#HURTWORLD EP 1 UPDATE#

Nothing overly exciting from me this week, just more clothes in the form of jeans and tshirt, trying to round out all the standard/base clothing items. I’ve also been looking at the community maps that people have been playing and liking, to see what they’ve done with layout and flow. It’s some interesting data that has given us a lot to think about when planning this next map. You’ve got the Dome, Valley, and Fortress all in a small area, it’s resource rich, survivable and accessible. You can see some of the aggregated maps below, showing where on the map certain objects are. So, the most populated part of the map is the transition between the Forest and the Starting Beach, which makes sense. There haven’t been too many surprises, and we were glad to see that a lot of the design decisions we had made had had their intended effects on player behavior. I’ve been pulling apart savegames and analysing them, seeing where people play, build their bases, hide their loot, and more. Part of this, which is what I’m doing right now, is looking at Diemensland and trying to learn some lessons from it. While Diemensland has been a great map that we’re proud of, Diemensland is just an aspect of Hurtworld. This map will integrate a lot of new assets, including the cities that Mils has been working on, as well as experimenting with some different layouts and structures.

My new main task, and what you’re going to be hearing about for the next few weeks, is making a new map to go hand-in-hand with the ItemV2 update. You have the frustration of this new thing is useless!, but not this new thing is destroying the game! Personally I prefer to err on the side of caution, simply because in the time it may take to re-balance and buff, generally, damage isn’t being done. If you go the other way, you will get good uptake as the mechanism dominates the meta, but it will be frustrating to be on the receiving end of it and a nerf will have to be quick, as damage is being done. If you err on the side of caution, and release a mechanism that may be under-powered or not viable, then you have less uptake on the mechanism and some players might be disappointed.

The question then becomes – do you balance a new mechanism erring on the side of caution and maybe buff it later, or do you release a possibly overpowered mechanism and maybe nerf it later? Both tactics have advantages and disadvantages. It’s always a balancing act when releasing a new gameplay mechanism, and it’s almost a statistical impossibility we’ll get it exactly right first time. That was a mostly smooth process, and now we’ll be looking at the feedback from you folks and metrics on the drill’s usage and uptake. I spent this week getting the Raid Drill out and fixing a few bugs that came up from that patch.

#HURTWORLD EP 1 UPDATE#

I had to update some of the mesh, textures and icons for it. We split the machine into 3 parts to make it’s creation and use more interesting. I also made some updates to the raid drill which you have now probably been playing with. I had to use mesh to get that nobbled tread silhouette which increases the poly’s significantly for that design. Once the 2 other low poly body kits are done I can check the combined polycounts of that tyre set with the other body kits to make sure we aren’t blowing out our poly budget. One of the wheel sets (the one on the right) that most resembles a standard dirt bike tyre, stretched our poly budget a bit more than previously thought.

I decided to model all the wheels and the body kits at the same time to make sure I don’t go over our poly limit. The low poly for the 3 wheel designs and one of the body kits are done.

Hurtworld ep 1