We’re gradually getting closer to a version of Testing that is good enough to migrate Live. I think we’ll need 1 more Testing release before it should be ready. In parallel we have plenty of other features and assets in the pipeline which will also be rolled into the next Live release.
We’ve also been working again to try and reduce any latency issues. The next release of Testing will include some engine changes that improve the performance of the world meshing by making more stages of the pipeline run in parallel, and dramatically (fingers crossed) reduce the number requests to the server for worlds you’ve already visited. This should help make portals string into life much faster. Boundless will now take more advantage of PCs with multiple cores. We’ll make sure that there are sufficient options so that if you’re capturing or streaming Boundless, or talking live with friends, that the game doesn’t take all available resources.
We’ve also been reworking all the client + server combat code to enable much more prediction on the client. This should mean that the combat you see in the client matches what the server is doing. It makes combat much smoother and feel great. I think you’ll notice a big change once this is released.
Lots of design work has been happening to tie together all the elemental weapons, tools, buffs, bombs, and creatures in game. The recent HUD updates attempt to communicate this in a clear way.
Code
Testing was updated with version Testing 163. All the details are in the release announcement.
The Status Effects are being worked through, adding dynamic modifiers to creatures and characters, for example the Slow buff now slows down the target and its animations. Bombs continue adding the throwing animation and it now has a fuze time so you can time your throw. The bombs now bounce off creatures.
The threading of the meshing is now integrated in for the next update and should roughly double the speed, making placing blocks more responsive as well as the world appear more rapidly, if it is downloading the data quickly enough.
We‘ve be adding the meshes for campfire and beacon controls that signify the state of the beacon’s fuel.
The GUI work is focusing on the Furnace and Storage. The Objective also continue to be polished up.
There was further work on the PlayStation 4 version to address some issues around multiple portals and excessive ram use.
Design
Apart from implementing the new objective system, Luke has been balancing different areas of the game for most of this week. He started the week off with the threat generating system and how it affects nearby creatures, particularly how they react to players with higher threat values. He also spent some time on improving how much Iron and Copper is spawned on spawn worlds, in response to player feedback. To finish off the week, he has been balancing the micro-experience rewards for performing certain actions in the game.
Ollie has been working with Andy and Fooks this week to bring the bombs and status effects system to life. He’s been trying to come up with fun and rewarding uses for these new features which will hopefully be coming to the game very soon. A nice break from the project management stuff he was doing last week, but alas he still had some to do this time as well.
Rob’s week has been spent on status effects as well. He’s been working on new concepts for a whole set of icons to show skills, status effects and different colour combinations to better represent on the HUD what is happening in the game.
Status effect elemental table:
Player related icons:
World related icons:
He also put together some new screens that are shown when you log out, when you are defeated and when you return to the sanctum. Some of these can already be seen in the Testing version on Steam.
Art
The art team have been supporting the Testing release, prototyping bombs, developing character customisation and more prefabs.
Amanda has been exploring different visual styles for how player tattoos should be designed. We did a first test exploring hard graphic shapes and gradients with a flaming tattoo decals theme. During character customisation you will be able to select a tattoo design and control the 3 different design colours.
Jess has finished the buying basket model. Now in game. Let us know what you think! The idea was to clearly differentiate between selling and buying.
We’re adding the last few prefabs to our first Earth-like library:
Adding more richness when exploring caves.
Cave ceiling crystals:
Underground remnant:
Underground themed remnant:
Standing stones:
Ancient glacier portal remnant:
Overgrown portal remnant:
Dry desert oasis:
They’ll be another weekly dev update soon.
