Dev Blog #36: Exterior Environments and Performance Gains

10 Jun 2016Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Welcome to our first Dev Blog (posted on Steam, that is!). We've been posting weekly development updates every friday for quite some time now here, and now that we're set up on Steam we'll be sharing them on this page as well.

It's been another busy week for the NVYVE Studios team! We've finished a bunch of meaty tasks that have been keeping us busy, in most cases resulting in pretty major performance gains. Our AI systems in particular have been massively improved, which means we'll be able to fit many more characters on-screen than we were able to before. Should result in some nice team fights between factions; we'll post more on that later!

We also made some great progress on the art side of things; we've greatly expanded Oasis - the main exterior area in Eden, added some new weapon boxes, created new utility attachments, and added dye support to a ton of items! You'll be able to find different dye modules within Eden to customize your AARM and attachments with a ton of different color schemes.

Oh, and here's hacking a locked container!

Here's the breakdown of what we've all been working on:

Adam

Made a ton of progress modelling the exterior courtyard area, Oasis, including several small stores and some larger POIs to discover

Alayna

Touched up weapon and equipment textures across the board

Added dye support to almost all existing weapons and items

Christian

Finished restructuring AI systems for drastic performance improvements - this means we'll be able to simulate many more characters on screen to really bring the world to life!

Implemented AI threat system - characters can now be intimidated and flee from other more powerful characters!

Patrick

Finished restructuring all weapon and prop animations for improved performance

Ian

Finished reimporting and restructuring weapon and props from Patrick and Mathew for improved performance and usability

Mathew

Finished creating equipment loot cases

Finished first batch of utility attachments - the player will be able to find and equip these to gain extra abilities in exploration and combat

Finished restructuring weapon and prop animations for improved performance

Stephen

Finished implementing security bypass items - the player can use these to assist in hacking difficult locks

Implemented first stage of zone based culling system, for huge performance gains on top of Unity's built in culling system

That's it for this week! Check back next friday for our next progress update.