Weekly Report - 27
As promised, this week contained quite a bit of smaller improvements to the game, aimed at making it more polished. Quite often, we do a significant amount of work on large backend systems, such as the quest system and the effects system, which don’t end up seeing much usage at first. These systems are the backbone of a fully functional game, and are often required for development of other features. Once these systems are in place, we are able use them as the need arises, which is very important for the development of this type of game, as you can’t be waiting on an entire system to be built in order to put in a single feature that a large amount of content is waiting on.
This week’s additions
Inventory Item Preview - We’ve now added a screen to the inventory which allows you to see the appearance of the item you’re looking at in the inventory, in addition to the description and other attributes. Now you can finally see some of the fancy item art we have.
Death Screen Improvements - Some improvements to the death screen, including a display for how much wealth you lost upon dying, and a display for which ending quote you received for your second and subsequent deaths.
Area Redone: Ro’to Gap - The Ro’to Gap, the first area you enter immediately out of the tutorial area has been completely remade to be much more visually impressive.
Time Based Activations - We’ve added the ability for activation to require the player to hold the activate button for a certain amount of time for the activator to be “used”. This system has been introduced with ore mining, but will be used for many activators in the future. The system also supports multiple players using the item to speed up the process.
Fall Flailing - Your character will now start wildly flailing when falling for more than a certain amount of time. This makes falling more amusing, in a morbid sort of way.
Walking - It’s now possible to walk, rather than run everywhere. Both during and outside of combat, you can press capslock to toggle between running and walking.
**Too much loot! - **Since we added walking, we now have the ability too… force you to walk when you’re carrying too much loot. Now that weight indicator in the inventory is actually meaningful.
Effects System - Finally we were able to get the effect system ingame in a meaningful sense. Now you can collect cooked food items which will boost your stamina regeneration by P for 10 minutes. As time goes on, many more systems will make use of the effects system. For now, see if you can get some of those tasty burritos. Ka’tro should sell them occasionally, others can be found.
Fixed: Ragdoll Self Collision - Fixed a longstanding and ugly issue which was causing ragdolls (limp bodies) of the player and every other character to not properly collide with itself, causing the character to turn into a mess of polygons and visual glitches when killed.
Fixed: Blood Decals - Fixed a bug that was causing players to not create blood decals when hurt.
Fixed: Item Dropping - Dropping items from the inventory will now place the items much more predictably.
Fixed: Equipped Item Shadows - Equipped items now properly display their shadows in full detail. Before they were using a different shadow rendering technique, causing them to appear blurry.
Next week, I’m hoping for more of the same! A lot of little tasks cleaned up and moved out of the way, leaving room for a much more polished and defined gaming experience. We’re starting to reach a critical mass of features that allows us to start hashing out less of the foundational features, and more of the structural features. Every week the game gets bigger and more fun, and I’m very excited for the coming weeks of Vizaris.
Non existent! The lighting is fully dynamic. Performance heavy to be sure, but it get’s more efficient all the time. You can also dial it back if need be, using the ingame options menu. Fully dynamic lighting, and seamless interiors and exteriors were big requirements for this project.
Weekly Report - 28
This week seems a little smaller than most, due to the nature of the items that were added – mostly code, gameplay, and sound. The rest of the work ended up being behind the scenes, either some moderate landscape work, work on the backend systems, and work on the bodies and clothing – We’ve now moved on to making clothing for the bodies, and we plan to jump to the new bodies once we have a few modular outfits functional for the characters.
Item Durability - A significant amount of this week’s work went into getting item durability functioning. This allows items (currently tools, but eventually armor and weapons) to be damaged when used, reducing in value and effectiveness, and eventually breaking entirely. This functionality has been added to the pickaxe, and the next new item:
Locks and Lockpicking - We’ve now added locked containers to the game, and in order to deal with those containers, you now have the ability to pick the locks of these containers. We’ve added two new items to the game, basic and ‘good’ lockpicks, which when possessed, will allow you to unlock locked containers that you come across. Containers can have varying difficulty locks, which significantly affects how long it takes to unlock the container. As a gameplay choice, you won’t know if a container is locked until you actually try to open it, in which case it will open instantly if unlocked, or give the player an indication that it needs to be picked. Lockpicks have durability as well. Ka’tro will sell a lockpick if you’re desperate, but otherwise they can be found randomly in loot.
Save Reminder - The game now reminds you to save periodically, if you haven’t saved in over 20 minutes.
Improved: Moving over rocks - We increased the size of the largest rocks the player can walk over, and removed the micro jump pause which would occur when walking off the rocks above a certain size. This should allow for smoother and easier movement over rough terrain, without needing to jump as much.
Improved: First Person View - We changed the position of the first person camera slightly, making it more centered and better fitting, especially when looking down at your body.
Improved: Death Blood - Blood on the ground caused by a killing blow is now significantly larger than regular sized blood pools. (Isn’t that an interesting sentence.)
Fixed: Activators on Laggy Servers - Fixed several bugs related to using activators on Laggy servers, including a bug which could cause activators to reset if the server was badly lagging.
Fixed: Stamina Regeneration while holding Sprint - Player stamina should now properly recover while holding the sprint key, but also standing still.
The gameplay of Vizaris continues to grow, day by day, week by week. Durability, Locks and lockpicking, are an example of how you can expect the game to grow. Moving forward this week, I’m hoping to be able to improve the efficiency of the game and optimize the graphics, as well as get ready for the deployment of the new payment and login system, which should add quite a bit more options for getting the game.
Additional work will be done on the new bodies – as mentioned previously, we’re now moving on to outfits for the characters. These outfits will be modular, and allow us to add several new features to the game, including armor, player customization, male player characters, more NPC variety, and more!
This week was generally focusing on some cleanup and optimizations. What this means for you is hopefully a noticeably faster game – Our development rigs were seeing at least a % increase, and these are machines with the latest hardware. We’re getting our current progress solidified, cleaned up, and ready for more gameplay expansions.
This week’s additions
**LOD Overhaul - **We did a massive overhaul of the LOD meshes for virtually every mesh in the game. What this means for you of course, is better performance – likely a significant increase. There will be some pop-in until UE4 finally integrates smooth LOD transitions.
**Sleep Simulations - **Now when you rest, your sleep meter will be restored at per hour, and your need hunger and thirst meter will reduce at 1 quarter rate. To illustrate this, we’ve added hunger, thirst, and sleep bars to the Rest Menu which will dynamically adjust to indicate how much you gain and lose for the rest length you’ve selected. You cannot rest if your hunger or thirst drops below .
**Interface Update - **We’ve done a moderately large update to the UI and Interface in the game. While this won’t change many menus beyond subtle visual changes, we’ve completely rebuilt store and container interfaces, adding the dynamic object preview, and improving layout.
**New Game Area: Upper Da’te’coro Canyon - **Because I always have to add something, a small new area was added… or rather, expanded; Upper Da’te’coro Canyon. This is a small teaser of new areas to come.
**Conversation Saving - **We’ve also added saving and persistence to conversations you have with NPCs. If you talk to an NPC, leave, and come back some time later, your conversation history will still be there.
**Dodging is now only possible in ready stance - **You will no longer be able to dodge when outside of ready stance, to prevent the player from accidentally dodging while exploring. (This should make movement feel significantly less finicky while performing precise movements.)
**Fixed: Sprinting, Jumping, and Falling now displays properly in multiplayer - **Fixed a bug and improved detection for Sprinting, Jumping, and Falling in multiplayer, which was causing these actions to not properly display in other player’s games.
**Fixed: Stuck messages on screen - **Fixed a bug which could cause chat messages and hud pings to become stuck on the screen.
Improved: HUD Pings - HUD Pings now queue up and display in order, rather than all trying to display at once.
**Fixed: Windowed Mode not saving - **Fixed a bug which was causing windowed mode setting to not properly save.
While working on LODs this past week, I was also interspersing the LOD work with terrain preparation, effectively preparing half of the remaining terrain* in the current gameworld for adding objects and eventual integration into the game.
*By remaining terrain, I mean a quarter of the first region of the game. Currently, this week’s build of the game has shipped with only one quarter (the south western quarter) of the first region of the game. Because the remaining three quarters of the game were incomplete and inaccessible, there was no reason to even distribute them with the current builds of the game. Of the current quarter, only a little over a third of that is currently fully playable. The first region of the game, the Qaris’da’te Caldera, is a desert region. As we continue to expand the game, we will add many other regions to the game, including forests and tropical regions, but that will be a long time from now, as we’re currently focusing on making one really nice region first.
The first outfit for the game was also completed, though it may be another week or two before it’s integrated, as it requires a few backend code systems in place.
This week we have the introduction of another major new gameplay feature, along with some pretty cool audio and visual improvements. The game continues to grow strong, even in this month of blockbuster game releases. Vizaris is gaining feature after feature, and improving every day. A big thanks to those that support us, even while the game is still in it’s infancy. You guys rock!
This week’s additions
**Crafting - **This week, all of the code work was focused on making crafting a fully functional and integrated system in the game. You can now open the crafting menu by pressing B (default key). Crafting in Vizaris has multiple layers and complexities. In order to craft an item you must know a recipe. The recipes are listed in the crafting menu in an easily sorted and filtered list. The recipe indicates the requirements for crafting the item. The requirements include three things: Resources, Tools, and Workstations. Resources are the actual items which are consumed from your inventory when crafting an item. Tools are items that you must have in your inventory, but aren’t consumed. Workstations are objects which you activate which allow you to create specific items.
Many objects will also have associated resource values, which allows you to deconstruct an object back into lesser supply of resources. While not all objects can be deconstructed, it will allow you dispose of junk in exchange for something useful. The player can learn recipes from a variety of sources; and you take your recipes with you when joining another player’s world.
Support for ALL of this has been added in code, along with even more backend work. For gameplay purposes, you can now cook dolfog meat (Including Haunch, Shoulder, Fin, and Tail) into something that won’t poison your character when you eat it; but you’ll need to buy a roasting spit from Ka’tro, or find one in the environment. Moving forward, many, MANY more objects and gameplay will be integrated into the crafting system.
**Expanded Area: Upper Da’te’coro Canyon - **The same canyon expanded last week has been expanded even further. It now dead-ends at “The Pit”, which as the name would imply, is a large hole in the ground which you can descend into. The Pit will eventually lead into an expanded Sa’le’talo Canyon. If you look at the map ingame, it should be pretty clear how and where Sa’le’talo canyon will be expanded to reach The Pit.
**Dithered LODs - **This makes the transition between different Level of Detail models more subtle when moving through the environment. This should remove most of the pop-in caused by the Level of Detail, which should significantly improve the visuals.
**New Dolfog Attack Sounds - **Dolfogs now properly play a crunching sound when they bite you, rather than the completely inappropriate placeholder metal coin sound. (Oops!)
**New Footstep Sounds - **Replaced many of the footstep sounds with a newer set, which should hopefully sound a little more realistic to most people.
**Improved Starting Tutorial - **Using a new popup message system, we’ve improved the starting tutorial area to be a little bit more descriptive and useful. This should help prepare you for your adventures a little more effectively.
**Heat Shimmers and Distant Blur - **We’ve added two new visual effects to the game, distant blur, and a heat shimmering effect which goes away at night. These two effects notably improve the visuals.
**Stamina Meter Loss Indicator - **Added a simple secondary graphic to the stamina meter on the HUD, which should help indicate the amount of stamina your previous action consumed.
**Fixed: A handful of broken interface graphics - **Fixed a few buttons that turned solid white when hovered, fixed a few others that had the wrong colors in general. Fixed the map button on the UI shell not activating as the open tab properly. Other small tweaks.
As previously mentioned, the crafting system will continue to be integrated into the game. There are two major elements to the crafting system, which will need to wait a while to be integrated. The first is skill based crafting, where your character needs to have skill in the specific area (Cooking, Blacksmithing, Bombmaking, etc.) before being able to craft (or at least know how to craft) certain objects. This of course needs the skill system to be completed and integrated into the game. The second major feature is object quality, which allows you to improve (or diminish) the quality of the object you craft based on the quality of the resources you use. This is part of a major feature of the crafting focused characters, where you need to invest some effort into finding the best quality materials if you want to make truly exceptional items (If you use crappy iron, you’ll end up with a crappy iron sword.). This system will need to wait until we have more objects in the game.
Crafting is the foundation for many skills in the game; and many play styles. Crafting is also the foundation for “tech” based characters; which will have some very cool gameplay implications, no matter what type of character you choose to play.
Yet another foundational feature was added this week. This time it was the virtue system, which is a core foundational piece for the upcoming skill system. In addition to this new system, we have a significant performance improvement for most players, and a big visual update for the landscape.
**The Virtues (Core Stats)
** - In another major step, this week we added the 8 core virtues, and their functionality to the game. Upon character creation (or via a menu for already created characters) you can now allocate your distribution of the 8 virtues.
– Strength; your physical power.
– Agility; your physical speed.
– Finesse; your precision.
– Endurance; your ability to endure.
– Willpower; your mental power.
– Intellect; your mental speed.
– Charisma; your ability to influence others.
– Luck; subtle influence on everything.
You start of with 80 points. Up until now, the player character was functioning as if they had 10 points in each virtue. However, now you can customize these points however you want. You can dump them all into a handful of virtues (at the cost to the rest of the virtues), or you can make little tweaks. It’s up to you. All of these virtues have real ingame effects, such as strength affecting weapon damage, and agility affecting movement speed.
Massive shadow optimizations - Thanks to some clever trickery, and new visual effects, we were able to significantly optimize the ingame shadows, leading to a performance increase of a MASSIVE 30 – 45 percent increase. This will allow most players to bump up the settings to the next quality level (or two)
Landscape Texture Upgrade (Again) - We also increased the quality, and improved the design of several landscape textures, leading to higher resolution and higher realism visuals. This also adds slightly more color to the scene, without changing the look away from the colors we want. (More color will be added in the future with foliage)
Critical Hits - Based on the player’s luck, there is now a very limited of causing a 2x damage critical hit on an attack.
**Fixed: Lighting in Character Studio - **Reduced the lighting intensity in the character studio, which makes the picture significantly less washed out.
**Removed: Unused Art Assets - **Removed a bunch of old art asset files, which weren’t ever going to be used ingame. This leads to a smaller download and install size.
In addition to the work last week on the virtues, there was a bunch of work done behind the scenes on the village. The exterior of the village, along with it’s architecture is now nearly complete. We’re about to start building a massive amount of art for the interiors of the village, which means we’ll soon be able to add the village to the game, as well as dozens, potentially hundreds of additional gameplay objects, such as food and tools.
Due to this week being thanksgiving, a major holiday in the United States, – and as well as a focus on the new backend/server system/launcher improvments, next week’s patch may be a little bit lighter than normal.
This game looks amazing, and to think i twas made by three people is crazy. I am very eager to play it but my time situation really doesn’t allow me to consider subscription based games at the moment. Regardless, when I have some time I will definitely be coming back to this one.
Subscription for a singleplayer/co-op game is an interesting choice. Is there any plans to add a ‘pay once’ option? Or even a long term sub at a discounted rate?
As far as the gameplay goes, the only criticism I have is that combat looks like it is a bit floaty and disconnected. But without playing it’s hard to tell for sure.
The only other comment I have is that I feel like the referral program cheapens the game somewhat. Not in the way intended But it makes it feel a little tacky. Just my opinion though. Regardless, game looks brilliant. Keep up the amazing work
Additional… I’ve just PMd you with an issue you might not have considered.
In a few weeks we’re going to release a significant update to the “payment” system, which is going to allow two critical things: It will allow you to bulk buy periods of time at a discount, and allow you to keep access to the game once your subscription expires. The subscriptions will give you access to download updates, but you’ll still be able to keep access to the game. If you’d like then you could buy a month, skip for a few more months, and buy another month to catch up on the updates.
The game likely won’t have a lifetime subscription option for a long time, because in order to make that work, we’d need to charge too much. I personally plan on updating the game for over five years; as more people buy the game we can afford to make more content even faster. Imagine every week, there’s new enemies, new weapons and armor, new areas to explore, more quests to do, and more - it makes the subscription a lot more valuable. Even without the bulk discounts, after an entire YEAR you’re still only paying what you would play for a new game.
Bandwidth is our largest expense. This game isn’t small, like most indie games - it’s several gigabytes, and it ends up costing a good portion of that subscription fee just on bandwidth alone.
We’ve had a notable amount of feedback on the referral program; there’s mixed results regarding it… but once we switch over to the new payment server in a few weeks, I’m probably going to reduce references to the referral program.
Thanks for the feedback! It really helps us to craft a better game!
Ah okay. I feel like you are selling yourself short with the option to stop subscription and keep the game active, as I can honestly imagine a LOT of players taking that offer up, and $5/month is a very low fee. However, I’m assuming you have alreayd considered all of that and crunched the numbers so I’ll keep out of that one XD
Makes sense about the bandwidth. I wasn’t so much challenging the subsciption model as much as I was just surprised to see it in a game that is geared towards solo and small co-op group play. I love those style of games, but there’s always an issue in keeping people playing that results in either the game dying off or the team having to slave away month after month post-release for more content. Very bold of you to take the latter, but it appears to be paying off so far!
One additional question - is the game story/quest driven? Or is it more sandbox? I’ve just noticed that there isn’t much mention of any sort of narrative?
If you choose to let your subscription expire you will lose access to the ability to download updates; so there’s a big incentive to keep paying, especially if you play with friends… but since not downloading updates means it’s not costing us anything, I really don’t have a problem with letting people play without keeping their subscription active.
It’s definitely sandbox. There are quests in the game, and in the future there will be long and even epic quest lines… but right now and continuing for the life of the game, it will be more of a sandbox environment where players will (eventually) be able to choose what kind of character they want to be, what their backstory is, and where they start. It’s then up to you to interact with the world as you see fit, and seek or stumble upon the quest lines.
The basic idea is that you’re not necessarily the chosen one. Most games force you into the role of savior, hero, Dovahkiin, etc - and while that’s great and not necessarily a bad thing, I wanted to do something different. The core concept of the game has an equally strong non-violent, non-adventuring component to it… so if you want to be a shopkeeper and sell crafted goods, or homestead somewhere in the wilderness, you can do that as a focus, rather than a distraction… or you can go and fight monsters and bandits and uncover legendary treasure etc.
The cool thing, in my opinion, is how this rolls over into multiple players. You can still have the core, unique gameplay that you get in a single-player game (As opposed to the weaker content you tend to get with MMOs), but playing co-op you can focus and do party builds that aren’t necessarily an option when playing a game by yourself (For instance, you can be a cleric with virtually no offensive capabilities)… or you can have a player that holds the fort down and constructs an ever improving mansion, while the other players go off adventuring.
We’re definitely still a long way out from that… but that’s the general direction that you’re going to see the game growing in.
This week the update is a little light on the big changes; due to time off for Thanksgiving and family. A big part of the work was also put into testing and finalizing the new checkout system and work on the improvements to the distribution system, both of which are not directly part of the game. We’re also preparing a to start creating the final set of meshes for the exterior of Ro’to village, meaning we’ll finally be able to get that ingame. At the same time, I was able to do some early design work on a new AI personality system, and we’re starting work on a whole batch of new creatures. Exciting times are ahead!
Expanded Area: Sa’le’talo Canyon - This week, Sa’le’talo canyon (the northmost canyon) was expanded to connect with the recently expanded Da’te’coro canyon, via the pit. The map was updated to reflect this. This area is notable only insofar as it’s likely the last new exterior area for a while. Most landscape work will likely be to bring the oldest areas up to date, and add some additional caves.
Tessellation and World Displacement - Tessellation and World Displacement was added to the game, resulting in a much higher detailed terrain mesh. Offsetting this, the very small rocks scattered on the landscape have been removed (at least temporarily) as tessellation effectively removes the need for them.
(More) Improved Landscape Textures - Some of the weaker landscape textures from the last update were revised again, making them a moderate amount -more- realistic looking, and improving visual quality. The old landscape textures were removed, helping to maintain installation size.
Weapon Stamina Cost Adjustments - Weapon stamina costs were adjusted again, in order to more effectively balance them with the new prominence of food and virtues which affect stamina values and regeneration.
Atmospheric Fog Tweaks - Improved and optimized the atmospheric fog being used. It should now look more appealing, especially at sunset and sunrise, with the introduction of some additional color adjustments.
New Object Pickup and Drop Sounds - Many new sounds were added for when the player picks up and when the player drops an item. This should be a decent improvement over the sound used for
Improved Water Sources - The water sources where you can refill your water items, now also work on water horns. In addition, your character now automatically sates their entire thirst. Meaning you don’t have to refill, drink, and refill again!
Fixed: Dolfog Footstep Sounds - Fixed a bug which was causing the dolfog to use some of the old footstep sounds; causing confusion and consternation!
So, moving forward this week, we’re going to hopefully be debuting our new checkout system. Beyond that, we’re going to do some code cleanup, to make sure the foundation continues to be solid. The non-code work is going to be focusing on the exterior area of Ro’to village, getting it ready for it’s introduction to the game.
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!)
**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.
Last week, we were all setup to launch the update when disaster struck. One of the services we were relying on to push the new update broke. The update was already on the sever and everything. By the time the issue was resolved, it was almost time for this week’s update… and because of this, last week’s update was rolled into this week’s update, making on big gigantic update!
We’ve done some significant improvements to some areas of the game world, and some MASSIVE overhauls to combat. Some other preparation and maintenance work was done, getting ready for the additions in the coming weeks.
Redone Area – The northern half of South Ka’te’coro Canyon - As with last week, where the southern half of south Ka’te’coro Canyon was rebuilt, this week the northern half of south Ka’te’coro Canyon was rebuilt, this time MUCH more drastically. The game area was actually moderately expanded with quite a large amount of complexity (and foliage) added to the area.
**Combat Combos - **Attacks in combat now follow a pseudo-combo system, allowing for significantly improved predictability. The first attack animation will always be the same, and the following animations will be different, but consistent. This is replacing the old system, which simply used the same animations but randomized.
**Reworked Combat Timing - **Combat was significantly reworked to improve attack damage timing, so that enemies are no longer damaged at times inconsistent with the animation.
Power Attack button now ‘Hold LMB’ - You can now perform a power attack by holding the left mouse button, rather than the previous control scheme. The power attack displays a super early prototype of a new major feature:
Timing Reticule - An early version of a new feature, called the Timing Reticule has been added to the game. This system will be substantially different and improved by the next update. For now, the only time this Timing Reticule is used is while you hold the left mouse button to perform a power attack. Time the release of your power attack to hit the highest peak of the reticule and receive a bonus to your attacks. The more precise you are, the more you are rewarded.
Combat Staggering - Staggering has been added to combat, along with a new stagger resistance system. Certain attacks deal more or less staggering. If you receive to many hits in a short period of time, you will be staggered. A blocked attack will now lightly stagger the player. A perfect block will fully bypass any stagger. Note, this tilts gameplay more towards being defensive in combat – and these values and various animations will need to be improved further for best combat feel, this is simply an introduction of the feature.
**Dolfog Overhaul - **Dolfogs now come in a variety of different colors and ages. The old, randomized color system was removed, and replaced. Each area of the world now has more specifically colored dolfogs. The different colors and ages affect many gameplay aspects, such as their health, speed, personality, damage, and more. Quite a few more varieties were added, including the boss-like Alpha Dolfogs (And even bigger ones too), and the sinister Emberfogs. Dolfogs also now have pelts which can be collected – these pelts are also color matched to the color of dolfog which the pelt is coming from, and in some cases even the age will affect the pelts.
Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.10.1 - As we strive to keep up with the latest improvements to the Unreal Engine, we’ve once again updated to the latest version of the engine. On this occasion, there have been no substantial changes to the functionality, performance, or visuals of the game due to this.
Weapon Speed Display in Inventories - The speed of weapons is now displayed alongside weapon damage, for a more informative choice when purchasing a weapon. Swords are the fastest, while blunt weapons such as maces are the slowest, with axes striking a middle ground.
New Combat Attack – Sprint Attack - You are now capable of doing a forward attack while sprinting, which is comparable in cost and effect to a power attack.
Block Sounds (Placeholders) - Sounds were added on both blocks and perfect blocks, making it a little more clear when both of these things have occurred. These are not the final sounds, and will be replaced sometime in the future.
Containers display Weapon Damage - Containers will now display weapon damage (Along with the newly added weapon speed), similar to the player’s inventory.
**Object Preview Improvements - **Once again, the object preview for containers has been improved, by increasing the size of smaller objects to make them more visible. Now you can see all the fine detail in our lovingly crafted objects.
New Quit Prompt - Quitting the game from inside the world will now bring up a new prompt windows, which will allow you to quit directly to desktop, quit to the menu, bring up the save menu, or return to the game.
Improved Shadows - Shadows were tweaked once again, this time biasing more detail closer to the player, in exchange for slightly reducing distant detail (Nearly unnoticeably so); because of this “compromise”, shadow detail was improved with no performance cost.
More Tessellation - Now all rocks have tessellation and world displacement, making every single rock in the game significantly more visually impressive.
**Tweaked Landscape Textures - **The landscape material was completely overhauled, and the textures it uses were tweaked. This will once again result in some subtle changes and improvements to the visuals.
Map Menu Improvements - The ingame map has been upgraded with a less distorted, higher resolution map image, which also properly reflects the newly updated areas.
**Tweaked Atmospherics (Skysphere, Lighting, Fog) - **The lighting color from the sun was adjusted, especially around noon, as were some subtle sky colors, as well as an overall change in the fog density. The fog changes especially help to make scenes less confusing, by adding more depth perception without overpowering the scene with fog.
First Time Fullscreen - The first time the game is run, it will now automatically launch in full screen at the highest possible resolution allowed by your computer.
Fixed: Game Freeze on Quit - Fixed a prevalent bug introduced within the last two builds which was causing a soft freeze on attempting to exit the game.
**Fixed: Many combat related issues and glitches - **Many combat animation related issues were fixed, which should allow for a smoother, more predictable combat experience.
Fixed: Music Volume - Fixed a bug that was causing music volume to not be properly adjusted down, when the player lowered the volume in the options menu.
Fixed: Infinite Falling Bug - Fixed a bug that was causing the player to potentially be stuck in an infinite falling animation if they were knocked off an edge during certain animations.
With this week being the week of Christmas, literally working on the game is taking time off to visit with Family. This means that next week will not have an update. Sorry.
In the coming weeks, we’re looking to requisition some additional animations, to potentially get Player Customization finally in place, along with some new NPC outfits (which would also be usable by the player of course)
Soon we’ll also be fielding some server improvements, which should improve stability and download speeds, as well as our new checkout system.
I’m really glad to hear it! It makes my day when I see screenshots I’ve taken as picture of the day.
We’re all taking this week (mostly) off for Family, but after Christmas we’ll fire up the forges for another update, and on the 4th, we’ll be right on target with another weekly update. I’m all geared up for another year of updates, and considering this project wasn’t any more than a blue guy demo with some custom camera controls this time last year, (Good old blue guy) I’m super excited for the updates to come over the course of next year.
Weekly Report - 35
Happy New Year. After a break for Christmas, we’re all back and kicking for another update to Vizaris. We’ll now resume our weekly schedule of updates to the game. This week should generally wrap up the significant changes to existing combat - at least from the player’s perspective.
This week’s additions
New Quest – Lotaspine Hunt - Added a new quest to the game, “Lotaspine Hunt”, where the player is tasked with delving into caves to find the illusive Lotaspine Fruit.
**Moons and Moonlight - **Added the moons back to the sky. There are two moons, a larger moon, and a smaller moon which orbits around the larger one. These moons provide some degree of light during the night, as long as the moons happen to be up at the time.
**Full Combat Reticule - **Heavily modified the combat timing reticule which was introduced to power attacks and integrated it into all attacks in the game. You now have the option to click again during an attack at precise timing to earn a bonus. If you have good timing you’ll gain a significant advantage during combat, but if you have bad timing, you will be penalized.
**Update to the final portion of Ka’te’coro Canyon (South) - **The final portion of Ka’te’coro Canyon (South) was revised. Once again, significant improvements to layout and visuals were made, along with the addition of foliage.
**Take Damage Screen Effects - **There is now a slight screen effect which occurs the moment you take damage, which should make it a little more obvious when you’re taking damage.
Journal now displays expected quest rewards - The quest journal will now display the rewards which you “expect” to get for the quest. These rewards are generally the posted or implied rewards for a quest; but be warned, if you’re dealing with someone shifty, you might not get the reward you were expecting.
New Ka’tro Dialog - Our resident merchant and quest giver, Ka’tro was given some addition dialog / dialog revisions this update. Be sure to talk to him about some new work opportunities.
Added “The Hand” - Added the monumental divine hand back to the horizon. The Hand, believed to be the literal hand of a god, is a colossal and culturally significant edifice which dominates the sky, especially during the night. The hand holds up a giant meteor, preventing life from being annihilated. The hand, and the many stories surrounding it will be explored over the course of the game. For now, it’s just a convenient nightlight.
Cleaner Tessellation - Updated the tessellation method to remove some crack artifacts which would occur. We now make use of a much cleaner method of fading in and out tessellation based on distance.
Less Orange Sunsets - Sunsets were adjusted to be a little less orange, because in certain circumstances it was like drinking a glass of orange juice with your eyes.
**Improved Star Quality - **The resolution of the stars in the Sky were bumped up a bit. Making for a more brilliant and detailed night sky. Enjoy your stargazing.
Sticky Health Bar - The health bar was made to be “sticky” which means that when you lose some health, the health bar will indicate the chunk of health you lost for a moment.
**Added options menu setting for First/Third Person FOV - **You can now adjust the desired FOV for First and Third Person views independently of one another in the options menu.
**Added options menu setting for Tessellation - **Have a slow computer, or a beastly gaming rig? You can now disable landscape tessellation in the options menu, or increase the quality even further. The new settings are “Off”, “Medium”, “High” (The previous default) and “Ultra”
Improved Recovery Points - Added more recovery points to some of the new terrain, and moved some of the old points which were a little too close to some dolfogs. Because Vizaris is open world, and saves are persistent, if you get stuck somehow while exploring, you can access a menu to rescue your character (at a cost)
Fixed: New Unsaved Games and Containers - Fixed a bug where if the player creates a world and quits without saving, it would create a partial save that bugs containers in their next world.
Fixed: Mistake that removed most of the Dolfogs from Sek’ra’coro Canyon - Not really sure what happened there but somehow the dolfogs, and ONLY the dolfogs were removed from most of Sek’ra’coro Canyon (and nowhere else) – They’ve been added back in.
Backend: Menu Flickering Workaround - A big chunk of this week’s programming time was devoted to getting around an engine bug which was causing interface flickering in specific circumstances. This doesn’t mean much for today’s update, but the implications are significant for quests, equipment, and other dynamically changing interface elements.
We’ve got some other, significant changes heading down the pike. Our artist is currently working on clothing which is used for the player character, villager characters, and cave dweller characters. We also have some new animations for the dolfog which will be used to massively improve their capabilities and the gameplay situations surrounding them, and we have work being done of the facial construction system for creating characters – along with many other things.
This time last year Vizaris barely even existed beyond a design document, and a walking character with camera controls. This next year is going to see the game grow by leaps and bounds in literally every area, and we’re super excited to get started!
The lighting is fully dynamic. Performance heavy to be sure, but it get’s more efficient all the time. You can also dial it back if need be, using the ingame options menu. Fully dynamic lighting, and seamless interiors and exteriors were big requirements for this project.
But it makes it feel a little tacky. Just my opinion though. Regardless, game looks brilliant. Keep up the amazing work 
