This week, we have been busy making sure that the PlayStation 4 version was on par with the PC version. e.g. making sure that things like the new GUI functions correctly using the PS4 controller. The PS4 version is still running at 60fps (the accurate number is 59fps but a little rounding up would not hurt?) and it supports all the features that are in the PC version. Its visual quality is the same as the PC options set to their highest

We haven’t forgotten about Trading Plinths, Direct Trading and XP player progression. We are scheduled to start our internal testing by end of next week. To our surprise, it is looking like we might be able to start our internal testing of warping too around the same time. Next week is going to be busy. We started some internal testing of World Builder’s prefabs this week. That should be released to the public soon! We hope that players will be able to get hold of these new features (first pass) by end of this month. Exciting!

As we been working on developing the bigger features, we were only able to release a small update this week. Details of this update can be found here. Testing 20: Bug Fixes and Art Improvements

Oh, the hopper (working name) creature (first pass) is coming to your neighborhood in Boundless soon too! Watch out! You have been warned

Code

This week, we have been continuing the work on the buying and selling plinths, with the user able to set prices, types of item to buy/sell and collect the coin/items from trades. Work on the warping has begun, and as part of this friend lists and location markers are being looked at.

Progression is progressing, with a simple in game leveling system now in place for systems like mining and combat xp. Work is continuing on the creatures with the server side root animations being used for smoother movement, as well as some tweaks to wandering behaviours so they approach the user. We’ve also been working on expanding the color palettes for the blocks to support more varied colors schemes.

On the engine side we have replaced the texture atlases with texture arrays. This reduces the amount of texture space used and improves the filtering using by anisotropic filter, so oblique object are more detailed.

Design

The design team is starting to feel more like a team, with four of us now.

Luke has been working on an objective system, which will be used for the non-obtrusive tutorial, and also for rewarding interesting feats in the game (much like the achievements that many games have). He has also been considering what other help new players might need to learn and understand the game. In between doing all that, he’s started getting his head around the progression, stats and forge systems which will be a key area of the game, and deliver a core part of our “sandbox MMO” concept. That’s going to be a long time in development, and be delivered in many stages, so he’s going to have a lot to do.

Rob has continued work on the HUD, and how all the GUI will work over different resolutions and aspect ratios. He has also been looking at the styling of the GUI, whilst not wanting to move too far away from the excellent work Ben did, we want to see if we can tweak things to turn it up to 11.

Having spent last week getting up to speed with the World Builder, Matt has put together a good first set of earth-like biomes (see his post here: New Biomes!). It’s great progress in such a short time, and I’m sure it won’t be long until some new worlds are up on testing for you to explore.

Ollie has been trying to catch up with everything that has happened while he was away, and there have been lots of meetings and discussions. Let’s hope next week he actually manages to contribute directly to the development of the game…

Art

This week, the art team has continued with creature progression exploration concepts.

We’ve completed progression concepts for the spanner which you use to maintain your machines. See our post here:

Art: Spanner concept - progression Dev Art Hi guys, i recently finalised the design for the Spanner. You can see the concept exploration page and the progression. Jess is currently working on the 3D model and soon will be in game. As always, stay tuned! Spanner Concept Exploration [image] Spanner Progression [image]

The spanners are now in the modelling stage.

We completed Torch progression models and here’s an ingame gem torch visualisation (the one on the left). Eventually the torch lighting will look like the one one the left. We are going to explore particles in the future.



We’ve started rigging the Hunter. Here’s a WIP image of building the skeleton.