Weapon Archives - Page 2 of 3

We Need To Secure the Computers In the Preservation Zone

from: Brandon Kama
to: Greg Iona
date: Fri, May 16, 2031 at 4:53 PM
subject: Securing the Computers In the Preservation Zone

Hi Greg,

I know I’m supposed to go through official channels with complaints and concerns but we have an ongoing issue with the Phxicom terminals out here that I’d like to get addressed. I’ve sent my concerns up the chain of command, and called the head Forestry and Wildlife office a handful of times with no response. I know you and Tom are good friends so I was hoping you could talk to him for me because I’m not sure the messages are getting to him.

In case you didn’t know, The Division of Forestry and Wildlife partnered with Phxicom last year to install terminals along the trails and key points of interest in the Preservation Zone. It’s been a hit with the tourists. A visitor who buys a lifetime pass from the Department of Land and Natural Resources gets a key that can be used at any of terminals in the zone. The key keeps track of where you’ve been and displays it on an overlay. It points out places that might be of interest to you and how far away they are based on how fast you’ve been traveling. They added a bunch of other features this year like a geo-location app so you can identify where pictures were taken, and a bird song identifier. Our troubles began soon after that.

We began to notice that a large number of guests had keys. That didn’t seem like a problem at first until the membership report came in and the math didn’t work. According to the main office only 13% of visitors paid for a lifetime membership. Then we got a complaint from a tourist that a key was stuck in one of the terminals. When we discovered that the key was a poorly made knockoff, my mind immediately went to Ano Lee and his gang of degenerate builders.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of going up there, but everything they say is true, it’s surreal. The first thing that hits you is the smell. It’s like someone filled a sweatsock with ranch dressing, breaded it with salt and vinegar chips and deep-fried it. I swear one of the cops I was with gagged when we walked into the printer shed. I know they have this fantasy that they’d be able to rebuild society, or would survive better because of all that maker stuff, but if mankind had to count on them after the apocalypse I’d rather swim out to sea and take my chances with the sharks. Of course nobody knew where Ano was and gave us the runaround so we kept looking.

Eventually we made it over to that dayglow nightmare they call the tchotchke hut. At least the smell there was manageable and you could barely hear the racket of all those printers, I can almost see why it’s so popular with the tourists. We started looking around and at first all we find is the usual plastic crap you’d expect. Then I started finding some really weird stuff at the back of the shop. They had a section of solar-powered toothbrushes of every color you can image and a waterproof toatser oven. I turned around to point it out to the police and noticed a box sticking out from under a shelf. When I pulled it out I saw it was filled with counterfeit keys.

Long story short, they made a deal with the prosecutor, paid a fine and ended up repairing some of the benches along the trails, replaced some signs, that sort of thing. I thought that was going to be the end of it but I should have known better. Over the last few weeks someone has been stripping parts off of the terminals and leaving some not-so-tourist-friendly images on the most visited machines. Whoever is doing it has been careful but has left a trail a couple of times. I think you can guess what direction the trails have led. I’ve called the cops multiple times of course, but they haven’t found anything up there yet.

I’ve been asking for more rangers to patrol the area but haven’t heard anything back. I understand that there’s budget issues to consider, but I feel like this is a great program that is being ruined by a group of extremely vicious and dirty ne’er-do-wells. I’m not sure if Phxicom has a model that’s tougher to dismantle quickly or something. This is a great promotion for them too and maybe someone over there should take a more active interest in helping us out. I don’t know. Hopefully you have a solution or can at least pass my concerns on to someone who does. Thanks in advance!

May 16, 2031

Excerpt from Captain Hank Gaud’s Book “Around the World In 80 Milliseconds”

The transport area looked nothing like I imagined it would. There was no hoop or archway to walk through, no door, or giant metal cannister that I would be lowered into. No, it looked just like a sturdy chair with some some equipment and a thousand tubes and wires mounted above. The team had spent years preparing for this moment.

They had sent a 1kg cube of tungsten through the gateway back in 2026 and some of that same team surrounded me. I’d be lying if I said some of their stories about the early days weren’t still stuck in my head. Some of the first cubes were lost forever. They still didn’t know where for sure. Others ended up warped and misshapen. One even got stuck to the floor somehow. The rat made it through the following year. They didn’t talk much about that, which worried me more than the earlier cube horror stories.

They had two-and-a-half-years to get it right I kept telling myself. I had to trust that they wanted me to make it as much as I did. We were all on the verge of making history. Like me, these people were the best of the best, specially chosen for the project. I trusted them with my life. It was my heart beating out of my chest that I was worried about.

As a pilot you usually have the semblance of control even when everything has gone to shit. Pulling on a stick, flipping a switch, or pushing a lever helps you focus even if it doesn’t help. A focused mind is a fast mind, and a fast mind makes fast decisions. It’s those fast, definitive decisions that can save you when the aircraft, and you, come crashing down. This was completely different.

The chair would hold me completely still. It didn’t matter how quickly I knew the process was working or not. There wasn’t anything for me to do but hold on and pray that everyone had done their job. As they strapped me in, I wondered if I was the right person for the project, but doubt is a dream killer. I had trained hard for this day and we were going to make this dream of Dr. Oeming come true. Just then I saw him enter the room.

Ironically his jet was having mechanical problems that day and he had to book a last minute flight. He had called earlier and told everyone to conduct the test even if he couldn’t make it, but I couldn’t imagine that day without him. I wondered if the people around Archimedes or Tesla appreciated just how lucky they were to be around that kind of genius. I knew that I couldn’t understand it fully myself. I didn’t know how any of this worked, not really. I was just the guy brave or dumb enough to volunteer. That didn’t mean that I was ignorant of what an honor it was. I appreciated him the way someone who doesn’t paint can acknowledge a work of the great masters. I’ll remember the look of excitement in his eye and the quiver in his voice when he wished me luck until the day I die. If this went all as planned my name would forever be associated with Eric Oeming. That alone was worth all the risks.

It was time and the countdown began. I felt the tingle of electricity on my skin. The hum grew louder and louder until it was deafening. The room began to shimmer like the air off hot tarmac. I realized that I couldn’t hear anything anymore. It wasn’t just quiet, there was a complete lack of any sound and everything went black for a moment. I thought I heard music playing somewhere off in the distance and my head began to spin. Then just as quickly as it had gone dark, a blinding light made me wince. Slowly the light began to dim and I could once again hear the normal sounds of the lab. My head was still spinning. I was glad that I was strapped into the chair. I could hear shouts and I thought something had gone wrong. After half a minute or so I could see what the shouting was about. In front of me was the lab in Kona instead of Seattle, where I had just been. It had worked! I had traveled through the Veil.

August 4, 2028

Weapon Paint Overs and Mutant Steering

Would you like to run around the wilds of Lahaina, build bases, shoot mutants, and help us work out the kinks? We’d love to have you in one of our testing sessions. Just join our discord and ask in our “testers” channel. See you there!

As sprint 45 winds down and the team adjusts to working from home, we continue our push to refine the player construction system. We added torch attachments outside of windows offering plenty of light to deter bandits, introduced sleeping bags for an authentic end-of-the-world slumber party feel, and added weapon damage and decay modifiers to construction pieces. Many bugs were fixed this week too. We corrected issues with some construction attachments showing 0 health when they were full, arrows not dealing damage to pieces, and a problem with pieces not rotating properly when placed. We squashed a bug that was keeping rivers from being intractable as well. Players can now build bridges and drink their fill from Lahaina’s pristine creeks and rivers.

We also worked out a few kinks with the island’s mutant population this week. We discovered that the AI spawn managers were spawning one additional AI beyond the intended maximum across the map and spawning huge groups near the shoreline. We love a bloody beach as much as anyone but there were so many mutants there that you barely had room to lay down a towel after combat. The team worked out some navigation issues keeping AI from going up and down stairs or going through doorways and corrected Big Bob’s charge attack. Nothing is sadder than a mutant overlord reduced to simply plodding into combat.

With more mobile opponents here, we’ve been working on some weapon paint overs with some great results. Below you can see our touch on the Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle. We’re particularly fond of the design work on the SCAR’s stock.

April 3, 2020

Contests and Camera Drones

The team finished up a lot of drone work, and made a bunch of improvements to the autonomous cameras that record the game action high above Lahaina. We’ve added improved decision logic to help them decide what’s worth following and what isn’t. We added a time limit to how long a drone can be in non-playable area before it heads back to find something worth recording. In the past, they would occasionally end up trapped inside a building or teleporting underground, but we’ve improved their stuck detection and teleportation logic, so hopefully there will be no more “subterranean exploration mode”. In addition the team added: Improved panning, lighting support, a new spotlight mesh to make them easier to spot by players, basic search patterns, sub. object focus when viewing multiple targets, and the spotlight can now move separately from the camera.

With the drones working better than ever, we took to imgur to talk about the game’s co-stars that share the spotlight with players, the animals and mutants. We made a lot of progress on AI last year to make the game’s enemies challenging and unique. We’ve added pack behavior to our wolves. If 2 or more happen to meet up they will form a pack and start hunting together. If a wolf finds prey or is aggroed it will howl for help, attracting all those around it. Our cannibals can smell blood from a fresh kill and will come to investigate, so players will have to clean up after themselves if they go on a rampage in the jungle. Below you can see some early concept art of one of our cannibals.

You’ll need more than your fists and wits to survive the dangerous wilds of Lahaina. While there are many different weapons in the game, players can always count on having one weapon/resource gathering tool in their inventory, a shark toothed pan. A tongue-in-cheek homage to the numerous shark toothed (leiomano) weapons in the game, the pan isn’t the best weapon, but it will do the job in a pinch, and is easy to clean with some coarse salt and elbow grease. Here’s a good look at what the pan looks like before being used in the field.

Finally, were giving away another XFX AMD Radeon RX 570 RS 8GB. There are multiple ways to enter, including joining the Fractured Veil discord server and reserving your player name. It’s the perfect thing for viewing the deadly beautiful wilds of Lahaina. Our previous winner sent us some pictures of his prize installed in his system and ready to go. The contest ends February 13th just in time for Valentines day.

January 15, 2019

Directing Drones and Seeking Shelter

As the week gets started the web team continues the front page facelift, and navigation update. Jesse has completed images for all of our social networks, and is working on a few custom overlays for streamers, as well as layouts for upcoming contests and announcements. We’re combining site navigation all in one place to streamline things, and help users find what they’re looking for more quickly. A number of minor improvements like new modal windows, and an easier to find download button are in the works too. Jared is still working on getting the drone footage to display properly, and it should be streaming live footage of the wilds of post-fracture Lahaina soon. In the meantime, you can always watch on our YouTube page.

The tech team is putting out the last of the fires caused by the UE 4.20.2 upgrade, but we’ve worked through almost all of the problems the update caused. Terry has worked out the issues with trueSKY. Beautiful clouds, oceans, and sky are right around the corner. We fixed a number of other lingering bugs, including tracking down an issue that was causing certain types of loot to spontaneously disappear from your bag. Nobody likes disappearing bullets, no matter how easy they were to find.

We’re making a number AI improvements focusing in particular with firearms and our Trophy Collectors. We’re adding some situational awareness to our plague-ridden body part collectors. We found their actions, (especially in groups,) to still be more chaotic than we’d like. The team is focusing on adding some cunning, and improving their battle tactics. In addition, we’re teaching some of our NPCs, like the cannibals, to shoot first and eat players later. They’re learning things like: laying down suppressing fire, herding players into groups for melee combatants, and not switching their machine guns to full auto until they’re close enough to not worry about accuracy. Lahaina is about to get a lot more dangerous.

The first iteration of a player bank is nearing completion. Soon, players will have access to a self-contained inventory to stash away the things weighing down your pack, or that you can’t quite bear to drop on the ground. Our drone cameras are getting some love this week too. In addition to upgrading them with the newest geographical info to keep them from gliding through the ground, we’re putting in a lot of work teaching them what to film. We’re improving their audio detection, so that they will recognize things like a fight, stop, and film the action. We’re also teaching them when to move on, so they don’t get stuck on someone determined to chop down enough trees to start their own lumber company.

We’ve made some “quality of life” improvements to help make the game more fun to play, and even have a new starting tool/weapon in the works for players to use when they spawn in. We discussed making sure that crafted items had more “health” than items found in the rubble, and ways we can encourage players to experiment with alternative ingredients when hard at work at the crafting table. We’re not encouraging people to try to make glass rifles, but we want to reward those who think outside the box. We’ve made some improvements to the bow and compound bow to make them look and sound more realistic as well.

Finally, we took to Imgur this week to talk a bit about the progression of buildings in the game, and the importance of seeking shelter. The Great Fracture not only wiped out most of civilization, it also had a lasting effect on global weather patterns. Maui was no stranger to the occasional severe storm or hurricane, but after the accident, the weather became much more unpredictable. Finding decent shelter is just as important as gathering food and water. We looked at some early concept art and talked about the progress we’ve made. As you can see from this shot below, having a cold drink on top of the Communication Tower, is a much different experience than collecting rainwater in one of the ramshackle huts along the beach.

October 23, 2018

The Distribution of Loot

The team is finishing out the week by focusing on a few ui improvements. Currently, it can be hard to see in the heat of battle what items you have selected or equipped from your inventory. The last thing we want is players mistakenly splashing mutants with a canteen, instead of filling them full of lead. We’re adding improvements to better outline the stuff you want to use. We’re also working on hitmarker improvements so you can line up your shots more accurately, either on the fly, or after a measured exhale.

While Terry and crew continue to manage the UE 4.20.2 and trueSKY upgrade, we made a few improvements to the map. We found some areas are too resource poor for our liking, especially when it comes to metal and minerals. The team is adding more rocks in these areas, allowing players the ability to smash stones until they give up the goods. We also talked at some length about points of interest visibility on the map. We’re making some improvements to better highlight places that are important for quests, might hold valuable loot, are fun to explore, or just act as landmarks and rallying points.

We’re just wrapping up final touches on the next round of mutants to chase players around Lahaina. These gruesome creatures will offer players new types of challenges to overcome, through different tactics and attacks than the Trophy Hunters do now. The group has been focusing on improving ranged AI this week too. We’re improving the tactics employed by ranged attackers like: taking cover between shots, focusing on certain targets, and funneling players into the teeth and claws of waiting melee fighters. After some discussion about what types of mutants would still retain enough of their minds to use complex weapons, we started working on gun tactics for specific creatures.

We’ve been moving all of our audio over to Wwise, and making some improvements as we go. Every area and building has its own specific noises, so those who’ve spent a lot of time exploring could theoretically tell where they were just by listening to the background noises. We’ve made some improvements to reloading sounds, because the noise a shotgun makes while being racked can be a great morale boost before combat, or a warning that something really bad is about to happen. We’ve made some other minor audio changes too, like slightly delaying the sounds of doors, and adjusting the volume of footsteps on different types of surfaces.

One of the biggest projects this week has been making improvements to the loot system. We’re creating all new loot tables based on “regions” on the map. While players have a chance to pick up any kind of loot anywhere, we want certain items to be rare in certain areas, and more plentiful in others. For instance, if you’re looking for shark teeth, you might find them anywhere, but beaches will be the best places to look. The mountains and dense jungle will turn up more harvesting tools and raw resources. Ruined neighborhoods hold more provisions than other areas, and downtown is the place to look for weapons and ammo. We’re also working on adding visual cues to help players see where a loot drop scenario is happening, and adding the same for quests.

Finally, we continue to work on improving performance issues with the Veil Station and our procedural building system. While we’re making progress on turning the station into the future social hub of the game, the team is also building out neighborhoods surrounding the Thorcon Power Plant. We’re still making performance and materials improvements to the automated building system, but as you can see from these shots below, the neighborhoods that we can build on the fly are looking pretty good.

September 20, 2018

Lahaina Loot Boxes

The team did a lot of inventory and crafting work over the weekend, to make sure the arts and crafts scene in post-fracture Lahaina remains vibrant. They added some ui improvements, made some adjustments to the drag and drop between the inventory and crafting screen, and worked through stacking and splitting issues. We added a double press item deletion safeguard to make sure players don’t accidentally destroy an item when they are in a clicking frenzy. The team also expanded the official recipe list with a few new useful creations that will come in handy when exploring the wilds. We took some time to discuss mystery/experimental recipes as well, and how best to encourage players to experiment, and discover how to make things not written down

After finding and fixing a whole new round of weapon attachment bugs, we finally have the situation in hand. Scopes, stabilizers, suppressors, mounts, magazines, sights, and bayonets are all working as they should now. We still need the art team to make a final pass, ensuring that everything looks good, but the mechanics are working well.

With all the add-ons working for weapons, we took some time to make sure there was something worthy to shoot at, and made good progress with creatures and AI. Our creature AI got an upgrade, and we have the first pass at wave/group tactics done. The horrors of the jungle avoid grouping up in tight areas like halls and doorways, they move at angles instead of straight lines, and they make use of cover as the run through the jungle. We discussed making stronger versions of our Trophy Hunters and looked at a number of potential improvements like: ranged attacks, poison, healing, and buffing as well as just making unsually tough or fast individuals.

We continued work on group play, finishing up the ability to heal others in your group. We need to add a little ui polish, and a round of testing, but we’ve worked out all the previous bugs, and have the system up and running. Now your best shooters can stay shooting as you patch them up, and players too hurt to move can get back on their feet in a hurry.

We’ve made some improvements to looting too. The time it takes you to empty a container in now based on its size, (bigger containers take longer to pillage.) We are finishing up the visual effects and map alerts for our loot drops to make sure it’s easy to find where gear and goods have appeared on the map. We want you to spend your time gripped in a life or death struggle for those weapons and resources, not fighting to find them.

Terry is completing documentation for the Git rollover, and finishing setting up the East Coast mirror. We scratched a few longstanding bugs off the list, and started work on drone camera documentation. We looked at some of the improvements and fixes included in UE 4.20 and discussed an upgrade strategy that would give us the most benefit, without chasing down a tsunami of compatibility issues.

Finally, our map rebuild and restoration took a few more steps forward. After a few setbacks last week kept us from pushing the new map to production, we plan on doing it by Friday. All the world map code support is finished, and we continue to fill in the play area section by section. Below you can see the framework of some ruins along the beach, just waiting for an apocalyptic makeover.

Check back later in the week for more updates.

July 25, 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

Filling In the Map

As we close out sprint 24 , the group is busy hunting down bugs, and adding finishing touches. We’ve been having some trouble with the Veil News Network’s (VNN) live broadcast on the front page crashing. We’ve identified the issue, and the team is putting in a fix that should keep the drone’s feed playing as it makes its way around the game map, highlighting key areas and capturing gameplay in real time. We’ve set a prerecorded fallback video in place as well, to ensure that the feed always displays a tour of post-fracture Lahaina, not static.

The web team fixed a few layout issues, and made some improvements to player and House cards. We worked on some icon improvements to make things look more consistent across the page, and made some animation improvements as well. Jesse completed the Paddle Creek Games bumper trailer, and it looks fantastic! He uploaded a version with audio last night, and the whole thing is a few iterations away from being ready to go.

The tech team is wrapping up the last of the weapon attachment bugs we discovered a few weeks ago. After fixing a really bad Aiming Down Sight (ADS) jiggle, we opened up a Pandora’s box of weapon add-on issues: bad sights, crooked scopes, and wrongly-sized attachments. We’ve worked through most of the problems, and just need to test the fixes in the game to work out the kinks.

Our 3rd loot drop scenario is finished, and ready for testing too. Players will have to take an item safely from one location to another, while being hounded by enemies, in order to claim valuable cash and prizes. If you think that sounds suspiciously like a quest, you’re right. We briefly discussed building on this to start a quest system in the very near future. Mindlessly rampaging through what’s left of Lahaina can be a very rewarding experience. However, there comes a time in everyone’s life, even a bloodthirsty gamer, when you long for some direction and purpose. Quests can help fulfill that need, even if it’s just bringing a bag of shark teeth, and some coffee to the armory in the morning without getting killed along the way.

Our monsters got a little smarter this week, as the team’s AI work continues. We are fixing a few of their battle tactics, and have added a bunch of new animations to make them, and their reactions look more realistic. We made some improvements to group play as well, including the ability to heal others in your party, and finding friends to fill out the ranks, or replace underperforming party members.

We made some crafting refinements, and are working out some drag and drop, and stacking issues. The HUD got a few ui tweaks, and layout updates to make it more helpful, and easier to use. We’ve fixed some lingering problems with the rain, and are working on the fog to make look better now.

Lastly, one of our biggest projects recently has been redoing the game map. We’ve stripped the whole thing, and started to rebuild the play area using topography data to make it look and feel as real as possible. We’ve finished importing the roads around Lahaina, and have replaced the foliage with more native plants, improving both performance and look. This week we’re clearing out the areas where our buildings and ruins will go, and started work on adding the effects of a global catastrophe to the roads and paths in the game area. If all goes as planned, we’ll start adding buildings next week, and filling out the map with key areas, and places to explore. Below you can see a bird’s eye view of the play area as it stands now.

July 6, 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

Tag: Weapon