We’re still busy preparing the next update to Testing. The aim is to make the next Testing update suitable for migration to Live for everyone to play. We really appreciate all the players reporting issues from the Testing releases. It really is super valuable.

The following are the main changes coming in the next Testing update:

Multithreaded chunk meshing.

Earn XP for standard in game actions: mining, building, chiseling, etc.

Objectives iterated based on player feedback.

Updated Furnace, Plinth and Trading GUIs.

Support for variable sized backpacks.

Campfire and Beacon control meshes added and showing fuelled status of the beacon.

Creature projectiles now fully predicted resulting in smoother and intuitive combat.

Player projectile damage now predicted.

Stamina rebalanced to operate more like food.

Code

We’ve been working on the projectiles system, adding support for shotgun style ammo and better prediction of projectiles for creatures. The aim is to allow each Slingbow to have a different firing function: rapid fire, sniper, shotgun. There has been further work on polishing up the bomb and its fuze as well as the status effects it delivers.

As part of Progression the inventory now supports variable sizes, getting larger as you level up.

We’ve update the GUI text rendering to support inlining coloured icons in the flow of text. This will be used to rendering controlling information during the tutorial, and also allow us to inline glyphs and other icons. The GUI reskinning has updated the furnace, plinth and trading.

We are continuing to work through the objective and adding any missing supporting logic.

We’ve added logic that will speed up meshing if you have already downloaded the data into your cache when revisiting an area. This should help portals open much faster. Further meshing logic has moved to a thread that should speed up remeshing when the world changes (building/mining) if it’s already meshing elsewhere as well as the lower level of detail meshes.

Design

Ollie’s has continued working on Bombs and Status effects this week. He also did some balancing for the core attributes and made Warp Crystal (formerly known as Warp Shards) easier to craft. This should help players who are struggling to get off their home worlds. There was some more project management tasks to do this week but luckily not as much as the previous weeks.

Luke is still working on the new objectives system. This week he’s mostly been generating a list of objectives to work as passive tasks for players to complete. This week he’s had support from Andy to introduce new elements and objectives to the tutorial. In addition to the objective system, he spent some time working on the roadrunner to make it more alert to nearby players and looked into balancing the Stamina drain when using items and jumping.

Rob’s focus this week has been on updating the economy screens in the game. He’s been looking at ways to improve the overall presentation and user experience for Request Baskets (formerly known as Buying Plinths), Trading and Shop Stands (formerly known as Selling Plinths). The names are still a work in progress, so let us know if you have any other ideas.

Setting up a Request Basket:



Another user selling items to the Request Basket:



New look trading interface:



Art

The art team have been mostly focusing on character customisation this week. Here’s a sneak peak of the character customisation module in action.

You’ll be able to choose from a library of faces and head pieces, character scale, body types, body colour, eye texture and colour. Plus a body tattoos - each with three levels of elaboration on the body, three areas to customise colours and a transparency slider to reduce the intensity if so desired. Checkout some examples below.

We’ve also been supporting development on bombs, prefabs and the new sanctum. More on these soon!