Vizaris Weekly Update - 45 news

We’re back once again! And with an actual update to the game! You have my profound apologies for the lack of a playable update last week. We were in the middle of a major overhaul to several components of the game, and I personally spent several days out of commission due to non-life threatening medical procedures. This week is one of those weeks, where the changelog looks deceptively small, but has some pretty significant changes to the game.

This week's additions

• Controller Support - The biggest addition to Vizaris this week was the near-complete support of controllers to the game. Simply plug in your Xbox One controller, or gamepad of your choice, and for the most part play completely free of a keyboard and mouse. Not all UI screens function with the controller yet, such as screens with text entry boxes. This coming week Controller support will be improved further to be fully functional.

• Controller Mode - Vizaris is now aware of when you’re actually using a controller, vs using a Keyboard and Mouse, and will adjust the UI, text messages, and displayed hotkeys to indicate this. That way, you won’t see “Press E” when you’d actually be pressing A to do that action.

• Split game world into smaller tiles - The map itself also received a comprehensive split into quarter kilometer tiles. Previously, the maps were composed of half Kilometer tiles. Objects like rocks were also split from the landscape. What this means is slightly longer load times when you first load your save, in return for significantly less loading hitches while playing, improved performance and framerate, less RAM usage, smaller future update sizes, and better visuals. This also improves distant landscape LOD, makes large distant objects visible, and reduces the size of Vizaris on your hard drive by 815mb. It’s a pretty big deal!

• Added the tunnel to Ro’to Village - In preparation for the addition of Ro’to Village, we’ve opened up the tunnel leading to the village. It’s still blocked off by the main gate inside the tunnel, but you can look through the gate to see inside the village for a bit of a teaser. Ka’tro has also had his dialog adjusted to reflect this change.

• Added high quality, durable pickaxe - Added a more expensive steel pickaxe to Ka’tro’s store, which costs quite a bit more, but will last substantially longer than a regular pickaxe.

• Minor Revision: Ka’te’coro Canyon (South) - Ka’te’coro Canyon was the first area to be revised in the recent revision of the map, and was missing one of the key steps of the new revision process (Some of the landscape texture painting.) We took the opportunity of the complete replacement of the map files to clean up this area and bring it up to the same standard as the rest of the revised areas.

• Keybind list is now sorted - The Keybind list is now sorted – so no more randomly searching the list to find exactly which key you want to rebind. Now keys are grouped generally according to their importance and their type of action.

• Health dots no longer appear for friendly NPCs - No more health dots subtly implying the possibility that you can cut down your friends if you wanted to. We couldn’t do anything about the voices inside your head telling you to do that though. That’s likely caused by a conflict with one of the peripherals attached to your PC.

• Various improvements to NPC head and body rotation - Various improvements were made to the rotation of NPC heads and bodies in relation to the player, including making the NPCs keep rotating towards you after they stop pursuit of you.

• Shadow Optimizations - Some moderate adjustments were done to shadow quality. This does reduce the quality of the shadows, but the resulting performance gain is definitely worth it.

• Fixed: Main Menu not loading for some PCs - Fixed a bug that was causing the Main Menu to not load on some PCs. This is obviously an egregious bug, but it has been fixed now.

• Fixed: Player Character Normal Map - Fixed a bug that existed literally forever with the Player Character’s normal map that was causing the shading to be incorrect. This was also done for a few other characters. Shame that we’re likely going to replace this character model in a week or so.

• Fixed: Camera Contrast and Saturation - Fixed a bug that was causing Camera Contrast and Saturation to be completely messed up. Prepare for less over-saturated yellow visuals, and more proper colors!

• Backend: Village Art - A bunch of exterior art was added to the village, and will now stream onto your hard drives. The work on the village continues as we prepare to add it to the game. One of these pieces of art was the Gatehouse, and other pieces of art include the massive sails, marketplace carts, proper windows, stairs, and more.

• Backend: Player and NPC Clothing Finished - The clothing for the new player character models was completed last week, and would’ve been added to the game had things gone a little more smoothly with the controller integration. The new clothes are very impressive in terms of their visual quality and modularity. This means that we’ll soon be able to introduce the new player models, male player characters, armor, and more NPCs to the game.

• Backend: Conversation Overhaul - Although there really isn’t much of a chance to see it in action, conversations were completely overhauled this week when it comes to multiple players participating in a conversation. Now players which aren’t the leader of the conversation can vote which options they’d like to pick, and can also of their own volition, contribute special benefits to the conversation. The host can see which options the other players would like to pick, and can take advantage of the abilities of other players in the conversation, if those other players are willing to provide their abilities.

• Backend: Exile - What happens when you commit a crime in a game that’s promotes consequences to actions, in a game world where it doesn’t make sense to throw players in jail, and in a village that doesn’t actually have a jail? Exile of course! Now when you commit a crime and don’t have the funds or the willpower to pay your way out of it, you’ll be thrown out, and locked out of the village, and given the opportunity to work off your debt to society by getting jobs from the gatekeeper. Of course, you could always just stay outside and get eaten by dolfogs or die of exposure. Your choice.

So as you can see, a lot of backend stuff, a lot of major revisions. You’ve probably noticed of late that a lot of the major code stuff has been going into the village. It’s all part of a major push (separate from controller integration) to get the village operational. Aside from further refinements to controller support, you can expect some additional backend work on NPC Disposition (How much NPCs like your character), Schedules, and refinements to the bounty system before it’s all operational. There’s also going to be even more art, because the village is full of that.

I’ve been harping on this weekly for quite a while now, but the village is really going to take the game to the next level, and provide a stable foundation for virtually every addition to the game for the next several months. I’m looking forward to getting it ingame more than anyone else.

See you all next week!

–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!