We were only able to update the game with bug fixes this week but we have not been slacking off.
- Beacon bug fix
- Spawning bug
- Server crash fixes
The following 1st pass functionality development by our engineers have been completed:
- Dual Wielding
- Storage
- Locks for the Storage and Machines
- Machine Crafting
They’ll be released once we’ve done some more internal (functionality / usability) testing and finish implementing their 1st pass GUI. We are in the process of replacing the current inventory + handcrafting UI with a new version so that we do not have two different UI in the game. Also, the Dual Wielding UI is proving to be a bit tricky to design / implement. We are hoping that the UI will be good enough so that we can release some of the features above next week.
Our engineer’s first pass World Builder update and Resource Regeneration have also been completed. We are in the process of reviewing the changes and the new functionalities to see if they are at an acceptable quality for release. Also, we need to do some internal testing. We plan to release these soon too.
Sorry that these have been slow… but the wait will be worth it.
The next big things we will be tackling will most likely be Currency (Selling / Trading) and Player Progression. Oh, one more things, we are tweaking some of the blocks so you will see some changes with them in the next release.
Code
This week we have being adding the resource regeneration to the world builder and game engine. The resources are distributed so that they harder they are to get to, either deep underground or deep inside a mountain (say) then the more likely you are to find something valuable. This system with a little extra complexity is to make sure that resources also spawn in floating islands, glaciers on the surfaces, and huge mountains or volcanoes - to give a few examples.
The locks have been implemented and are are nearly ready. You can lock interactable items such as storage, doors and machines inside beacons. Locks don’t work outside beacons as players could easily remove the lock before accessing the device. There have been quite a few edge cases that we’ve needed to deal with, for example if you build a set of doors on the boundary of a beacon - with one door inside and the other outside. But who would build anything like that? We are polishing up the machines to make them more usable and adding in more of the items.
Checkout some more details about Locks from @dave here.
We’re continuing to work on getting the updated shaders to work on all three SKUs (Windows, OSX and PS4).
We’ve been working on the Boundless art tools, fixing up various export issues and tools.
The GUI has been adding in more polish, like physical responses (wobble) when items are placed to reenforce the physical nature of the GUI and Boundless universe.
The server deployment has been worked on to make it more scalable and adding some more test servers.
Design
This week we’ve managed to get some world colour palettes generated and ready to be looked at in game. The tool uses some clever colour theory to generate sets of colours which are broad, but where the colours complement each other. Hopefully we can get the palettes into game soon and see how they look. There will be a fair amount of work to get them to look great after seeing them in their natural setting, but the tool will allow us to do that. Roughly speaking, each block will have over 200 unique tints that will be exposed into the world builder and used during generation. These colours will then flow through the crafting system and tint al the items you craft and place in the world.
@lucadeltodecso has added some great features to the world builder, and we’ve started using the new version to make a library of new nodes to make the creation of further biomes easier.
Along with @gerryjacobs, @claudiotolomei and @Minyi we came up with a plan for creature variation (making sure all the creatures don’t look identical) and progression (making sure all the creatures don’t play identically).
GUI
GUI in-game is more functional and nearing a releasable state (now with the 3D depth and weight animations). It’s still missing proper icons and assets, but here’s a gif of our work-in-progress Inventory in action:
Earlier this week we posted a contact sheet of all the new icons palette soon to be included within the new GUI, including the four different icon weights.
Art
This week has all been about character race design. We’ve concepted a wide range of potential player characters. They’ll be shared soon.
Other concepting this week:
- Location Signal
- Signs
- Trapdoor
- Totem and Oort Cube - the default tools you have at the beginning of the game.
- Creature progression
- Beacon plotter
- Storage variations
We’ve been playing with some example worlds and spent some time iterating the new block textures. We want to ensure they are as aesthetically pleasing as we can make them when the worlds are procedurally generated.
Animation on the Cuttletrunk has continued this week - we’ll post on this new creature in the near future.
We’ve also been supporting the machine crafting integration.
We’re off to watch 
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