Hi, hello! Welcome back to our weekly development digest!
One of the most important things that happened this week was that we found a new illustrator! I won't go into all of the details, but once we get something more finalized, I'll be sharing.
We've made some progress on dedicated servers, which are actually helping us pinpoint some performance issues as well. Performance in a game has got to be the hardest thing (in my opinion - I also don't do programming) to pinpoint and figure out the right way to do things. We've changed up so many things that have shown promise, but still they never end up fixing the issue (I'm specifically talking about the missing furniture in buildings after a couple hours of gameplay). It's a rabbit hole of time and energy.
Louis has been hopping around a bit this week. He's been working on finishing up the shop item overhaul. This would make it so that you can purchase a daily limited supply from shops rather than just the one item sitting there.
He has also been working on vanishing NPC's, a long-needed feature. Basically, if an NPC says "I'll see you in the next town" then once you've left the area and returned, you won't see them standing around anymore. It'll fix the weirdness with Sen seemingly teleporting between Azura and Castaway Rock as well as being super useful for things to come!
Lastly, he's been working on the map overhaul! This overhaul will give you the ability to see the world map, zoom into each (available) zone and even place waypoint markers wherever you'd like. You'll also be able to see your quest log while looking at the map and track quests from it. The map will also be receiving a fog of war feature which covers areas you haven't yet explored and tracking your exploration progress using a progress bar off to the side.
Wendy and Kindred are making progress filling out the quest content in Windless Woods and our dedicated testing team will be combing through them with a fine toothed comb very soon to catch all those pesky bugs before the update launches this summer.
Kindred has been working on the Shrubrian village as well and some background programming needed there. I shared some of the models he made last week, but I don't want to spoil the village.
This week wasn't really picture friendly (but we did share a lot of fun gifs between the team in our conversations haha).
I'll see you all next week!
-Janna