Weekly Report - 56
It’s week fifty six of the Vizaris updates. This week has the introduction of a major new gameplay feature, in the form of Armor (and outfits). This is a major step forward for the game in terms of gameplay, content, and player customization. So let’s get into this week’s changes:
This week's additions
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Armor - We’ve added the ability for you to equip armor ingame. In order to acquire armor, visit Ka’tro and buy the Scout armor pieces from him. The (visual only) armor has been removed from the player character so they can have their new armor equipped. Equipping armor will reduce the amount of damage you take per hit. This system and code is very important to the development of the village as well, and many outfits and some new armor should be added to the game by the next update; along with further gameplay features relating to armor.
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World Re-centering - In a major, significant change, we’ve re-centered the world around Qaris’da’te. Previously the north-west most corner of Qaris’da’te was at the center of the world, which put the play area pretty far south, almost at the limits of what the Unreal Engine could handle in terms of world extents. The world has now been moved to put the center of Qaris’da’te in the middle of the game world, making all four corners of Qaris’da’te equidistant from the center of the game world. Existing saves may need to “Wither”.
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Heavy Level Streaming Optimizations - We heavily adjusted level streaming distance to be more efficient during play. The effect on gameplay is non-existent, however the effect on performance is significant. While this will reduce high detail view distance somewhat, this will only be noticeable in a few select locations, whereas the performance benefits will occur all the time. We’ve also fixed a few instances of some levels being loaded at the wrong distance.
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Reduced Loading Times - Because less of the world is streaming in at full detail at the start of the game, the initial load time of the world on the first (and only) loading screen should be reduced by a noticeable amount.
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More Aggressive Landscape LOD - We also much more aggressively reduce the amount of polygons in the landscape as it gets further from the player, which significantly reduces the amount of polygons needing to be rendered at a given moment. This naturally has a positive effect on game performance.
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More Shadow and Lighting Optimizations - Shadows were also further optimized, bringing in significant performance increases once again. The gains were made at the expense of long distance shadow resolution, which we’ve adjusted to almost completely hide any difference in quality. The end result is distant visuals which are almost the same, but a gain of several FPS.
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Added Town Music - We added the Ro’to Village town music to the game. This won’t play anywhere but Ro’to village. There are two new music tracks specific to the general Ro’to village, along with a specific Tavern music track, as well as a specific Temple music track.
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Better Music Cycling - We improved music cycling to more properly cycle through different music tracks. Previously the system would rely on you moving from one area to the next in order to cycle the music tracks. Now the system will automatically cycle the music tracks to the next track.
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Changed Ro’to Tunnel - In order to make way for the coming addition of Ro’to village, we’ve improved the main access tunnel to the village to make it more visually appealing.
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Work-around: CTD on Play - We’ve currently integrated a work-around for an engine bug that was causing (on a small set of machines) crashes to desktop once the player hit the play button in the main menu. This issue appears to be rooted deep in the Unreal Engine and tends to pop-up at unexpected times, so we can’t quite claim “fixed” on this one yet.
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Fixed: A rockslide where you could glitch out of play area - We fixed an area at the start of the game where you could glitch out of the play area (Sorry to all you intrepid explorers, this is the one spot in the game that we -really- don’t want players accidentally getting out of the play area.)
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Backend: Villagers and Village - Every day, more NPCs are having their dialog written and completed. Completed and fully functional NPCs are the last significant obstacle preventing us from releasing the village. We’re also aiming to have several quests added at the same time, which must be integrated into the NPC dialog.
The addition of armor is part of a greater addition of an “Outfit” system which handles armor, clothing, jewelry, and other accessories, and allows them to be visually displayed on the player and other characters in a meaningful way. While only the ability to buy and equip armor was added this week, the functionality also exists now for NPCs to wear armor, which can then be looted off of their remains and worn by the player.
The player’s days of wearing their current leather armor are now limited, as in the coming week we hope to strip the player down to their undies, and re-integrate their current outfit as wearable armor, along with the rest of the sets of clothing in the game.
In addition, we’ll also be integrating a wear and damage system which will have the armor (and in some cases other items) deteriorate with use. Which also allows us to introduce a repair system for maintaining the player’s equipment.
With the armor system now in place, adding armor to the game is now possible, which gives us a more direct reason to put resources into adding more armors and outfits into the game. Piece by piece Vizaris is gaining gameplay features!
–Luke
Vizaris is an open world, fantasy roleplaying game, with singleplayer and 6 player co-op multiplayer. Vizaris focuses on player choice and freedom. New updates at the start of every week!
You can play Vizaris right now by going to www.VizarisGame.com/play , Every dollar goes to supporting the development of the game, meaning more content at a faster rate. It's like our Kickstarter or Patreon, but you get instant access to the game! Free press access available! Questions, comments, help, and feedback welcome!
