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.
