Tom

Hey Hurtworldians,

This week I’ve been fixing bugs, continuing with vehicle work as well as evaluating the recent claiming changes and planning the next experimental patch, 0.6.1.0 which is planned to release on 2nd August.

Bugs

There’s currently a bit of a loophole that allows you turn resources into amber by using amber protection on an upgradeable item. Take the spear for instance, you can craft a stone spear then protect it for one amber. When upgrading to an iron tipped spear the amber protection is transferred. If you then suicide with this upgraded spear and grab the loot you’ll get four amber from the protection drop effectively trading ten wood, flint and shaped iron for three amber.

To close off this loophole in a way that is automatically handled we are now making protected items skip their amber drop if their protection originates from an item upgrade transfer (the item is still protected).

I’ve also fixed some problems with the shack, we now run a terrain overlap check on deployment to make sure the shacks spawn position isn’t intersecting into any level geometry.

I’ve also extended the check for overlapping machines on sleeper spawns to run on shack spawns as well which will stop players spawning into placed C4s and using the depenetration force to push their way into rocks.

I also fixed a bug in the vehicle claiming system where it was possible for your claim to fail but the amber cost would still be consumed (oops! sorry!). I also added a new alert panel that displays when trying to claim a vehicle of a type you already own one of.

We are currently aiming to get these fixes released in time for the weekend.

Vehicles

On the vehicle front I’ve got the slug up and running again internally including the heavy slot mechanics. I’ve also started experimenting with different traction models but there is still much more work to be done here.

We’ve been listening to the feedback on the vehicle claiming changes and understand that many of you haven’t been happy with them so I want to try to explain our reasoning behind the changes.

We want vehicles to be something players invest in over the long term with fragments and visual customisation just like their other items. To achieve this we think vehicles need to be at least as protectable as items, especially when vehicle fragments can be rerolled into other fragments through dust.

We also want to avoid people rage quitting from the game after losing a large investment like a vehicle and this did seem to be relatively common thing in legacy Hurtworld as evidenced by the large numbers of stolen cars in dominant team’s garages (these would despawn if the player continued to play and either claimed a new car or unclaimed the old one).

We also think that the amber drops from vehicles generally have more of a gameplay benefit than having spare stolen vehicles in a garage that usually exist just as trophies.

Vehicle wheel damage was removed due to complications with the insurance system, having no repair method and not having good enough feedback (having to view the vehicle window to see wheel health is kinda sucky)

The two main problems players have with the system seem to be losing the ability to permanently steal other’s vehicles and losing the ability to shoot wheels out.

For the wheels we are definitely not opposed to them being destroyed but due to complications with the insurance system it was quicker to just remove this feature so we could test the insurance system earlier. If we decide to stick with the insurance system we will work through the issues and bring destructible wheels back into the mix.

In terms of stealing vehicles I’m hoping the real value here is the prestige/bragging rights of owning the vehicles as trophies instead of a kind of schadenfreude where players are happy knowing that they depriving a player of their vehicle and making them suffer.

If it’s all about the trophy then I think it might be interesting to do something like drop a placeable number plate style trophy with the owners name on it that you can place in your base to show off.

There’s also the issue of the Kanga and Roach being too grindy and hard to farm but I see this as a balance issue that we can iterate on to find the right level of required farm.

With all this in mind we are delaying further vehicle work to gather more feedback, develop some solutions to these issues and then work on handling updates, new vehicles and claiming overhauls together in the same patch cycle.

Next Patch

For the next patch (0.6.1.0 releasing 2nd August) I’ll be focusing on adding dynamic weather systems (blizzard, sandstorm etc.) back into the game.

Currently we are pretty happy with how the progression transitions you into a new biome by forcing you to ‘poke’ into the new biome during its weak hours (night for heat, day for cold) to gather a new resource that will allow you to craft gear to stay in the biome during its strong hours. This works well but currently there isn’t enough reason to stay in the biome once you’ve managed to stabilize yourself in there and instead it almost immediately feels like you should be poking into the next biome. To mix this up we want to add a second stage to a biomes progression where you can establish yourself more and really thrive rather than just survive.

To achieve this I’ll be shuffling gear balance around along with biome temperature levels and crafting costs so there’ll be more of a farm gate to overcome before being able to poke into the next biome.

The weather systems will affect the temperature of the area which gives a reason for players to take thermal protection beyond baseline survivability levels for the biome. I’m hoping to use this to create more interesting decisions in what pieces of gear a player chooses to craft where they can choose to focus on say thermal protection or combat stats like accuracy and reload speed. Currently you pretty much need to build each item from each tier and there aren’t really any choices to be made until it comes to working out how to integrate toxin/radiation protection into your build or building an all rounder end game set.

TEHSPLATT

Hello, this week I’ve been putting some stuff together for the tropical biome, my original colour pallet was not well received so I’ve been exploring some new colours, trying to reuse assets as much as possible just to get the something out there. I think this biome needs a few rules set in place when using the splats/grass/trees, it seems that the grey cliff rocks really help to sell it, but I think the hills need to be toned down a bit and have slightly less rocks covering them. I feel like it needs 1 or 2 more tree options to help it along so that you don’t just feel like you’re in the green forest with random palm trees, it needs a bit more in the way of grass variation as well, currently it just has a green grass to match the splat and then a slightly greener grass that’s taller and fatter in smaller patches mixed in. The palm trees currently aren’t matched to the rest of the pallet, I would like to add in some lower occlusion tropical bushes as well.

To me it looks the most like a tropical biome when you feel like you are enclosed by lush foliage and cliffs, if you imagine it with a few more tropical looking plants in it and some water holes and what not I think it would look pretty nice.

Mils

This weeks biggest challenge was to make a wood that looks like wood and still holds to our art style. I think this is really looking good and should gel well with whats in our game already. The normal baking went well so I got onto the texturing pretty quickly. The wood is the only fully treated material in this shot. The wear passes aren’t done on the other materials, but will be ready in the next couple of days.

I’ll move onto the standard tip for this next and then the magazine after that so if we feel the need we can put it into the game sooner.

La Spencero

Haha! This isn’t Spencer, he’s on Holidays in Italy so if you see him there kick him in the nuts for us! 😛