Ether Devlog 6

Posted on May 1, 2024  •  3 minutes  • 478 words

Hello everyone! Its the monthly Devlog time! This time focusing on gameplay, brought to you by our Patrons Walpar, Pitti, Kyle and Vaipu. (Original Post with animated pictures available here )

Spawners

I have implemented a system which allows me to randomly spawn objects on the land or sea and align them automatically with the surface. This will be soon used to spawn events and beacons, some of which will be visible from the SatMap.

SatMap

SatInsight now shows real-time and accurate clouds overlay, so you’ll be able to see a rainstorm approach you.

Limited version of SatMap is now available on the go by using the PDA (Tab menu). As of now it shows only the SatMap preview and a compass. No device/beacon tracking or EMF info.

Hiding

Player now has the ability to hide inside lockers. I am sure this won’t cause any paranoia and the mechanic is not suspicious whatsoever.

Food

You can now eat food. Yes, this is the food update. There is no benefit to eating food yet.

Worldbuilding

We have managed to lay (write) down a solid foundation for worldbuilding. Thanks to Seth (and his impeccable writing), we now have a bunch of lore and ideas for the first few threats/anomalies we will put into the game.

Graphics

The previous versions appeared a little too dim so I have increased lighting intensity to compensate for it.

On top of that I have created a vegetation model for cotton weed, a plant commonly found in northern mountain regions. I think its whiteness breaks the monotone look of the grass. More vegetation models pending.

I should also mention the new Radar model, yes we have that too!

Cave

Speaking of paranoia, the bunker now has a second enterance: a cave which connects various points of interest across the island. A cave which is super-ultra safe to traverse and is totally not a possible enterance for threats.

Weather

To liven up the world further, I have added weather sounds for wind/rain which changes dynamically depending on whether you are indoors or outdoors. Rain particles are WIP and will probably arrive in next devlog.

Smaller changes:

• Exterior Global Illumination is now baked, resulting in non-black shadows anf AO which looks much nicer. Time of day related corrections will come much later.
• More details models, textures and decals added
• New footstep sounds for water
• Monitors are now affected by fog.
• Fixed invalid AABB bug for reflection probes
• Wind now has different sound variants for exterior and interior
• Items grabbing no longer causes the object to become a rocket and fly far away behind you.
• Dynamic beacons now properly spawn on SatMap.
• Some terrain textures were refreshed.
• Improved sea rendering for day/night scenarios.

Needs to be done:

• Implement some of the threats and story events
• Polish ship
• Make dynamic fog alongside weather events.
• Player lost in fog event.