This week we’ve released a Testing update that includes a 1st pass of the following features:

Storage and Locks Updated Inventory GUI Updated Hand Crafting GUI

Full details of the Test 16 update are shared here.

Note: The update is currently available as a Steam beta under the name Testing.

The current short term release plan is:

This coming week: 1st pass Dual Wielding and associated GUI.

Next week: 1st pass Machine Crafting and associated GUI.

Exciting!

“1st pass” basically means that it’s an initial version that we’re releasing early for players to checkout and offer feedback + complain about. These features are still in significant development, we ourselves are still working out how much we like a feature and how best to alter it. This means that your feedback is extremely valuable.

We have started to work on 2 huge features of the game:

Economy - including Currency, Buying + Selling, and Player Progression.

When we have more visibility on when we might have the 1st pass ready for preview, we will let you know.

Whilst the World Builder and Generator have already been updated to support Wrapped Worlds, we’re now deep into updating the game to correctly support the Wrapped environments. This is more challenging that you might first imagine: projectiles, navigation, visibility queries, creature AI, physics, basically everything needs to respect the Wrapping. However, we’re making good progress and hope to release an update before the end of July. Watch this space.

Code

Dual wielding is nearing completion, with the radial menus for equipping left and right hand being added. The GUI has been fixing up issues and improving usability with the first version now on the testing branch. We have also worked on the storage and item placement on them. We have started work on the trading plinth so you can sell items to people.

We have started some of the groundwork for world wrapping, that will remove the edge of the world. The day / night cycle is being reimplemented with separate moon and sun configurations. We also added level of detail to some of the meshes, this will help performance when items are farther off. The engine work has continued with migrating the shaders and fixing up issues.

GUI

Now that the panel GUI is nearing completion, we’ve turned our focus to the HUD. We’ve been focusing on what information is going to be most important, and where to put it (avoiding obvious overlapping issues and using the same scaling logic we do with the panel GUI.

We’ve mocked up a bunch of different scenarios below so you can get an idea of how it’ll feel when you’re playing:

Chat, Trade, Pickups

New Location

Weapon Switching

Enemy Info and Damage Indicator

Status Effects

Finally, here’s a flat version that includes almost every element in one screen:

Art

The Art team’s main focus has been preparing for this week’s storage release. Other areas have seen good progress in character and creature pre-pro and creating tool benchmark assets.

Here’s our first character exploration concept. We’re very excited about the prospect of seeing some of these cool designs in action. We will make a character shortlist based on the community and team’s feedback. Whilst the Character Race concepts are all currently male there will be a full set of female variations that match the concept and design.

Creature work has continued apace. Here is our proposal for Roadrunner progression. The design gets more flamboyant and not armoured like most of the other creatures to show power status. The creatures progress will be inspired by the essence of the creature: toughness, speed, stealth, curiosity, etc. We like the idea of the elemental Roadrunner types leaving a trail of elemental ice or flame (or whatever) in their wake.

We first saw the Hopper in last year’s trailer sneaking to the world through a portal. Here’s the progression concepts for this creature. The Hopper is tough and temperamental. How will you destroy them? Or maybe they’re a handy tool if provoked and controlled skilfully. We’ll be prototyping the movement of this angry critter in game soon.

We also shared a post about the new Storage shelves. The Storage system is customisable allowing us to offer many different props that can act as storage. Here is the shelf storage concept:

Now we’ve decided on the progression language for the Boundless tools and weapons we’ve completed a benchmark asset set for the hammer. We’ll use these assets as standards for all the other tools and weapons.

We’ve also modelled the default held items a comforting light cube and trusty stick.

Animation

The Cuttletrunk has too many limbs x 2 !!

Progressing

Noise

We’re now in the process of integrating the first few tracks of music into Boundless. We’re insanely excited to share the direction we’ve taken. Hopefully - jeesh hopefully - everyone will love it.

We’ve also just started working with a new sound effects (SFX) designer who will begin fixing the shoddy state of the audio in the C++ version of Boundless. Hopefully we can catchup quickly and start filling the worlds with … wonder!!