This week we have been busy testing new features and fixing bugs for the Testing updates we did on Thursday and Friday. We will be fixing more bugs and making tweaks with feedback from the community next week so that we can update the official Live release with all the latest goodness.

Next month, we will be putting more efforts on the following.

HUD + GUI update to the new skin.

Creature asset creation.

Slingbow, grapple and lance mesh updates.

More SFX and VFX.

Please report all bugs and issues here for the recent Testing updates.

Code

This week there lots of work on features to get the release out. The release notes cover most of what has been worked on.

In addition we’ve been working on:

a more sophisticated Spawn Locations for creatures and players, both when they first join, to improve the ‘golf drop’ and when they respawn after death.

making the portal transitions even smoother.

the procedural palette generation for worlds.

We’ve been looking investigating back end database options and started some refactoring to allow benchmarking. The server were updated to Ubuntu 16.04. We have had an VFX artist join us so there’s been quite a bit of knowledge sharing and set up.

Design

@Tobelawe has wrapped up the five world configs and numerous biomes that will provide worlds for us in the near future. This is a great base to build on, but there is plenty more amazing things that could be done. All of his work will be available to see and play with in the World Builder. The Worlds and Biome used in the Testing 22 release are currently in a branch of the boundless.worlds project. If you want to contribute to the worlds for the game you can get involved – message @nevir or @olliepurkiss for help on this.

@luke-turbulenz has been tweaking and balancing experience gaining and the rewards. He’s also continued to work on the design for the stats system, as well as thinking about VFX that are important from a design perspective. Finally he saved @olliepurkiss from going mad by doing the second half of the descriptive text for the objects in the game.

@olliepurkiss has been helping to get the release ready, keeping up with reviewing bug reports, polish tasks and supporting the coder’s work on analytics and “smart stacking”.

Art

This week the art team have been supporting the Testing release build.

We’ve concepted adjustments to the Totem to support the new Location Marker creation on remote worlds.

We’re modelling the final Shovels: wood and stone seen below. They will be added to the Testing and Live releases soon.

This week we presented the first 4 Boundless creatures, including their Progression, Elemental and Exotic visual treatments. Each post contains details on different aspects of the design. You can check them all out below:

The initial family is almost complete. More coming next week.

We’re now focusing on the VFX for Boundless. Below are some early concepts exploring a hand generated style for an updated Torch flame.

We will do a separate post soon when we have finalised the style and have it working in game.

We’ve also been exploring a procedural palette system that will generated all the different block and lighting colours of the Boundless worlds.