We've been working really hard this past week on the final alpha update (beta updates start afterwards). It contains many new features, and its getting close to release at the end of next week.
This week a fair bit of work has gone into the new farming system. We've been working on fixing up the forest system to be more stable with the farming, where the trees you can grow will use the same technology as the trees that are spawned in the world at the beginning. In that process the forest code has had a couple of stability improvements that could lessen some weird behavior in the normal forests, like having duplicate trees in the same location.
The farm hay has been optimized, where the last model LOD is low poly enough that it can be batched so a whole field will only be a couple of draw calls after 50 meters away, as well there's a wind effect on the farm hay now. We put in various polish features like particles, smoothing the transitions between vegetable stages, and making plot placement easier than just placing where the hoe hits.
There's been some bug fixing for female armors, since the chest would tend to stick through some combinations of armor, especially the tabard. Some meshes had to be modified and custom versions were made to accommodate the female figure. At this point most of the bugs and clipping issues for females have been resolved.
On the combat front, we fully implemented the spear animations, settled on a stab, downward stab, and modified swing animations for horizontal attacks. Hit reactions also now vary in intensity depending on what weapon was used. Heavier weapons appear to cause bigger blows. Weapons should also now hit properly, whereas previously some weapons would hit with the side of a blade rather than the sharp edge.
Kicking/Blocking has also been improved. Players are no longer able to kick when they have broken legs, and some coding mistakes related to kicking/blocking were fixed. Audio has also been implemented for the new spears, and some bugs fixed with projectile's not playing the correct sounds. The trebuchet is now also less random and allowed for more counter weight to increase accuracy.
We've also doubled the no build zone around resource nodes. Our original intention with resource nodes was that they become a point of contention and strategic value on the map, and we wanted to encourage players fighting over control of resources. However, we now feel it is best that if a player wants to try and fully control a resource, they have to build and maintain a much larger base around it, making it much harder to do so.
Were also implementing a leaderboard system that admins can view (and helps aid in our report system) - A system that polls current statistics from players and compares them to each other, ranking their scores from highest to lowest. Though it has been ready for action for some time, it had not been tested, nor had its supporting systems been implemented.
A menu was created to observe the leaderboards in action, which can currently be opened by administrators with "/menu open Leaderboards". Tests now look promising, although a leaderboard filled with 1000 items may begin to test a user's patience. We have created leaderboards to track who is on-top of various reports and player-versus-player interactions.
We've also been working on new Corner Pieces for all the 3D Tilesets. These pieces are intended to join ramps and stairs at their corners, or just to add variety to builds. They have a unique gizmo and can be placed similar to how ramps and stairs are placed.
We plan to launch the new update at the end of next week, and there will be a wipe when it launches.
Enjoy your weekend of gaming,
- The Code}{atch Team