Q1 Progression Update 1

Hi!

I decided to share a progression update on social media + discord, I have talked about these topics on Patreon earlier but here's that update post:

It's around mid-point of Q1, so I decided to share some updates related to early access milestones and progression in general.

I'm planning to share two of these updates in each quarter until the first commercial version (early access) is ready to be released.

Q1 Milestones Like highlighted in the Roadmap (website), the main milestones for Q1 are:

• UI Overhaul

• Grenades

• Dynamic Time

• Shelter Customization

UI overhaul is around 95% completed, I just need to render bunch of new icons (tetris-style) for some of the existing items and then it's good to go. I'm really happy that I decided to bring back this tetris-style UI and it visually makes the looting experience much more interesting.

This system and those tetris-grids are quite modular, so in the future this system can be extended to have "nested-grids" (for example grids inside backpacks) but for now, I will stick with the weight capacity approach for the early access.

When it comes to grenades, I would say it's around 60-70% completed. I have done all the necessary mechanics (implementation / code) for the system, grenade models are ready (4 different ones) and audio is also done for all the explosions, handling and so on.

Grenades are quite animation-heavy topic, since there's animations for both the player (FPS model) and simplified versions for the AI. I'm still waiting for those animations to be completed since they are outsourced through current contractors.

Once the animations are ready, the completion will jump quite fast to 100%, it's going to just need some audio-animation matching (connecting them together) and making sure the AI grenade behavior doesn't do anything really unfair.

Dynamic time is a feature that removes the manual TOD buttons (like in the demo) and integrates TOD and weather options as part of map transitions. This basically means that there will be a running game time which handles TOD rhythm and whenever you use the map transitions it will check if certain "time threshold" is exceeded and TOD will automatically change.

Weather conditions will be also randomized with certain percentages and there's bunch of secondary elements linked to this system like trader resets, sleeping mechanics etc.

One more thing to mention related to dynamic time. Even though the current approach for TOD changes is transition-based like mentioned, I'm also doing some experiments with the actual day & night cycles (sun position, clouds, sky etc.), but this not a "must-have" for the early access, so it's more of a tech-experiment to see how complex the system would need to be in order to support that.

Then the final milestone for Q1 is that shelter customization combined with multi-shelter support. This system was showcased in the last feature highlight video and I would say it's 100% game-ready as a mechanic.

There's still one early access shelter missing called Tower which is based on this IRL lookout tower in the Finnish coast / island near the Area 05. Other shelters (Tent, Cabin and Bunker) are fully ready.

TLDR 
The Q1 progression is going really well and I would say even better than expected. I don't see any possibilities how I would miss any of these Q1 milestones.

What's Next? 
I'm pretty confident that I can actually start working on those Q2 milestones somewhat early and those are mostly related to voice acting, AI upgrades, bosses, faction events and fishing mechanics (+boats).

None of these milestones are that "scary", meaning I have clear plans how to implement them, but there's few elements that need a bit of luck. For example finding a suitable voice actor for the Grandma character is kind luck-based or otherwise it's not wise implement or worth putting effort for something that would be placeholder. But nevertheless, I'm quite optimistic about the current and upcoming milestones

- Antti (Developer)