The Whaler - Video - New Art - Dev Update #8 news

Hi Crew,

During this last month we have been working on the way-point system and how the quests/Mission will work, this all with placeholders while we are getting the ship ready and animations redone, yes, we had to redo most of the animations so we got a studio in to fix it, who previously has worked on some big projects.

We have also finished a lot of the art and the composer has made some amazing music done for the VS as well. Super excited to show it to you in a few months.

Remember, you can sign up for the closed beta here: thewhalergame.com and join our forums for QA or feedback..or just shanty singing here Forums.thewhalergame.com

Crafting & Inventory
- System definition for implementation (parameters, variables, etc.)
- Validating documentation
- Partial work on draggable core class

- System implementation (WIP)
- Scriptable Object definition
- Inventory base
- Crafting product base

Quest System
- Quest DB Holder (all quests)
- Intelligent Waypoint spawns (static, location-based)
- 'Q' now initiates quest DB (3 dummy quests, one of which active)

- Prevent duplicate active quest entries

- Additional work on the 'hunt' quest (dummy to attach to whale to trigger 'death trigger' when a whale that was sighted is effectively killed)
- Attempting to import whale assets to build dummy quest whale prefab (Scale Compensation export issue, unsupported by Unity)
- Added triggers for 'hunt' and 'deliver'
- Hunt quests only completed if 'killing the whale' as opposed to entering a zone (currently, killing a whale is defined by touching it with the ship, which is going to change for the minigame when ready)
- Simplified Waypoint system, now able to support both Whale and non-Whale objects (single entity to use)

- Typed Quests (Fetch, Deliver, Hunt)
- Ironed out 'Fetch' quests (reach destination = autocomplete)
- Preliminary disambiguation between Fetch, Deliver and Hunt
- Wip on 'ResourcesManifest' (for Deliver quests)
- Wip on 'RewardsManifest' (for Quests rewards in Fetch and Deliver (Hunt has no reward: just the whale!))
- Debug Question initiation ('Q') now triggers 3 dummy quests dynamically
- Cleaned Debug Quest 'Add' and prevent duplicates

General
- Script files reorganization / hierarchy (cleanup job)

Ship Physics
- Base Torquer (V2) and handler (wave rocking)
- Floating physics

Camera
- Camera jitter partial fix

- Adjust Camera settings based on ControlFocus (including focus in)

- Added secondary camera slave
- Added camera transition mode

Character Physics
- R&D Character relative positioning on boat (best fit), no falloff
- TODO: up/down fake physics implementation (will require raycasting & heuristics)

Character Movement
- WASD core movement (relative to boat)
- Camera panning (mouse-movement derived)
- Cursor Lock Status

- Physics-implementation of the character (RB to RB relationship) - WIP

Managers
- Added ControlFocus Class (determines whether player is controlling Ship, Character or Boat)
- Debug switch mode (1 = Ship, 2 = Boat (unused), 3 = Character)

Water
- Texture now 'offsets' accordingly with movement (illusion of movement)
- Texture offset follows 'waves' vector modifiers
- Fixed graphical tear in water texture (caused by recurring normals recalculation missing frame target)
- Attempted waves smoothly going faster/slower (stronger/weaker) but faced with algorithmic glitch to fix*

QuestLog
- Placeholder UI
- Debug show/hide ("J")
- Update quest status in UI

Compass
- Added Camera-space canvas as camera slave (child)
- Added Compass Asset to camera-space canvas
- Decoupled needle as interactive component
- Inverted X and Z axis of compass (export settings fix)
- Bent compass' Z-axis rotation to ship's Y-axis rotation dynamically (no smoothing)
- Added placeholder lighting setup for compass
- Adjusted material settings (metallic)
- Imported texture and normal map
- Added Waypoint feedback
- Added Waypoint feedback relative rotation

- Placeholder color disambiguation of up to 3 waypoints
- Now supports the top 3 active quests for waypoints

Quest Book
- Skinned quest book (wood texture)
- Adjusted 9-slice borders

Quest Popup
- Added placeholder quest popup (content still placeholder)
- Quest popup triggers when a quest completes

Button Prefab
- Skinned button (frame + bkg)
- Adjusted 9-slice borders

Crafting System
- Skinned Crafting panel (frame, encaved_slots, back, wood)
- Adjusted 9-slice borders
- Adjusted ratio
- Adjusted alpha

- Assets rundown, repriorization of current goals based on available assets
- R&D on character rigidbody on moving surface

Character (Player)
- Modified current character implementation (physics) to avoid jitter
- Created new camera (slave to character)

Character (Ship)
- Modified current physics implementation
- Modified tracking parameters of primary cam

Resources System
- Created the world resource container
- Created resource instances for: Grain, Iron, Oil, Rope, Rum, Meat and Wood
- Created prefab allocations for each resource
- Assigned to the world resource reference table (name, image, etc.) *NOT value (port-specific)