This week the team is finishing up our first pass at a crafting system. We’ve fixed some issues we had with crafting timers running too long, or not resetting, so item production should flow in Lahaina once again. We’re adding a repair/wash feature so you’ll be able to fix chips in machetes, clean gummed up firing pins, and scrub the Shrig blood out of your cargo shorts, extending the life of all your gear. We talked about a design for a repair bench, and the possibility of having a group crafting system in the future.
We did some performance improvements to the player inventory, and started work on a tier 2 loot drop system. While our first loot drop scenario is a scramble to get to the gear first, this second option is about holding an area for a set period of time. A flare will go off letting players know what area needs to be defended. Creatures and players will attack the area until the timer goes off, and a loot chest or hidden cache will open for the successful defenders. We added a way for players to throw melee weapons to help them fend off invaders, and because throwing a shark-toothed koa axe at someone’s head is awesome.
San added new camera rotation algorithms, and a few other improvements to the VNN live feed on the front page. The drone coverage has never looked better, and gives a great view of many places of interest in the game. Jesse added some improvements to the animations on the video overlay, and we discussed adding a few more bits of information to what it already displays.
Lots of other animations were included to other parts of the game too. Various player movements including: going prone, a number of weapon actions like stringing a bow, and racking the slide of a gun, and new ladder animations were added this week. We discovered a great bug this weekend too. When you kill a rabbit in the game and try to harvest its meat or fur, it explodes and reforms again. While an endless supply of small exploding animals sounds like a good hook for some sort of rodent throwing warrior class, it’s not a feature that we want to keep in the game, and has no basis in Hawaiian history or culture.
The web team made some improvements to the Shop page. We optimized images for all products and packages, improving performance, and Jesse fixed a few lingering layout issues. We then turned our attention on making a 3D game map for players. We talked about different layers that we could add to show different types of information like House, and friend locations, as well as landmarks and key buildings.
Audio improvements continue throughout the game, and we’re doing some AI work to ensure that the horrors of the jungle aren’t just terrifying, but smart too. We’ve made several HUD updates to make things look and play better. In addition, we’ve updated the Settings ui so you can personalize the game to you liking. Finally, with the first iteration of our programmatic building system up and running we talked about what we’d like to improve next. As you can see below, buildings on the beach are looking great.
As always, we’ll have more updates and pictures later this week.
