Vizaris Weekly Update - 40 news

This week I was unfortunately struck with a bit of an illness which prevented me from putting in as many hours as I would’ve liked to. We’ve still got some pretty cool additions this week, including the usual area revisions, gameplay updates, unarmed combat, new features, and more.

This week's additions

• Revised Sek’ra’coro Slope - Continuing our standard pattern of revising an area of the game each week, this week, the Sek’ra’coro Slope has been revised. With new foliage, objects, attention to detail, and even a new map marker or two. The top of the Sek’ra’coro Slope is one of the highest currently accessible parts of the game, so be sure to take a look at the view once you get up there.

• Unarmed Combat - This week we added basic unarmed combat, or in other words, combat without a weapon, to both players and NPCs. The regular attack alternates between left and right punches, while the power attack alternates between a left and a right heavy kick. Unarmed combat relies on your character’s strength to determine how much damage you’ll deal with each hit. Finesse will affect how much stamina is lost on each swing, with characters that have higher finesse loosing less stamina per attack.

• Fixed: Broken login for passwords with specific characters - Last week, with the help and patience of a couple of users, we were able to identify and fix a problem with the Vizaris game code that was preventing you from logging in if your password contained certain special characters. We apologize for the difficulty any of you may have had with logging in to Vizaris.

• Improved Health Dot Work - Some moderate improvements were made to the functionality of the Health dot in combat, including a larger size, longer duration and a pseudo lock-on system for keeping the health dot of your current target on the screen. Some back end code was also added to the system that will allow us to add some additional features next week.

• Improved NPC Surrender Checks - NPC Surrender checks were also improved, making them health based, and notably less likely to occur with braver NPCs. The more cowardly an NPC is, the more they are affected by losing health, whereas NPCs with more Bravery can be barely affected at all by losing health.

• Tweaked Blood - The appearance of blood was tweaked to be significantly less reflective. Previously, as you may have noticed, at certain angles you could be blinded by the sun reflecting off a pool of blood.

• Temporarily removed dolfog power attack - We temporarily disabled dolfog power attacks, pending the addition of new dolfog animations, as the old animation was causing visual issues in combat.

• Reduced Dolfog Health - Dolfog health was reduced by a quarter, as they were proving to be too strong under many circumstances; with the new combat tactics of blocking and timed attacks, they were already significantly more challenging, and we lowered their health to compensate.

• Early revision work on Sek’ra’coro Canyon - Because Sek’ra’coro canyon is such a large play area, I opted to get a head start on it, by working on its revision this week; don’t expect any significant changes ingame yet, but the area will look slightly different to those with a keen eye. Sek’ra’coro Canyon will be revised in the coming weeks

• Fixed: Friendly NPC Hit Reactions - As one of our players spotted last week, if you attacked friendly NPCs they still had their old physical impulse system enabled, causing them to wildly flail about after being hit. This physical reaction has now been disabled.

• Backend: Initial Integration of Temple Assets - Progress on the village continues to steam along. This week, in preparation for the coming addition of the village to the game, we’ve added a significant amount of new art assets to the game dealing with the interiors of several key structures in the village. There’s only a handful of external art assets left to be completed for the Village before we’ll -finally- be able to put it into the game.

• Backend: Loose Items - Work was also performed on another new major system for the game – the Loose Item system. This system is made out of several moderately complex systems, but the short story is: It allows the player to take and manage specific portions of very small items, liquids, semi-liquids, and more. Once complete, the current system used for water containers will be replaced with the new system.

As mentioned in the changelog, a lot of work is going into the completion of the village. It’s currently the primary focus of our artist, and one of my largest focuses as the level designer. Ro’to Village, aka the Rock Fortress Citadel, is a highly complicated, very compact location, with a significant amount of vertical layout. It has many key locations, including a player home, a grand temple with a school and hospital, a town feasting hall, the grand well, a large market area with interior and exterior shops, a decent sized tavern, a stable, and much much more.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we’re still going to open up the village to players before it’s fully complete. The bright side is, you’ll be able to explore the village much sooner because of this. The primary aspects that will be missing is NPC Diversity in appearance/animation, and the ability to enter every interior right away.

There’s still plenty to be excited about though, because with the addition of the village to the game, that allows our weekly work on the village to actually go into the changelog, and get into player’s hands. It’s definitely something we’re really looking forward to getting into the game.

–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. Free press access available! Questions, comments, help, and feedback welcome!