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[Chris MacAdam]

Im curious about the bounty system. Maybe you have covered this and I missed it skimming the devlog.
How many people can be in a game at once? And can you only do 'bounty missions' with people in the game your currently in? Or say is there a 'most wanted list' where I can find the people with the highest bounty and pretty much jump into their game to try and kill them?

I like the idea of it though! Also you mention checking to see if the killing was legal. can you kill your own team mates and then become an outlaw?

[Mittens]

The bounty board will only show bounties for people on that planet (server). But a planet can have a lot of people on it at once, given their size. People aren't really meant jump around servers in territory, it's more like an MMO where you pick a rhealm with good latency and you will just keep playing on that planet.

When you log out of the game you don't disappear, you character just animates like they are sleeping, when you log back in you wake up where you left off.
So if you are someone with a high bounty, you don't have to be in the server to be hunted, people can try to find where you are sleeping to collect the reward

[Chris MacAdam]

Ah okay I was just wondering. I was under the impression that you could jump around from matches. I like the more persistent world idea making it more like an MMO. Good luck on this! I always check out the thread whenever you post something 

[Mittens]

Over the last couple of days I've been working on the "map" view. As you zoom further away from the ground it will tint moreso to match the color of the faction whom own that territory

I also made a crazy new spherical grid reference system which (in my opinion) is much better than longitude and latitude for a world which does not effectively have the poles walled off. The livable areas of the earth can effectively be mapped as a cylinder, so X/Y coordinates work fine here.
With my system you refer to a place by it's side number eg. side3 then the X/Y coordinates on that "square" side eg. A7

[Mittens]

Here's a better example of the ground changing color, the other pic is very dark

[Mittens]

I'm currently working on being able to save and load the start of the whole world.
Turns out this is pretty a pretty tedious process

[Mittens]

So, the saving/loading system works pretty nicely now, I just need to properly hook it in next to the "Start Server" button and have automatic saves while  a game is hosted.

In other news I added basic voice chat functionality. Eventually I would like to have faction members all able to talk with voice like they are in a Skype call and also have each player able to transmit voice from their player location to anyone nearby (volume fades off with distance from player)

[Mittens]

Good news, I've made a small breakthrough in getting voice data to stream to the server and them stream from there out to every other connected client.

Now I need to figure out how to decipher which player the data from each received data-steam belong to and play the audio from their respective location.

[Mittens]

Voice chat is now working like a charm and world saving/loading is more or less integrated and working also.

I also added health bars to structures which show approximately how long they are going to take to finish building and also display the health of the building if it's damaged

Only a few more things I want to add or fix up before I'm happy to put up a public test download

[lagdog]

so fast o.o
do you use your own engine or unity or ue4?
i love tribes, but i think you will need much more hilly terrain to get the same feel, the best part of tribes was the crazy speeds you could build up.

[Mittens]

I'm still working on this game, proof

added: added easy aliens that spawn near poor people
added: pop-up hint tutorial boxes

fixed: humvees slowly sliding down hills
fixed: friendly fire bug in BulletScript2
updated: title menus
improved: consistency of night darkness across various graphics settings
started: making hint pop-up UI
improved: layout and style of login menu

made index menu transform into tabs (top of screen) when pressed, don't close menu

prevented shop inventory or faction menu to be open while dying
fixed: "suggest alliance" is appearing on targets who have no faction
added: a minimum amount to bundle resources (prevent spamming items)
added: limited number of ranks made per faction
made entering a vehicle based on a range/facing check instead of tracing
fixed: players are re-spawning without their previous faction?

changed: carry volumes now disable player sync, instead will snap players to server position of they desync by more than 2 units

changed: yaw to face aimpoint in scope view no longer applies if seated in a vehicle_entity
fixed: changing seats in a humvee locking players camera when they get out
added: vehicle saving and loading
fixed: camera homing had wrong lerp maths for vectors
fixed: clients auto-equipping wearable gear bought from shop

added: fighter and dropship health and damage system
fixed: faction account money exploit

fixed: carry areas not carring dropships or jeeps
fixed: jeep wheels always rolling
fixed: grass growing on not ground
fixed: multiple action bubbles appearing for healing self and bandaging self

fixed: humvees spazzing when driver exists

fixed: vehicles killing driver and passangers when getting out
fixed: jittery movement of played being carried by dropships or carriers
fixed: player shaking within the driver seat of dropship and fighter jet
added: night vision with N key
added: vehicle gun sound for fighter cannons

fixed: vehicles using mouse steering only working for server player
fixed: humvee physics

improved: custom wheel/suspension system
added: smooth following script for childed objects Vehicle_Camera_Smoothing.cs
added: screen blur based on health
fixed: dropship flight physics …
added: updades panel to base factory, enables purchasing upgrades to factory

improved: drop ship flight physics
fixed: waking up without proper movement physics, gravity script was not getting initialized

added: context menu in map view, can spawn local and replicated markers/pings for yourself and faction-mates

added: infrastructure for factory upgrades
changed: camera angle in title screen
fixed: player always logging in as a dead sleeper, heath_state numbers were wrong in the conditions of Event_StopSleeping


added: screen effects and heartbeat when on low health/blood …

fixed: medkits going past 100hp
fixed: world map not centering on player initially
fixed: exception in faction menu, caused by alien ragdolls being tagged as "Enemy" when that should be for faction enemy data only

fixed: bounties costing no money …
fixed: items not being destroyed when used from client inventory
fixed: voice chat callback not getting called, moved subcription to GlobalCallbacks
fixed: duplicate factories caused by Attached() call, replaced factories with prefab spawn points
changed: factory spawn point to be higher so it does not trap player inside factory
changed: widened angle range when re-spawning onto faction commander
changed: InventoryItem now deletes itself when detached from bolt

[Mittens]

I made a new alien today.
These ones behave neutral/cowardly towards the player. They run away if you get in their vision but can be snuck up on from behind.
If the player hurts one it turns aggressive and starts biting at the player till either you or it dies

[FK in the Coffee]

This is ridiculously impressive for a one-man team. I'm blown away by the work so far tbh. You should definitely be proud of what you've done so far!

[Mittens]

Thanks FK.

So I'm really close to releasing an online test build of this.
I gave the game out at a LAN recently and go to see how new players handle it.

I found a bunch of bugs, obviously, most of which are fixed now.
I also found that not a single player interfaced with the base building part of the game, I believe this is because players are required to buy the builder tool before they are even able to see what's possible re: base building.

So now the base constructor tool is a free starting item

I also found that people really struggled with the complex weapon handling, So I'm going to try adding in a lot more hints, interface and instruction to make it a learn-able skill instead of an impassable hurdle


One pretty fundamental problem I'm finding with the game is the requirement for population. Most of the (planned)fun of the game is in the interactions between players and groups of factions (building a base with others, assaulting an enemy base, forming a large faction, etc.)
All of this requires many human players be present in the server at any given time. When this player density is not met, the game feels shallow and bad.

I haven't yet come up with any brilliant ideas on how to solve this

[Mittens]

random screenshots

Soon there will be snowy lands on the poles of the planet


NVG effect


new foliage

[jctwood]

All of these landscapes look jaw droppingly stunning! I am surprised I haven't come across the thread before it should really be at the top of devlogs with the production quality and mechanical depth you are achieving! Congratulations on voice chat working I can imagine it is a hard task. I also really love the black and white shot, it is so soft! Will this be a specific type of scope or some other effect that causes the player to see in black and white?

[Mittens]

All of these landscapes look jaw droppingly stunning! I am surprised I haven't come across the thread before it should really be at the top of devlogs with the production quality and mechanical depth you are achieving! Congratulations on voice chat working I can imagine it is a hard task. I also really love the black and white shot, it is so soft! Will this be a specific type of scope or some other effect that causes the player to see in black and white?

Thanks
The black and white effect is what the game looks like when using night vision. Currently every player can toggle night vision on and off with the N key

[c023-DeV]

Why does nobody care about my work? If the next person to ignore this thread could comment on why they are ignoring it that would be really helpful

I feel you on that. I guess that the mentality in indie development has changed. Don't let that stop you! If you do what you feel is best for you then there will be others that like it! To me ignorance isn't bliss it's resignation

[Mittens]

I am very good at pressing the screenshot button right as the character closes her eyes

[del]

This seems ambitious and awesome! Really impressive works so far.