Fracturedveil
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We've been working on letting the jungle reclaim the roads in the game recently.
We just finished a big new foliage update with better-looking grass, new types of trees, and coconuts for players to harvest.
Character Customization Updates: New Clothing and Improvements
We kicked off this month by removing the old Hawaiian shirt, cargo pants, and bucket hat outfit that was standard issue since the early days of alpha. A lot of players asked us when we were going to give folks more options.
So we added a bunch of new clothing options and even glasses so you can better see the bullets coming.
We Improved the look and feel of the first-person meshes and animations as well.
There are many more options for making your character look unique now and we included a feature that can make your facial hair color match the hair on your head.
New Content: Vendors
The lone vendor in the Thorcon Power Plant has some competition now. New outfits and an array of weapons and gear (such as various clothing options) are purchasable from these three.
Vendors can be found across the map now for your survival needs. At the top of the tallest towers, to the worst neighborhoods in Lahaina.
Wherever you are, there is a sometimes friendly vendor location near you.
New Feature: Sleep
When a player logs out they no longer disappear into a void, they go to sleep. All your stuff will persist when you’re not playing the game, but your body is vulnerable while you sleep. So, you have to make good choices about where you decide to lay your head if you want to keep it.
New Feature: AI Zones and Updates
This month we introduced zones radiating out from the Thorcon that get more dangerous the further you explore. The area around the power plant remains mostly safe for players, but the island’s other inhabitants get more dangerous as you move away from the starting area.
The zone closest to the Thorcon is filled with cannibals. They’re not too hard to manage as long as you burn everything you kill and don’t let them eat a corpse to power up.
Trophy Collectors are added to the mix in the next zone. They try to pin down players by throwing rotting heads that explode into clouds of toxic gas.
Move out a little further and you’ll start finding butchers and groups of mutants.
The groups get bigger and the mutants get tougher the further you go.
We also updated the toughest mutant currently shuffling around the island, Big Bob.
Bob’s attributes got an overhaul and we increased his charging speed.
Don’t let the cane fool you. He’s spry enough to catch just about anything if he’s hungry enough.
Miscellaneous Updates
Environmental Updates
- Improved foliage distribution and collision
- Improved rain occlusion
Harvesting Update
- Adjusted drop rate of coconuts and bananas
Game Update
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Added safe zone message when logging out and 'Teleporting, please wait...' after initial login
AI Update
- Improved AI movement, pushing, and avoidance system
Player Update
- Increased Stamina recharge rate while crouching
- The Respawn Penalty no longer affects the player's carrying capacity
Currently, totems help players claim a plot of land to build on and can prevent your base from decaying if you keep them filled with resources.
We added tiered totems and totem shields this month to make them more useful if you’re willing to spend the resources.
There are now 6 different tiers of totems that players can build inside their base. They get tougher as you upgrade them and provide buffs to construction pieces around them.
Totem shields create an invisible force that attackers have to wear down before they can access or damage your totem making it even harder for someone to take over your base if you have them installed.
Last summer we added a dungeon to our starting area, the Thorcon Power Plant.
It remained empty with some placeholders for a while why we worked on more important things like making the game run at a playable frame rate without crashing.
Now that we’ve achieved that goal we went back to work on the Thorcon dungeon.
Things are looking a little different inside now.
There’s still work to be done but it’s a fun place to run around with a group as we work on upgrades and other hidden places for players to explore.
To learn more about Fractured Veil check out our Discord. We love talking about what we're working on next.
Back in 2017 we made a concept for the jungle of our dreams. A Maui with painted trees and dense foliage. Plants that showed signs of the ‘fracture’ just like the mutants running around the world. In closed-alpha our main goal was just to get a stable game that didn’t crash every 5 seconds. Now that we’ve accomplished that, we set our sights on the trees and plants in the world to get closer to the first concept art from back in the day.
This was what it looked like a week ago.
This is where we’re at now, adding bigger palm trees, flowers and tons of ferns and bushes.
Added some grassy vines off the trees as well to add to the post-apoc feel of an abandoned world overgrown and messed up.
This is an example of before the update, standing in front of a bridge near the river in the starting area.
This is the same shot once we prettied up the world a bit.
In our version of Lahaina, it’s been super tough to get trees to show from any elevated vantage point without killing performance. There was a line where the trees ended and the map was just brown dirt before.
But after some tinkering with the Unreal engine, we’ve figured out a way for players to still see the greenery as they take an elevator ride.
It’s crazy how much a difference it makes for the feel of the game, how all the color and plants have brought us closer to the version of Hawaii we wanted.
The plants even react to the wind after the update and when it rains you feel like you’re lost in a dense jungle trying to not die.
Our persistence work continued this week making sure that all your stuff sticks around where you left it after you log out to play in the real world again. In addition to inventory and containers we focused on making improvements to weapons and totems.
We’ve received a lot of feedback about a handful of totem and construction issues and focused there first. We updated the placement rules for totems so they can only be placed on foundation pieces now, and made sure that resources for building, upgrading, repairing and placing attachments will now come from the totem before taking them from a player's inventory.
We also fixed a bug with totem claims not persisting as they should. Nothing is more frustrating than logging in to find that the neighborhood property lines have been redrawn while you were gone.
The team made some crafting improvements and fixed bugs involving duplicate inventory slots and the server crashing after a player made certain items. Since spear and axe production has never been easier, we thought we’d take another run at balancing thrown weapon damage.
We adjusted damage to eliminate one shot kills after it became an issue in a previous play test, but there was still room for improvement. Hopefully, we hit the sweet spot between spears being the most powerful weapons in the game and wearing a headful of axes like a crown.
We fixed an issue with research benches not working for all items and recipes before moving on to making a few improvements to weapons you don’t throw to round out the week.
We took care of a bug that resulted in weapons that wouldn’t reload and canteens that would never empty, and made a number of updates to weapon attachments to ensure that they are working properly, including the ability to add multiple attachments to guns. Players should find it a breeze to play dress-up with their guns and load them on the fly once again.
If you want to learn more about Fractured Veil head over to our Discord server.
More About Fractured Veil
From the very beginning we’ve tried to add little touches to the world that remind players of the thriving Lahaina that existed before the Fracture. There’s no doubt that the forests and beaches frame the setting in the game, but the buildings and dilapidated neighborhoods help tell the story of the people who didn’t make it through the apocalypse.
Followers of our discord will know that one of the projects we’ve been working on is adding pictures and posters to the ruins and abandoned homes around the map. Community members have submitted photos of their fur babies and we’ve set out to make them Lahaina famous.
We’re happy to share that we’ve finally fixed a few bugs that saw posters stacked on top of each other and rooms having too few or too many pictures to reach just the right amount of wall hangings.
Right now it’s mostly pictures of the team and some friends but if you head over to the #pets channel on our discord and submit a photo, you might just see their picture hanging in a house in the future.
We continued making persistence and inventory improvements this week and squashed a long list of bugs with the help of our testers. That includes some updates to the research bench and fixes an issue with boot and hat recipes not producing boots or hats.
We made it impossible to place sleeping bags under benches and we fixed an interesting bug where players could steal items from other players' inventories. There are plenty of reasons for you to kill other players but stolen arrows won’t be one of them anymore.
One of our testers discovered that the meat spoilage timer was being applied to other crafted items like iron and charcoal. Nothing smells worse than putrid ingots so we fixed the problem. We also fixed an issue where dragging a stack from a player-built smelter into a stack in a player inventory wasn't working correctly.
AI should be lootable again so players can feel free to go through the mutant’s disgusting pockets after they’ve been put down, and we fixed a bug with weapon reloading animations. As you can see loading your rifle after shooting one of the neighbors looks as good as it feels.
If you want to learn more about Fractured Veil head over to our Discord server.
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