Atajrubah
12/11/2015 - Development Update
I finally managed to get some development time in over the past two days.
I just wanted to post a quick update on what I've been working on.
[Quick Slots UI]
Work on this has just about been completed, items can now not only be picked up and moved around in the inventory but they can also be added to the Quick Slot bar. This will make equiping and using weapons,tools and items much simpler than the previous system.
Seeing as that work is just about done I went about making sure that all the back-end stuff for using tools to gather resources is also done. The backend setup for using weapons is also done. The next things I'll focus on is getting some new animations in place and making a range of melee and projectile weapons to test out with folks online. I don't have an eta on this update but we'll see how things go.
[Conclusion]
There's still plenty of work to be done but I'm happy with the progress made over the course of two days. I hope you all enjoy the forthcoming weekend. Please feel free to share your thoughts.
Best Regards
MrNexy
20/08/2015 - Update : Upcoming 0.1.8b details.
It has certainly been a very busy week in terms of development, perhaps a lot more than has been the case in recent months. I just wanted to give you folks a quick run down of whats changing in the coming updates. I'll also be taking some down time from today until Monday. So updates,development and testing should resume on Monday.
[Item Pickup UI Elements]
Today's update has this already in place , when you pickup items or gather resources a UI icon will pop up in the bottom right of screen. The design and animation is open to change and debate.
[Functional Quick Slots]
As of today's update these are only cosmetic, however once I have the back end side of things setup you'll be able to equip tools and weapons.
*Note*
In preparation for this you won't be able to gather dates to eat but you'll be able to gather stone and wood (albeit without any tools in hand :S)
[Host Game Menu]
As of today's update there are no real options for hosting other than hosting a LAN or Internet game. Next week's update will add a 'Host Game' Menu that will allow you to set a custom server name and player limit. While there aren't many options at the moment, they will be expanded in the future to allow hosts to modify drop rates and other things related to world and game behavior.
[More Placeholder Animations]
With the ability to equip tools and weapons comes the need for new animations and animation states.
[Conclusion]
That's it for this weeks round of updates , I'm going to take off for the weekend and get some rest. Please do feel free to share your thoughts and have a great weekend ( Weekends start on Thursday around my neck of the woods :D ).
Best Regards
MrNexy
0.1.8a - Patch notes.
- MrNexy
[UI Improvements]
When searching for or joining a game, dialogue boxes will appear to notify you of the result.
[Voice Chat Icon]
An Icon now appears above player's head when they press down the [V] key for voice chat.
[Menu Navigation Improvements]
You can now use escape to get back to the Main Menu from all other Menu's , when you are in game and the Main Menu is up you can press escape to close it and return to the game.
Update 17/08/2015 - Menus & Multiplayer Testing
This update has taken a little while longer than even the last one has. It was worth taking the time to put some important things in place. The systems and features mentioned below are still a work in progress , if and when you find bugs please do post them in the relavent discussion board.
[Hands !]
I have fashioned some first person hands from the character mesh that Dan Hitchen created previously. The animation isn’t great but gets the point across for the time being.
[Foliage & Resource Collection]
I’ve done the ground work that will enable players to gather resources such as stone,wood,plant fibre and scavenge-able food from nearly every foliage mesh placed in the world (Within reason of course).
I made some new grass meshes as the old ones were made using the concept art made by the ever awesome Tien.
For the time being you can gather dates from the Palm trees that you’ll find around the world and you can drink directly to reduce thirst. The logic is in place for collecting wood and stone from Palms and Boulders but will only be made available once I’ve finished the second part of the inventory system. This is something that I hope to work on for the next update.
[New Menu System]
There’s a new menu system in place. Its not extravagant but it gets the job done for the time being. From here you’ll have access to the server browser and more graphical settings, as well as a method for exiting the game properly. A note on the graphics settings however, if you reduce the anti-aliasing below x4 the reflections on the water will disappear and I’m not sure why but will see what I can do after some further investigation. Also please note that I haven’t set up any save system for the settings just yet , for the time being you may have to change the settings to your liking every time you play the game. This will be taken care of in the next update.
[Server Browser Menu & Multiplayer Testing]
Right good folks this is where I need your assistance, I have tested the server browser locally with UE4’s Null OnlineSubsystem and it works with no issues. I have gone through the steps to get it working with Steam and now need a hand testing it out. The functionality is fairly basic at this point and doesn’t include support for invites or steam’s server browser, this functionality will be added later on once I know the system is up and running and its been tested.
Make sure that Atajrubah has been added to your firewall exceptions and that the standard steam ports are open on your firewall or router. Please feel free to add me on steam if you want to find out exactly when I’ll be testing the multiplayer functionality :)
Linux Support
This update doesn't apply to the Linux build at the moment as I'm having some issues packaging for the platform. Once these are resolved I shall update the Linux build to be on par.
[Conclusion]
Thats it for this update. Expect bugs,graphical glitches and certainly the occasional debug text popping up. Please feel free to share your thoughts and any issues you may encounter on the discussion boards.
Best Regards
MrNexy
Update 05/08/2015 - Update
I'd like to apologize for the later than usual update. I've upgraded to Windows 10 and migrated the project over to Unreal Engine 4.8.3, some house keeping was necessary to get things working smoothly but it's done now.
[Testing Instructions]
A very important notice. When you want to try out the latest build when it goes live , please be sure to uninstall the game through steam and re-install it. That way you are getting a clean install of the build without any remnants of the old one to cause issues.
[Basic Graphics Settings]
I have added a few graphical options to the intro screen. Once I've rebuilt the menu system I will make a full set of graphics options available to you fine folks. For the time being this should help things run a little smoother on older systems.
[Inventory]
I have put more work into the inventory and it now supports automatic stacking, each stack has a limit of 64 for the time being and if a stacking operation results in an excess the excess will be created as a new object with the proper stack count. There are still some bugs/exceptions that may cause items to disappear if the inventory is full , I'm working on a solution for this.
[Time Of Day]
The next thing I did was fix the time of day, I rewrote the system from the ground up inside of the GameState. This allows for Day/Night cycles to be synchronized between the server and the clients. The day is split into Dawn,Morning,Noon,Dusk,Night and Midnight and can be used to govern the behavior of AI,events,loot spawning and environmental conditions at different times of day.
[Landscape and Water]
As part of house cleaning the previous landscape has been re-built , this time it uses LODs for distant parts of the terrain. This has improved the frame rate significantly. I have also done some work on the old water shader that I had implemented originally. Its not spectacular and shaders certainly are an area in which I need improvement. It should however do for the time being and can be re-done later on.
[Multiplayer]
The work that I've done this week has also ensured that things are ready for multiplayer testing. Over the next week I will be putting together the various elements required for Online connectivity and basic player-player interaction.
[Conclusion]
Once this is set up and tested on my end I will make it available for you folks to test out. For the time being though, won't you try out the latest build of the game and leave feedback in the discussion boards ?
Best Regards
MrNexy
Update 29/07/2015 - Update
I'm just popping by with a quick development update. This is what I got done in the time that I've had this week.
Inventory
Further improvements have been made to the drag-drop inventory. I still haven't gotten automatic stacking in place yet though. However I did make changes that will allow me to dynamically spawn windows of different sizes. This will make creating bags of various sizes nearly effortless.
Chat and Multiplayer
I have spent time getting this functionality in place, its not complete but will pave the way for getting people in the game and communicating with each other. Strangely enough the work done here will benefit the day/night cycles, making sure that its properly replicated to all clients.
Well thats about it for now , I shall see what I can get done tomorrow in terms of Settings UI. I may simplify it for expedience sake. Perhaps 3 additional buttons for the time being for low,medium and high ?
If all is well in the world there should be a new update by Sunday/Monday.
Best Regards
MrNexy
Update 25/07/2015 - Inventory Management
As mentioned in the previous post I have updated Atajrubah , I'll be focusing on the UI and inventory management for a while. Please refer to the post below for instructions, below that you'll find a few screenshots.
** I've also made a Linux build of the game , though I have not been able to test it out as I don't have access to a Linux OS at the moment. I'll be updating this build a little later today if anyone is interested in testing it please drop me an email.
As I mentioned in the previous post , there is something strange going on with the Day/Night cycle. I will address this in a subsequent update this week.
You are free to leave feedback and ask questions in the relevant discussion boards.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/282960/announcements/detail/118568617150327562
Best Regards
MrNexy
** The current build will be updated after some troubleshooting because Linux :3
Update 24/07/2015 - Inventory Management Update
Just swinging by to give you a heads up on the next update. It should be rolling out Friday/Saturday evening and will focus on the Inventory UI.
The UI will require further updates before its done and the functionality has been thoroughly tested. To bring up the test inventory you can do so by pressing [Tab]. Pressing [Tab] again will dismiss the menu.
You can collect items either by pressing [E] when they have an orange highlight , or you can press [LMB] to collect a particular object.
I've added an action menu .You can access it by hovering over the inventory item you wish to perform an action on and pressing [RMB]. For the time being the salvage functionality hasn't been implemented just yet. You'll also notice that hovering over an inventory item brings up a tooltip with information about that item.
Lastly I have implemented stacking items. Its not automated just yet though, you'll have to manually drag items that you want to stack onto other stackable items of the same type. You can split the items through the action menu. I've added a use case that handles uneven numbers.
Another thing that I've noticed is that there is something strange going on with the day/night cycle and time of day system. I shall endeavor to fix this, failing that I will redo it from scratch.
I've received a number of emails regarding feedback and where to leave it. Please feel free to post it in the discussions section under feedback.Your help in thoroughly testing the inventory is very much appreciated !
Thats about it for now , once I have the builds up I will post another update with some screenshots.
P.S: This is not a final design for the UI , just in case you're wondering ;)
Best Regards
MrNexy
Update 20/07/2015
Update 15/07/2015
http://steamcommunity.com/games/282960/announcements/detail/118567983061532193
In addition to that I have defaulted the game to run fullscreen and added an intro screen. I've also set up the left mouse button up to fire a projectile that explodes when on contact.
For the time being apart from the aforementioned changes , there's still not much to do in the game. I spent the past weekend doing a lot of behind the scenes work on the new inventory system implementation. It may make it into the next build if I can find the time this week to get the rest done.
I've included a few screenshots below of the intro screen and new terrain.
Best Regards
MrNexy
Update 15/07/2015
Thank you !
First and foremost I want to thank everyone who sent in key requests , there were many of these requests and as such I'm not able to respond to each one in a personalized fashion. Thank you for the kind words and support, they are very much appreciated.
Regarding Key Requests.
To date there have been around 290 - 300 odd keys sent out, which in part explains the delay between the request emails being sent in and the keys being sent back. Given the number of requests received I can bet there are some that I have missed, others that may have received double emails.
For that I would like to extend my sincerest apologies, however moving forward I won't be accepting any more requests
Changes to the Game
Life has been very busy the past couple months and work has not allowed me much time to work on Atajrubah. In the precious little time that I've had to work on the game I have made some changes.
- I've put together a new landscape using some of my old textures as a placeholder. This still requires a great deal of work. Foliage has been stripped away and will only re-appear once I have made new assets.
- Changes have been made to lighting and post processing.
- Cloud Shadows have been added, though actual clouds are required to complete the look.
- The Inventory is being completely re-worked, as such I've done some behind the scenes work to setup interactions and item collection.
Conclusion.
I'll be replacing the current main build of the game with the beta version.
So when are you going to get this update ? I'm aiming for Sunday/Monday, screenshots will accompany the update.
Thank you for taking the time to read this update and thank you again for the support !
Best Regards
MrNexy