Good Day community! Before diving into this month’s article we’d like to wish everyone a happy, and safe Independence Day. It has been a very productive six months for our team. This month we are going over a) this year’s recap, b) the Item system and c) our updated roadmap. Looking back, it has been a great year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀1ST AND 2ND QUARTER RECAP:
The first three months of the year were dedicated to improving performance on the island. We deployed three patches during this time. Patch A.00.02.29, and A.00.02.36 in January, and Patch A.00.02.39 in February. Thanks to player feedback we were able to address several issues to include crashing. During this time we continued to add optimized art assets, sculpt terrain, and update various content for the new starter island.
The following three months were just as busy as the previous three. In April we deployed two more patches, A.00.02.41, A.00.02.42. This month included a large number of art asset additions and optimizations. Work continued to improve performance to include the slight reduction of area size from 590x590 to 567x567.
June brought with it our sixth patch of the year, A.00.02.45. New assets quickly took the place of the island whiteboxes during this phase. The visual changes have made the island feel much larger over time. Additional water scourging was added to the island and harvesting regions adjusted. We continued to address any issues with content that arose as well. This patch also brought with it fixes for mainland area issues, NPC placement adjustments, and art asset additions.
The estimated release of our next patch is eight weeks from now. Like many, Covid-19 has required adjustments to our schedule. This in turn has slowed our progress down slightly. Despite this, the team has continued to put a great deal of effort into their work. Which brings us to the topic of system design. We are excited to go into detail about the next system design currently in progress. You’ll find more details on this topic below in our updated road map.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀CREATING AN ITEM SYSTEM:
The current item system contains a mixture of items that are used, useless, or unusable that can not be deleted. All of these items required documentation and review. This process has taken a considerable amount of time. This is partially due to the lack of indexing and not using mutable data, but instead hard coding these things into the scripts. Despite this, we’ve been able to document and sort the existing 3369 items so we can move forward with the new design.
Understanding what is part of the current system allows us to consider which items should be remade under the new system, and which will be removed or replaced. It also helped us determine what is missing from the current system data-wise.
We have been able to start documenting how we will rebuild the item system from creating top level (core) classifications to subcategories under those. Listing out all possible specs and fields for items under those classifications, then start building the item database.
Once we have a base of items created (not all that will end up in-game) we will start working on the crafting functionality for each of those items. At this point, once we are able to create any item under any category and subcategory and tested, we should be ready to start the multiple pushes from development to production. Multiple pushes for the Item system are needed so you, the players are able to test each function and we have a working solid core for all aspects that fall under the Item System.
This may change, but here is the base we have right now so our two programmers can get started on the new system once the foundation is finished. Below is a sample of the classification (top level categories) and subcategories of items and our process of documentation:
There is a lot more other than just this. We have worked out flow charts and tables for each cat and sub cat with all possible fields and modifiers that will work with that item type. This extensive documentation (currently at 19 pages just for the item system) also lets us know what to have as visible fields for you when you are examining an item in the GUI. Our spreadsheets and database of items will be much larger.
There is a lot to consider when creating an item. Below are some of the questions we have to ask as we review what is in-game now, and how we want to optimize, categorize and display the items to you. Here are a few questions we have asked and reviewed.
- How is it classified?
- Does it need a visual, and if so, what type (icon, mesh, text reference, all of the above)?
- What is it used for?
- How will or can the item be used?
- Will the item have modifiers?
- If it does have modifiers, what are all possible modifiers for that classification?
- What is its durability?
- Does it have decay?
- Does it use triggers or scripts?
- And so on!
Once the categories were determined we were able to begin fleshing out their default subcategories and modifiers. This ranges from what Prefix to use to how many text fields (mutable data) could an item have for different categories. These items tie into other systems as well. Skill, inventory, crafting, etc. Which means considering how they are affected by Tiers, and scripts.
There are items that must be charted out for Tier success and failure rates based on item and player data. Others are interactive items that require the use of a script. All of this information must be considered before creating a new list of items for the future list.
The player Inventory system development (part of the container system) will then begin once we have the core item system done. We will let you know more about the player inventory later this summer.
UPDATED ROAD MAP:
Outside of patch content, the first two development quarters of the year were spent designing different systems and planning for revamps. These include the Item and Inventory systems. We’ll address these topics along with our plan for the rest of this year.
Here is our updated roadmap. As you can see more things have been added to the “past year” section. We are excited to enter this next phase and eventually start pushing out the new systems to go with the island and soon, the new mainland world connected to the Island.
ROADMAP TASK COMPLETED THIS YEAR:
- ✓ Combat basics updates and adjustments
- ✓ Targeting system and Auto-target adjustments/refinements
- ✓ Implemented Line of Sight revamp
- ✓ Astronomy and Time of Day (ToD) system finalization
- ✓ Shader clean up, new shaders, shader optimizations
- ✓ Environment adjustments for Island and world rebuild Templates
- ✓ Character Select area cleanup
- ✓ Player account/character updates and cleanup
- ✓ Player Character expansion with new Alpha Supporter group/titles
- ✓ Multiple Area clean up on Mainland
- ✓ Four Mainland areas rebuilt for better performance for current gameplay
- ✓ New Island released with 6 land and 16 ocean/sea areas
- ✓ Art asset cleanup
- ✓ New art styles added to the island (and some areas of the mainland)
- ✓ Core foundation for Item system (WIP, see below)
- ✓ Core art for harvesting assets completed
- ✓ New default environment, lighting and TOD system completed.
- ✓ New geological art (terrain assets) completed
- ✓ New flora systems (trees, bushes, plants and dynamic detail) completed
- ✓ New interior and exterior system for buildings completed (no more sunshine or rain inside buildings)
- ✓ New “rooms” (Default exterior, default transition, default interior, default cave) systems and environments
- ✓ New oceans and waterway systems completed
- ✓ Final templates for terrain, oceans and coastal areas completed (and used for the island).
- ✓ Created and added working platforms, lifts and doors.
A GLIMPSE AT THE UPDATED DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP.
- Website and forum updates
- Item System (new system)
- Adjusted container system (new system)
- Crafting Basics (new system)
- Harvesting basics (new system)
- Player gear basics (new system)
- Horticulture (new system)
- Factions (new system)
- Adversarial Camps (Spawners)
- Races spec system (new system)
- PC/NPC System (new system)
- NPC Pathing and navmesh updates (revert to engine default then update)
- Quest/Mission system (new system)
- Updated Nation System Revamp
- Housing (Revamp + new system)
- Ability System (new system)
- Combat Ability and Skill system (new system)
- Combat Progression and title awards (new system)
- Player Auction converted to World Auction House (new system)
- Player Merchants (new system)
- Job Billboard system (new system)
- Additional Updates to the new single Astronomy System
- Start of World Rebuild (area linking (seamless) and rough sculpt
- New fully functional clean UI/UX with modular style
We also will be doing the first HE update sometime after we finish the core Item system. When we do this, it will cause much breakage across most of the old systems. At that point, we will begin the parallel development for those systems. We are not sure when we will be doing the first HE update, but we will let you know when we do, and what we expect to experience, or have experienced. Update schedules will then be estimated based on that breakage.
Doing stepped HE updates will allow us to start bringing up to date. DX11/12 will not be in the first few engine updates pushed to Repop. That is still to be announced.
Your continued support helps us progress with our project. We appreciate all the feedback, and tickets we receive from the community. We hope that everyone will enjoy the coming changes and testing with us. As always we look forward to your feedback. Please stay safe during these difficult times.