Friday Dev Update: Patch, Models, and AI Code

9:19 AM Unknown 5 Comments





Here is what has been going on this week at Lavaboots Studios.





Patch 1.5.1 Pushed

First off, we got update 1.5.1 pushed live, which feels great. I’m glad we chose to go ahead and get that patch rounded off and pushed separate from the new island patch we are working on. 1.5.1 introduced the new humanoid models, rendering pipeline, and added some new content.



New Boat Models



Also this week, I have been collaborating with our modeler on some boat models! As part of the next update, we needed a new boat, so I contracted him to make one for us, which he did an excellent job with. The new boat makes the other boats in the game look unprofessional. And rightly so, as I modeled all of the other boats in the game myself (I am not a modeler). After seeing that, I immediately contracted him to model some more ships to replace some of the ones that I made. From what he has done so far, I think you’ll be pleased with the change when it comes.

Changing current ship models will, of course, ruin the placement of ship objects such as torch holders, beds, etc. I’ll come up with a way to handle this. I’m thinking I could add an option when inspecting boats that allows you to retrieve all attached upgrades to that particular boat.

I don’t yet have an ETA on the ship changes, as our previously planned content for next update takes priority. But I expect we will get them in either with the next patch or shortly afterwards.

AI Code

Other than pushing a patch and collaboration, I have been deep in the code this week. The new island is going to have a new NPC that will require different AI logic than what we already have in Salt. In order to facilitate that, I have been fixing up the system that we use for AI (we use behavior trees for those that are interested). I hurriedly left the system in a sort of a hackish state when I last worked on it, and it needed some cleaning up. That has been going quite well, and having a better underlying AI system will also serve us for the entirety of development.

Sounds And New Island Visuals

As for the other Lavaboots team members, Robert is diving into the visuals for the new island, and Will is working on sounds and music. Some new items we are going to add in the future are musical instruments that play songs when you use them. Will wrote a really cool pan pipe tune this week that we are going to use for that. I’m listening to it as I write this and it has me all relaxed.

- John Gamble (Lead Developer)