DEV

Towers, Trails, and Tarnished Buildings

The team has been putting a lot of work into our creature AI this week. We’re making improvements to both animals and monsters after discovering that we’re having a little trouble with AI senses. Our Trophy Hunters in particular aren’t acting like keen predators, tracking down players to collect grisly souvenirs like they should. Instead, you occasionally run into groups who aren’t stirred to action until you get up in their face, and invade their personal space.

We’re adding new models for a few unique types of Trophy Hunters who use different tactics in battle, and have different abilities. Right now you can tell the ranged attackers from your standard mutant because they’re wearing floppy hats. While a hat based hierarchy for creatures would be interesting, and unique, we’d rather add cool looking physical differences instead. We discussed future creature abilities we’d like to see down the road, like the ability to use weapons and gear.

Our underground spawning area is getting some attention this week too. We’ve added the finishing touches visually to your subterranean home away from home, and are adding new audio elements as well. Once they’ve collected the starting gear laid out for them, and climb up the ladder, players now face the Communication Tower. We’re focusing our next play demo on that area, and are working on a short quest scenario. As you can see from the shot below, the map leading up to the tower is looking fantastic.
Responsive image

We’re making audio improvements in other areas as well. We’re adding new sounds for picking up and dropping items, and making sure that things made of wood sound different than metal items when they hit the ground. The team discussed updating all audio to Wwise, and briefly touched on the upcoming UE 4.20 upgrade.

The web team made some improvements to the shopping cart to improve user experience, and make sure everything goes smoothly with purchases. We took another look at our friend and referral system, and talked through some improvements we’d like to see down road. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to invite your friends, and reward you when they sign up and play.

Progress on filling in the game map continued this week too. The team has put a lot of time into material upgrades to improve look and performance already, and continues to put in a lot of road work to keep players moving around the map. With more time being put into the Comm Tower, we circled back to the idea of putting ziplines in a few key areas. We looked at what a few other games have done, and discussed how we’d like ours to work, as well as where they would lead. We’re currently using clouds of poisonous gas to keep players inside the areas we’ve completed on the map, and discussed other options for borders once the whole game area is complete.

The art team is busy taking the beautiful buildings and roads they made, and roughing them up so they better represent the toll of the great fracture, and decades of neglect. It’s a long process, but we’re coming up with some great ways to streamline the grunging. Below you can see some of the fruits of our anti-home improvement efforts with: cracked foundations, faded paint, weathered siding, and a nice layer of moss growing on the outside of one of our ruined homes.
Responsive image
Responsive image