Development Update 09.08.2024

Hey all, welcome to this week's progress report.

Level: 
Mini Locations: Our work on the cave mini locations is almost complete and should be finished in the coming week, leaving only camps and miscellaneous smaller locations.

Blockouts: We also continued work on the detailed pass of the alpha camp and the first blockout iteration of the laboratory.

Continued development of Alpha Camp Assets.

Code:
Our work on the new animation blueprint is continuing. This week, we finished implementing the layering logic for combat animations, which allows us to blend together movement cycles with different combat related animations e.g. different upper body poses for holding weapons or blocking.

In terms of the combat rework, we improved the character movement logic of combat moves. Before, the movement only worked well on even terrain, but now the logic can handle any terrain properly.

Started working on an advanced bone control manager window. This will make editing multiple bone controls at once a little easier - you will have the option to bulk add and modify your existing controls, as well as the ability to bake control object transforms into the offset values. The manager is still in early development, so it is unclear whether it will make it into the build next week.

Character: 
Transferred several outfits to different characters including the Warrior Village healer outfit to Rasha, Zuri and Karra.

Finishing up the feral boar enemy creature. It will be the standard feral Kerpali enemy and share its animation skeleton with the current feral lion.

Animations: 
In the animation department, we finished the implementation of the Max x Sadora minigame this week, putting the final touches on scene flow and camera placement. It is now ready to be put into the story, but will still have to wait for Pearl Village to be in blockout stage A for its final placement and for Sadora and her quest to be implemented in story mode.

We also continued work on the move set for Max' starter weapon, which will be a type of stun mace issued to all scouts from Alpha Camp. It is a faster, but more short range weapon, compared to Maya's blade spear, with blunt hits and a shock stun as its special move. A variation of it, that partly shares its move set, will be the heavy wrench, which has no shock, but a smashing heavy attack instead.

For cutscenes, we finished the first pass of the landing scene and now started work on the cutscene of Max meeting Maya at the group of trees, as well as the scene of Max arriving at the Warrior Village.

We also spent some time testing and comparing various solutions for improving our mocap workflow, especially for movements that are difficult to record accurately such as climbing, walking on uneven ground or jumping down from somewhere.

Design:
We finished determining the values of all items in the first iteration and are now in the process of setting up item data.

The first iteration includes ammunition, treasures, crafting materials, food ingredients, cooked meals, potions and recipes. Weapons and armors follow as soon as the development of the combat system allows.

We also gathered references for all collectible plants.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team