Development Update 04.07.2025

Hello everyone, welcome to this week's progress report. 

Level: 
During this week, Tech Art primarily worked on cleanup and performance of the Story Mode to improve the overall experience of exploring the world map, while the level team focused on creating the broken and worn-down assets that will be used in Apoc. More props are also being finished and the next batch is getting ready to be implemented in the game to replace their blockout versions. In Like Village, we have added bamboo, reeds, and other plants to the area. 

Code:
This week, we implemented Newsgroups for NPCs. A Newsgroup is where player crimes are reported and if an NPC is part of that Newsgroup, they can comment on any crime the player has committed (like theft or assaulting an NPC). Each Newsgroup has a central NPC where the player will be able to clear up their crimes.

We also resolved nav mesh tile generation stalling the render thread, which caused heavy stutters in the open world. 

On the sandbox side of things, we added a slider to the camera settings that determine the camera smoothness while moving/rotating it. We also started working on a long requested feature - being able to change facial expressions in sex scenes similar to how the poser does it!

Character:
The boss model has been finished and our character team spent this week rigging him and setting his character up inside the game engine. We also made a Bol-sized version of him because he just looks so cool.
We have been working on the blockout models for most of the weapons in the game, as well

Animations: 
In the animation department, we implemented finisher animations for (almost) all monster types. The player can execute these for big chunks of damage after getting monsters into the exhausted state. We also implemented threaten animations for certain monsters, so they will not just sprint at you immediately, but first warn you to back off.

Lastly, we started work on making special attack variations for various weapons, so Game Design can soon create every melee weapon item that will exist in the world.

Design:
Our game designers prepared the final stage of the combat system implementation, that means getting rid of the last quirks and designing a camera system and placeholder effects.

We also continued fixing AI and implementing AI reactions into the game (e.g. player gets thrown out officers quarters), as well as designing the Newsgroup system and comments on player crimes such as attacking innocent NPC, theft, etc.

3 new weapons were also added: the Heat Blade, Warrior sword, and Lizard sword - each with its respective move set.

Thank you for all your continued support,

-Wild Life Team