishing touches to a new fullscreen ui update, finalizing the new HUD, and adding some shadow/light scalability settings in the game settings ui.

We’re wrapping up the initial merch offerings this week too. Jesse is working out some details on some all-over shirt designs, finishing up a Kula coin (our premium currency), and completing our catalog with all images of available products, and game packages. We ran into a bug that was keeping shipping options from being displayed during checkout as well. Jared is hunting it down and the fix should be in soon.

The item spawning system is ready to fill your backpack with items of an appropriate power/usefulness level at an appropriate rate. While they can be fun for a few hours, getting rocket boots on your first day can make any game too easy, and ultimately not very fun to play. Terry focused on map builds and integrating Wwise and TrueSKY. We’re working on a handful of needed animations for long guns, and prone combat too.

Lastly, this round of map and game performance optimization work is just about done. We’re replacing the last of the old building components with parts from our programmatic building system, and adding audio support to the few remaining silent places around Lahaina. The safe sewer spawning area is done for now. Players can find a canteen and a few basic survival tools there, and take a minute to get their wits about them if they’ve just been killed in combat. As you can see from the pictures below, it’s not bad a far a post-apocalyptic drainage systems go.

February 27, 2018

Tag: VNN