Spencer
Hi Guys,
It’s been awesome to get the new map out to you guys, feedback has been good overall and it feels like another hurdle behind us towards releasing a kickass V2 version to master sometime soon. There is still a lot of work to do on the map, but what we have will serve as a base that we shouldn’t need to drastically change for a while.
I spent the start of the week working on fixing the root cause of the duplication bug in the Item system that has been discovered in the last week.
Because of this issue we will be doing another wipe on Thursday 5pm Melbourne time with some other balance fixes.
Mozzy
Now we have the new map live, I am starting work on getting the Mozzy in game and to actually have a purpose. Initially this will be the fun part of modeling the flying physics and crashing into stuff, but will also include designing where its parts are found, what it can carry etc. Should hopefully have something cool to show next week.
Mils
This week I finished the high poly modeling on the main part of the FR18. This came out as expected and now I have moved onto the laborious task of UV mapping. The mapping part as always is pretty quick to unwrap, but slows down a lot when you get to straightening the uv islands and fixing up any that came out just plain weird. That part is done. Now I’m onto the UV packing, which seems to be the slowest part of the process. I hand pack the UV’s to get the most efficient layout for our texture size. Auto packing never gives as good a result especially when you want to pack parts logically so it’s easy for other artists to understand if they need to touch them. I’ll get this done today and then can get onto baking the normal maps.
Below you can see an example of how I scale the UV islands that will be closest to the camera. I do this so they look great up close when looking down the iron sights. Adversely I give less texture space to UV islands that you barely see like the parts where the magazine goes in etc.
Here’s a shot of me over halfway done with the UV packing. You can see logical groups separated and placed out of the way while I pack the preceding groups. I start packing with the biggest parts with the biggest islands in the top left corner. I pack these based on groups and their proximity on the model to each other. For example I clumped all the parts from the rear bolt/firing assembly pretty much together. I break this rule for the smallest UV islands which I use to fill the big gaps around the largest islands. No other way to do it without wasting texture space really.
TEHSPLATT
Hello, so we finally got a playable map out the door and people seem to be enjoying it, obviously there’s a lot of places that need polishing and reworking, and that is exactly what I’ll be getting up to for a while. Currently I’m attempting to splice in the tropical biome I was working on a while ago. Trying to be a bit smarter about it this time now that I know the tools better, If I manage to get everything in looking the way I want then it should be a really cool little zone to come across, I think the idea based on what we have discussed as that this biome will be the actual beach where you spawn and then lead into the current noob desert with the tropical biome scattered through it, hopefully it all blends nicely. Currently I’m still in a testing phase of getting all my nodes and assets set up so here’s a few pictures of the old original tropical test to jog your memories.
Tom
Hey Hurtworldians,
Unfortunately I caught the flu going around last week and didn’t get much done in map work other than some small changes to the snow zone like introducing some ground texture variation.
I also made some small balance changes increasing Yeti health and removing vehicle loot from air drops but otherwise have been trying to rest up and get better.
This week we’ve been reviewing the vehicle handling changes and whilst we have been making improvements we aren’t totally happy yet so I’ll be going back in for another round of changes.
The main areas we are looking to improve are acceleration response (getting into top gear happens too fast, needs more build up into top speed) and drift handling (right now it’s too easy to turn a vehicle once its in a slide, entering a slide should be easy but once in a slide you shouldn’t be able to continue to turn into the slide without regaining traction first).
Speaking of vehicles I’ve started to bring the Slug (truck) back in and get it up to speed with the recent changes. Once thats out of the way I’ll be reintroducing the heavy slot mechanics to ensure the Slug has a strong gameplay niche of its own.
I’ll also be doing some more work on the Mozzy (helicopter), right now it’s a very basic skeleton of a vehicle waiting to have the simulation code written for it. Spencer is going to be writing the simulation and I’ll get everything else ready for it in the meantime (like creating the panels and masks).