Weekly Report - 36
This week a lot of stuff simply didn’t come together the way I was hoping, so the update is going to be a little smaller than normal; and for that, I apologize! A lot of things got half-baked or even finished, but not soon enough to make it into this week’s update.
If next week isn’t as much of a foxtrot-fest as this week, we should be able to make up for it with a more substantial update. Several of Murphy’s Laws makes this unlikely, but we’ll see!
This week's additions
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Improved Map – Panning and Zooming - This week pretty much all of the programming time was dedicated to improving the map, as a result, it is now possible to pan around, and actually zoom in on the map, making it easier to take advantage of the doubled resolution map image from last week
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Improved Map – Mouse Coordinates - We’ve also added the ability for you to see the map coordinates under the mouse, in addition to the old ability to see the coordinates of the player. With any luck this will be useful for a variety of things, such as coordinating movement, pinpointing locations of interesting finds, and so on.
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Added Foliage to the Ro’to Gap - Foliage was added to the Ro’to Gap. As the Ro’to Gap was just recently revised, it didn’t need to have any substantial overhauls to its design. However, the plants which populate the Ro’to Gap are of a different variety than the ones previously seen.
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Rebuilt the Ro’to Gap – Da’te’coro Canyon Junction - The three way junction between the Ro’to Gap, Da’te’coro Canyon (South), and Da’te’coro Canyon (North) was heavily revised, and populated with the new foliage. The revisions to the landscape also pushed a little bit into Da’te’coro Canyon (South), though the revision of that area has not been completed.
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Proper Sticky Stamina Bar - Last week we updated the health bar to be sticky (Indicating the amount lost for a brief moment), but in the process we removed our old sticky stamina bar, which wasn’t very well made. This week we updated the stamina bar to use a new system to better indicate the stamina lost from things like attacks, jumping, sprinting, dodging, etc.
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Footstep sounds and effects are more accurate and scale to speed - We rebuilt the system which produces footstep effects and sounds. This system is now independent of the animations (Before, it would require special makers every time the left or right foot hit the ground). In addition, footstep sound, and effect size now dynamically adjusts it’s size based on the speed of the player. I have plans to later adjust this system to use entirely different sounds for walking vs running.
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Optimization – Object Preview - We also performed an optimization of the item previews. The game code is now more keenly aware when these previews are rendering, and makes certain optimizations when they aren’t on screen. The benefit of this is a notable boost to framerate when outside of menus. Hooray!
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Fixed: Dead characters sometimes making idle sounds - Fixed a bug which was causing dead characters to occasionally make their idle sounds. Surprising and terrifying some players into thinking they’ve been ambushed by a retaliating force.
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Backend: Map Markers - The vast, meaty portion of this week’s programming work was spent on creating map markers for the map, which required a massive, and deceptively complicated overhaul to the entire way we did our maps. Unfortunately, the work wasn’t completed soon enough for us to have any functional map markers in the game, but next week, you’ll now be able to discover locations in the game world, and have them automatically marked down on your map.
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Backend: New Combat Animations - The footstep revision seems like an arbitrary addition to this week’s code, but we’re in the process of integrating a massive amount of new combat animations, and the improved method of detecting footsteps was a byproduct of this new integration. Ideally, as soon as next week, we’ll have a bevy of new and more suited combat animations!
Behind the scenes, as I mentioned last week, we have new dolfog animations, new clothing, and some heavy improvements to the launcher and subscription system coming down the pike. There was some notable progress on the subscription system today (Which unfortunately, demanded my attention for such a long period of time that I wasn’t able to finish one of the features I wanted to add today… but of all the reasons for not getting a feature done, this is one of the best reasons)
The half-baked and finished features that didn’t make it into this week’s update will fold over into next week’s update.
–Luke
Vizaris is an open world, fantasy roleplaying game, with singleplayer and 6 player co-op multiplayer. Vizaris focuses on player choice and freedom.
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. Free press access available! Questions, comments, help, and feedback welcome!
