This week we updated the game to include slightly smarter creatures and displaying location markers on remote planets in the HUD.

We have finished working on allowing players to build their own portals. The code is in the current release but we have yet to enable it as we did not have the time to do sufficient internal testing. We need to choose the recipe for Oort Shards that powers the portal.

Next this week, we hope to release the following:

Warping to friends.

Updated creature presentation in compass.

Updated character animation for some of the tools. E.g. the shovel.

Further improvements to the HUD.

Additional moves and AI for the Cuttletrunk.

Possibly additional VFX and SFX added.

We have started to reskin the User Interface to reflect our final design. You will start to see changes to UI such as the inventory screen by mid March.

Code

The portal code is now in and being tested so, all being well, will be in the next release.

The new creature drop system was completed. The creatures pathing have been improved again, now able to get through one block wide gaps. We have also resolved why some creature audio was not playing so there will be more sfx in the next version.

The gui skinning is being worked through, with the inventory being updated. The additional planet hud information is being implemented. The user can now see which planet friends are on and where to allow them to warp to them.

The damage system is being overhauled to use attribute system, so flaming or corrupted hammers etc will deal different kinds of damage.

We’ve also worked on an demo version of the game for an upcoming event and resolving a number of bugs that showed up.

Further work on was done on the Sony TRCs, such as the Trophies back end. The database testing continued and ironed out a few back end issues.

Design

@olliepurkiss has been working on an idea to score builds based on the resources used. It wouldn’t be able to judge how awesome things look, but providing some sense of progression based on how much time, energy and / or Coin has gone into the blocks and props will give builders a sense of satisfaction. He’s also looked into how villages, towns and cities are identified and marked on the worlds. Around that there’s been lots more work to do on attributes data for characters, creatures and items.

Rob has been working on the character information and skill tree GUI

@luke-turbulenz Has been working on an expanded Sanctum to include character creation, account creation and teach new players the basics of Boundless.

Art

The art team has been busy on the first character race modelling, VFX and 3rd person animations.

We’ve also been working on a list of earth-like prefabs for our worlds for V1.0.

@jesshyland rebuilt a new head template in preparation of new face designs and new head shapes. Here she’s matching our current head shapes to the new template :

This image shows the two body sizes and shapes available for our race.

The more slender character body mesh. The slender character is also scaled smaller in game:

Last but not least, here’s the first of our new faces. We’re very excited to be working on these. This is an ‘elf’ face sculpt :

@gerryjacobs has been working on the 3rd person tool animations. The shovel animation should be in next this week’s release.

Code (@michaelb and @lucadeltodecso) have also provided us with a neat system that scales the 1st person tools and weapons to compensate for changes in screen aspect ratio. This means the tools/weapons are now centralised so we can go ahead and author the final 1st person animations and prototype the lance.

Dom has completed all the elemental point effects for impacts. Here’s a sneak peek of the corrosion version: