Spencer

Hi Guys,

This week I’ve continued work on the map marker system which required some upgrades to network object culling scope. These upgrades allow us to do arbitrary distance culling rules for individual entities that require more complex logic for who should be able to see them. Previously we could only cull based on grid cells of a fixed size. Now an entity can specify its own culling logic implementation.

Long story short, needed low level upgrades to support what we wanted to do which will also improve network performance in other places. Nothing particularly exciting to show.

We are still on target for the 11th for the clans patch.

Mils

The Blast Furnace is looking really nice and is ready to go into the project. I was asked by Spencer to make this one look nice and grimy and I reckon it hits the mark. We added some windows to either side so you can see light spilling from them when the furnace is on. I added a nice molten ore texture that will switch on and off with the function of the furnace also. This looks much less like an upside down rocket ship :P. I’m tidying up some other assets to round out the week and then onto the next thing.

Tom

Hey Hurtworldians,

This past week I’ve been working on the clan system and making some good progress.

Right now I’ve got all the basic clan functionality up and running on the backend (things like clan creation, applying to a clan, accepting/denying applications, promoting/demoting members etc.) and a working front end (UI windows, clan creation consumable item) for basic clan management although they are very much still using programmer art so aren’t quite ready to show off yet. This coming week we’ll be testing all of this and then I’ll be iteratively making improvements as well as hopefully implementing the real art for the UI.

Clans Window

The first of the new UI windows to manage clans is a generic clans window that shows all the clans registered on the server. If you are not currently a member of a clan you can use this window to apply to join a clan and if your application is accepted by an online member with the right permissions then you will join the clan. We chose this over sending out invites as it was easier to implement (no need to add some kind of view of all online players in game) and we think it’s much easier for new players to discover clans and find friends this way.

Later down the track the clan window will also double as a kind of scoreboard for clans allowing you to see how they rank against each other but the gameplay systems to support that aren’t going to be ready for the next patch (pretty confident that they are going to be worth waiting for though!)

My Clan Window

The other new UI window is actually a new tab for the character window, the button for this is going to take the place of the handcrafting button (which is moving to the interaction tab system). When selected this window will show you all the relevant information about the clan you are in. From here you’ll be able to see which members are online and offline and see their ranks, you’ll also be able to leave your current clan from here.

If you have sufficient permissions you’ll also be able to view all applications to join the clan and choose to accept or deny them. With sufficient permissions you’ll also be able to promote, demote and kick clan members from this screen.

TEHSPLATT

Hellooo, this week I’ve been working on finding a good consistent style for the hair, this has proved to be a pretty hard challenge because we need something that’s reasonably quick to do. The main thing I’ve been trying to do is cut down on noisy details that create a fuzzy mess when you aren’t up close, this creates another problem how ever, as those finer details give us something that represents hair, so currently trying to find a good balance with that. Also been doing a bunch of tests to see if I can get hair looking good with some shine from the standard Unity shader and so far, it hasn’t been great. It’s pretty easy to make jet black hair look good with basic specular but as soon as you move into lighter colours it all falls apart, so I’ve concepted some looks that we might be able to build shaders for to get away from the matte blob look. I also finished swapping out the FPS hands to slightly less square and sharp ones, still having problems with the 3rd person swap though.