Vizaris Weekly Update - 33 news

This week’s update is a day late due to some upload issues. This week we’ve got some new visuals, and a whole bevy of minor tweaks, fixes, and improvements. We were finally able to get some proper foliage into the game, giving us a pretty decent visual upgrade to the game; with performance optimizations in other areas completely offsetting the cost (and then some!)

This week's additions

• Redone Areas with Foliage - The southern portion of Ka'te'coro Canyon (South), and the Ka'te'coro Overlook were overhauled, bringing them visually up to par with the new areas, and then even further, with the addition of the new foliage models. This adds a little bit more color, as you can see from the screenshots, and really makes the canyons look more alive. More canyons will be updated as time goes on.

• Container Object Sounds - Moving items from containers into your inventory now makes the object's appropriate pickup sound, and moving the items from your inventory into a container now also makes the object's appropriate drop sound.

• Wealth Decimation - All items now cost 10 times less, and you find 10 times less wealth (copper, silver, and gold coins) in containers. This should help make the inventory a bit more clear, and helps push the realism factor a bit more.

• Coin Overhauls - Coins now have proper preview images, descriptions, and pickup/drop sounds.

• Container Wealth Display - Containers now have a more immersive display of the wealth inside of them. Instead of saying "X Amount of Wealth", the display has been improved to break down how many of each coin you've found.

• Item Value Display - In keeping with the other changes, items now have proper breakdown of their own value, displaying their value in a color coded number appropriate for the number of coins the item is worth.

• Improved Object Preview - Object previews were adjusted to make sure that larger objects now properly stay within frame. Previously, larger items such as weapons, were being cut off.

• Weapon Damage Display - The inventory now displays the damage dealt by weapons when you hover over them. This should make the distinction between the various weapon types (Blunt, Blade, Axe) a little more clear.

• Stats Screen Integration - Improved the integration of the Stats screen by making the N button properly open the UI shell with the buttons for the rest of the UI menus.

• Crafting Menu Hotkey closes crafting menu - Pressing the hotkey that opens the crafting menu (Default B) will now properly close the window as well.

• UI Shell Improvements - The UI shell now displays carry weight in red if the player is carrying too much. It also now has a button which opens the crafting menu for convenience.

• Code Refactoring - A large amount of code was refactored, organized, and commented. This means little in terms of actual gameplay - it just means that we're keeping things tidy while we continue to expand the game.

• Multiplayer - Other player health display improvements - Other players now have improved name/health displays, making use of the health dot, rather than the old text value for health.

• Blood Spatter Improvements - Blood spatter now has a randomized rotation, making it look a little more natural.

• More Sky Improvements - The sky colors were tweaked at sunset and sunrise to be less orange/pink for less time. Other general improvements were made to the sky appearance.

• Performance Improvements - The quality of the terrain tessellation was optimized slightly. The update rate of the sky was optimized slightly. The shadow casting of the terrain was optimized slightly. All of these together mean decent performance improvements.

• No more friendly fire - Player and AI hit detection was improved, so that Players can no longer kill each other, and AI which are on the same side will no longer kill each other.

• Fixed: Silver Conversion Issues - Fixed an issue that was causing silver to be converted into gold coins faster than they should've been (Sorry!)

• Fixed: Item Previews - Fixed a bug where if a container was opened before an inventory, or vice versa, the other would not be able to properly display it's 3D item preview.

• Fixed: AI Falling - Fixed a bug where AI were unable to fall (React to gravity) even when there was terrain below them.

• Fixed: Ore Nodes - Fluorite, Sphalerite, and Sulfur nodes did not have proper setup for holding down the button for mining. This was causing some general glitches and weirdness.

In addition to all of that, this week we also had the models for THREE new creatures completed, with more on the way. It will still be a while until they’re ingame, due to their need to be rigged, animated, programmed… not to mention sounds, effects, and secondary item setup (Like meat and pelts).

We wanted to launch the new subscription system this week, but some technical issues prevented us from getting it to work. Hopefully next week we’ll be a little more successful. In the meantime, I’m continuing to work on both reforming older areas of the game and building models for newer areas. Progress should continue to improve the quality of the game significantly every 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.

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!