Weekly Report - 55
It’s week fifty five of the Vizaris weekly updates. This week’s update is pretty minor, as virtually all the work went towards finishing the village. As you may have guessed with all the extra focus being put on the village, not only is it going to be a significant addition to the game in terms of content and gameplay, but it’s also going to be added very soon.
This week's additions
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Improved: Interior-Exterior Transitions (Further) - We’ve improved the transitioning effects when going inside and outside, by adjusting the brightness of the screen. This produces a much nicer and more natural effect when transitioning from the inside to the outside, and to a lesser extent from the outside to the inside.
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Light Propagation Volume - We’re experimenting with the use of some low quality light propagation volumes, which is some experimental tech inside the unreal engine which allows light to bounce off of surfaces and light up the surrounding environment. The result is a more realistic looking image. We’re very likely to modify this effect by the next update.
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Skin Color Customization - You can now select the skin color of your player character in the character creation menu. This was a feature that previously existed many versions ago, but was removed when we updated to the new bodies. These new skin colors should be significantly more realistic.
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Fixed: Equipment Effects Bug - Fixed a bug which could occur when the player un-equips and then immediately re-equips an off-hand item while their weapon in drawn.
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Fixed: General Equipment Bugs - Generally fixed and improved several other issues regarding equipment and off-hand items.
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Backend: Door Locking / Lockpicking - Lockpicking code was split off from containers and turned into a more portable chunk of functionality, allowing us to apply the lockpicking mechanic to other objects, primarily in this case, it’s used for doors. This will allow the player to risk breaking into NPC homes in the village; just be wary of being caught.
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Backend: Sleeping in Beds - Functionality was added to beds that now allow the player to sleep in them. This will relocate their spawn point, similarly to placing and using a campfire. This will allow players to place their respawn point inside a city or other locations which prohibit placing a respawn point via a campfire.
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Backend: Inns and Renting Rooms - Because the player does not start the game owning a home, we also added the ability for players to rent rooms from an Inn. This gives them a bed, and the ability to place their respawn point in the Inn. As time goes on, this will become more important as sleeping in the wilderness will become more dangerous.
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Backend: Many New Objects - Many more objects were integrated into the game this week. The game now has over 300 unique items. Each one of these items has a description, with several thousand words of description being written. Descriptions are generally either humorous or actually informative. For objects unique to Vizaris, the description will tell you what the object is. For period accurate real world objects which existed several hundred years ago, the descriptions are accurate to the actual object – if you pay attention, you could actually learn from the Vizaris object descriptions in many cases. These new objects are important to finishing the village and adding loot.
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Backend: New NPC Outfit - Another new NPC outfit was added to the game, to add a little more variety to the game. While every outfit in the game is capable of being setup with a variety of different fabrics and colors, this new outfit gives a new shape and profile, further increasing options for variety. Once the games outfit system is complete, players will be able to wear this new outfit as well.
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Backend: New Masks - Fifteen new mask meshes were made for the NPCs; along with the possibility for different materials and colors to be used with these masks. This allows us to significantly increase the visual distinction between the various different NPCs, which is important for finishing the Village. These masks will eventually be usable by the player as well.
That’s pretty much all for this week. At this point all that needs to be said about the village has been said (until it’s actually added to the game of course) – so if you’re interested in reading about it, please look at previous weekly reports. All hands are working on finishing the village.
–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!
