Vizaris Weekly Update - 44 news

Unfortunately, there’s not going to be an update to Vizaris this week. Several work and personal issues combined to make the update impossible this week, including delays and crashes, doctor’s appointments, vet visits, and an unrelated headcold. With the excuses out of the way, I’m still going to do a bit of a showcase of some of the upcoming creature art in Vizaris.

Creatures

As anyone who’s followed Vizaris is aware, the Dolfog is one of the main creatures that inhabits the Qaris’da’te Caldera, a warren of caves and canyons which used to be the bed of a vast inland sea, one thousand years before the start of the game. A cataclysmic event drained the sea, and caused rapid evolution of the creatures in the area. In this case, a fish mutated into the Dolfog. A horrible creature which can vary in size from a cuddly puppy to a gristly charging bull. You generally want to stay away from these guys.

The Pirahken is a very small creature, usually no taller than knee height. They are known for swarming larger prey, an males which are exceptionally boisterous and aggressive, especially during mating season. The inhabitants of Ro’to village domesticate Pirahken, harvesting their egg clutches, and using the creatures themselves as a source of meat.

The Pirahken, along with other two creatures listed below, is one of seven new creatures which we need to make animations for. If you’re an animator, or a animation skinner/rigger, we’d be interested in hearing from you.

The Vython is a large creature, generally about the same size as a dolfog. The vython is known for it’s gaping, tooth filled maw, which is often the source of luminescent jets of acidic water, which it uses to stun, confuse, and blind it’s predator and it’s prey (usually one in the same) and then either devour it’s target, or flee. Unlike other creatures of the Qaris’da’te caldera, Vythons are very rarely, if ever domesticated, do to their frequent and hazardous acid leaks.

The Balgore is a large and fairly passive creature, so long as its offspring are safe. It’s known for slowly lumbering around the canyons, usually with a cavalcade of offspring following behind it. Naturally, humans being humans, find these offspring to be quite the delicacy, and often hunt the young balgores around the times of large feasts and festivals. The protective parents won’t have much of any predator, and will likely charge any hunter or predator threatening their babies.

Now, just because I wasn’t able to get an update posted this week, doesn’t mean there wasn’t progress on the game. The player outfits along with some outfits for the villager were completed this week, along with more code for village, including a significant overhaul to conversations, allowing multiple players to participate in a conversation with an NPC, and enhanced behavior for when the player doesn’t have enough money to pay off their bounty, and doesn’t want to die at the hands of the guards. (The player gets exiled, and must do quests to work off their bounty, if they want to get back inside the village.)

For the work outside of code and art – well along with several miscellaneous tasks, including a new high quality pickaxe upgrade and some visual fixes, we’re also working on a complete overhaul to the way the map is loaded, which will result in smoother gameplay, less hard drive space usage, lower ram while running, and yet still provide better visuals. It’s a pretty significant update to the landscape, and by the time for the next update there will be a whole additional week of progress added on top, so the update in a week should be pretty big.

Outside of next weeks update, we’ll hopefully be able to get at least one of these creatures rigged, animated, and ingame. We’re definitely looking forward to more variety in the creatures – but it’s more than just animations, it also requires custom sounds (What does a balgore sound like? You’ll have to wait and see), visual effects, code for unique behaviors, and a smattering of secondary objects like the dolfog has (pelt, multiple meat chunks, etc.)

–Luke

Vizaris is an open world, fantasy roleplaying game, with singleplayer and 6 player co-op multiplayer. Vizaris focuses on player choice and freedom. New updates at the start of every week!

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. It's like our Kickstarter or Patreon, but you get instant access to the game! Free press access available! Questions, comments, help, and feedback welcome!