Vizaris Weekly Update - 35 news

Happy New Year. After a break for Christmas, we're all back and kicking for another update to Vizaris. We'll now resume our weekly schedule of updates to the game. This week should generally wrap up the significant changes to existing combat - at least from the player's perspective.

This week's additions

• New Quest – Lotaspine Hunt - Added a new quest to the game, “Lotaspine Hunt”, where the player is tasked with delving into caves to find the illusive Lotaspine Fruit.

• Moons and Moonlight - Added the moons back to the sky. There are two moons, a larger moon, and a smaller moon which orbits around the larger one. These moons provide some degree of light during the night, as long as the moons happen to be up at the time.

• Full Combat Reticule - Heavily modified the combat timing reticule which was introduced to power attacks and integrated it into all attacks in the game. You now have the option to click again during an attack at precise timing to earn a bonus. If you have good timing you’ll gain a significant advantage during combat, but if you have bad timing, you will be penalized.

• Update to the final portion of Ka’te’coro Canyon (South) - The final portion of Ka’te’coro Canyon (South) was revised. Once again, significant improvements to layout and visuals were made, along with the addition of foliage.

• Take Damage Screen Effects - There is now a slight screen effect which occurs the moment you take damage, which should make it a little more obvious when you’re taking damage.

• Journal now displays expected quest rewards - The quest journal will now display the rewards which you “expect” to get for the quest. These rewards are generally the posted or implied rewards for a quest; but be warned, if you’re dealing with someone shifty, you might not get the reward you were expecting.

• New Ka’tro Dialog - Our resident merchant and quest giver, Ka’tro was given some addition dialog / dialog revisions this update. Be sure to talk to him about some new work opportunities.

• Added “The Hand” - Added the monumental divine hand back to the horizon. The Hand, believed to be the literal hand of a god, is a colossal and culturally significant edifice which dominates the sky, especially during the night. The hand holds up a giant meteor, preventing life from being annihilated. The hand, and the many stories surrounding it will be explored over the course of the game. For now, it’s just a convenient nightlight.

• Cleaner Tessellation - Updated the tessellation method to remove some crack artifacts which would occur. We now make use of a much cleaner method of fading in and out tessellation based on distance.

• Less Orange Sunsets - Sunsets were adjusted to be a little less orange, because in certain circumstances it was like drinking a glass of orange juice with your eyes.

• Improved Star Quality - The resolution of the stars in the Sky were bumped up a bit. Making for a more brilliant and detailed night sky. Enjoy your stargazing.

• Sticky Health Bar - The health bar was made to be “sticky”; which means that when you lose some health, the health bar will indicate the chunk of health you lost for a moment.

• Added options menu setting for First/Third Person FOV - You can now adjust the desired FOV for First and Third Person views independently of one another in the options menu.

• Added options menu setting for Tessellation - Have a slow computer, or a beastly gaming rig? You can now disable landscape tessellation in the options menu, or increase the quality even further. The new settings are “Off”, “Medium”, “High” (The previous default) and “Ultra”

• Improved Recovery Points - Added more recovery points to some of the new terrain, and moved some of the old points which were a little too close to some dolfogs. Because Vizaris is open world, and saves are persistent, if you get stuck somehow while exploring, you can access a menu to rescue your character (at a cost)

• Fixed: New Unsaved Games and Containers - Fixed a bug where if the player creates a world and quits without saving, it would create a partial save that bugs containers in their next world.

• Fixed: Mistake that removed most of the Dolfogs from Sek’ra’coro Canyon - Not really sure what happened there but somehow the dolfogs, and ONLY the dolfogs were removed from most of Sek’ra’coro Canyon (and nowhere else) – They’ve been added back in.

• Backend: Menu Flickering Workaround - A big chunk of this week’s programming time was devoted to getting around an engine bug which was causing interface flickering in specific circumstances. This doesn’t mean much for today’s update, but the implications are significant for quests, equipment, and other dynamically changing interface elements.

We’ve got some other, significant changes heading down the pike. Our artist is currently working on clothing which is used for the player character, villager characters, and cave dweller characters. We also have some new animations for the dolfog which will be used to massively improve their capabilities and the gameplay situations surrounding them, and we have work being done of the facial construction system for creating characters – along with many other things.

This time last year Vizaris barely even existed beyond a design document, and a walking character with camera controls. This next year is going to see the game grow by leaps and bounds in literally every area, and we’re super excited to get started!

–Luke

Vizaris is an open world, fantasy roleplaying game, with singleplayer and 6 player co-op multiplayer. Vizaris focuses on player choice and freedom.

You can play Vizaris right now by going to www.VizarisGame.com/play , Every dollar goes to supporting the development of the game, meaning more content at a faster rate. Free press access available! Questions, comments, help, and feedback welcome!