This week we updated the game to include player made Portals. Have you built and used one yet? All the details of this week’s update can be found here.

The next big change you will see is the re-skinning of the user interface. As it is not easy to release the reskinning bit by bit, we will most likely update the game once we have the majority of re-skinning is complete. This may not happen until end of March. Also, by then, we should also have the following in the game:

Lance integration.

Improved player progression and game balance including updated player objectives and tutorial.

Further improvements to the HUD.

Tweaked and new 1st + 3rd person animations.

Additional creature AI support for the Cuttletrunk and other AI tweaks.

Portal world rendering improvements to allow more portals to be open simultaneously.

Code

The portal code has gone live. We are continuing to refine the logic, including how the active portals switch and how much is visible through them to allow more active. This is a particular challenge on PS4 which has limited memory.

The Cuttletrunk is being upgraded with greater manoeuvrability and a new ‘drag attack’ that sucks characters (and creatures) towards it. If the Cuttletrunk manages to capture you prepare to go for a little ride.

The Attributes System is progressing with the Damage Systems and Items being upgraded. This means that it’s possible for us to create (and modify via buffs and progression) almost all elements in the game.

Further sounds effects were integrated and a simple environmental reverb system.

The GUI reskinning continues. We’ve also been working on the basic backend to support in game purchases such as private worlds. The PlayStation sign in backend is nearing readiness for initial testing.

Design

Below is a work in progress of the Boundless 1.0 GUI skin.

The current in-game (work-in-progress) version is on the left and Rob’s visual target is on the right. Rob only managed to point out 30 issues that still needing resolving.

We’ve also spent some time working on fixing the engine’s 2D distance rendering pipeline. Distance map rendering is a technique used in many games where sprites are converted to distance fields before being rendered with a custom shader. The advantage of this technique is that the assets are much smaller (so take up less VRAM) and give a perfect edge at any scale. This is a much more efficient technique especially when we need to scale the GUI and HUD up to 4k displays.

Below is an example Glyph in the source and distance map form.

We plan to migrate all the outstanding elements of the GUI + HUD across to this technique.

We’ve also spent the week iterating the new user experience. This included expanding the Sanctum with more tutorial objectives, a new set of in-game objectives and reconfiguring the initial stages of creating a beacon. We’re exploring the idea of allowing players to create single plot “campfires” that can’t be expanded and can act as temporary plots whilst you get the beacon crafted and placed.

Art

This week the art team have been busy working on race concepts, face modelling and 3rd person character tools animations.

Amanda has been concepting a set of six race 01 faces and a selection of full body decal designs:

Jess has been building our second race 01 face. We’ll share this with you soon.

Gerry has completed final 3rd person animations for tools. These will be available in the next release. Here’s her forum post with gifs.

Saturday morning is the new Monday!