HURTWORLD UPDATE #23 - 24/02/2016

NEW SOUNDS

We’ve got a whole bunch of new sounds coming soon! New ambient soundscapes, impact noises, creatures sounds… Expect everything to have a good going over. We’ve even got per-biome ambience!

AFK KICKING

One of the big problems we’ve had with official servers is people going AFK (most of the time to reduce infamy). This frustrates a lot of people trying to join busy servers, and rightfully so. Hurtworld will have in-built AFK kicking in the next patch! Players will be kicked when inactive for a set period of time, by default 30 minutes. This should free up servers a lot, and means that the player count you’ll see on a server will always be active players.

CHANGES TO INFAMY

Previously, being killed by someone while you weren’t an Outlaw would reduce your infamy. Talking about this part of the mechanic, we couldn’t really find a justification for it, and it creates a situation of players being used for infamy sinks. This is when one player murders another over and over, to reduce the latter’s infamy. You still won’t gain infamy from killing Outlaws, and you’ll gain less if you kill someone who has some infamy.

We’re also making it so you can see if a player is an outlaw, which is related to a new cool system I’ll talk about below. Outlaws will now have red nametags, so ya might want to think twice before trusting those people. Not that you trust anyone in Hurtworld, of course.

As I briefly mentioned, the afk kick should impact infamy as well. No longer can you just afk it away.

I infamy is a touchy subject for a lot of people, these changes are just another iteration. We will keep tweaking it until it works for everyone.

PLAYER EFFECTS

Currently, there’s no real way to tell what’s happening with another player, in regard to their stats. Are they cold? Poisoned? On fire? Unless you asked them, there was no way to tell. Coming soon will be effects that show these things happening, which will make setting someone on fire just way more satisfying. This system is shaping up to very extensible as well, and I can’t wait to push it to it’s limits. For instance, the infamy nametags are implemented with this system. Or, we could make it so you could set machines and creatures on fire! Or poison them, irradiate them, hell, even get them wet – and now we can give visual feedback on all of these states.

Burn baby, burn!

SPENCER

This week has been mostly a continuation of map sdk for me. While I would love to have some new shiny features to show off each week, some things take a bit more time. Only working on tasks that fit into a weekly schedule would massively hinder what we can achieve. I know you guys are starving for new content, know its coming soon.

We found some big regressions in Unity 5.3 that made vehicles undrivable which is now fixed, and a few more issues around compilation and dependency resolution of shaders in asset bundles working on different platforms. Nothing too exciting but a roadblock we definitely needed to get through for the SDK.

Everything appears to be stable in 5.3 now. I am in the process of updating our build server so it can handle building of the SDK bundles and maps from separate projects which should be done by tonight. If nothing new comes up I should be able to put a new SDK steam branch out tomorrow.

SDK Documentation / New map project

Probably the biggest piece of work left before you guys can start making awesome maps is me documenting the map making process. To make this project a bit more fun, and likely a lot more usable for everyone, I’m not going to be writing massive Wiki pages on how everything works. Starting this week I will be starting a series of screencast / youtube videos where I will create the second official Hurtworld map using only the SDK tools you guys will have access to. Once completed the map will be released as an official map.

The first episode will be a crash course in getting from concept to gameplay in 20 mins or so, then we will look deeper into the more powerful tools that are available inside our Shigitools package.

Once basic documentation is down, I will start work on the engine to Steam workshop integration allowing people to join servers and autodownload the latest version of a community made map.

DAZZLER

I have been chipping away in animation land this week. 1st task was setting up explosion ragdoll parts for the two insects, so that they give a satisfying ‘splat’ and send arms/legs/heads flying. Next was a redux of the bow sighted animations so that they do not obscure your target. Lastly, I have rigged and begun animating the cat that Gav showed in the previous blog. Looking forward to seeing it hunt! (funny co-incedence… the gyfycat came out as “PlumpWelloffCreature”… pretty apt for a cat )

GAVKU

Ok look. I read the forums. I read reddit. So I know what everybody has been asking for since we first launched. We have unfortunately been way too busy to act on these community demands. But now, finally, I had some time to create what Hurtworld has been sorely missing……….

I made a Skoogler!!!

Its design is based on large birds like the Cassowary, as well as prehistoric winged raptors. Its main attack will most likely be trying to disembowel players with its taloned feet, probably by leaping towards them. It will also have a limited flight ability, maybe something similar to say a chicken, where it wont be off soaring the skies but can glide and use its wings to cover short distances quickly.

MILS

Working in the city…

So I’ve been building the modular road and sidewalk part of the cities this week. It’s looking and feeling quite good. This should be able to handle most grid type road structures. There are now around 70 – 80 individual meshes in the city now. My layer palette in Maya is getting a bit owned.

Note that some of the surfaces don’t have specular (shiny) values so don’t look as snazzy as the the rest. I thought it better to get the look right first.

I think adding some old broken garbage bag piles, rubble piles and whatnot should give it a lived in feeling. Some planter boxes, garbage bins and smashed up stuff would be good.

This would be an ideal place to get cars, perhaps we will split the car spawns and loot crate spawns to the different areas? Not sure as yet though.

#sandbox