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Devblog #2 November

11/3/2015

 
Argh! We have a new batch of updates for ye! We've made some decent progress this month as we've been hurrying to wrap up the business issues. Dakota has also been finishing up a freelance contract he started before the Kickstarter,  once that is out of the way things should speed up even more.

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 Right now our main goal is to get the game back to the state it was in during the  Kickstarter while also adding in some of the basic new features we've been planning as we go.

Paypal Extension Results!

We were able to raise an additional  $14,489.29USD  to help with the development of Blackwake! Thank you everyone.  This will help go towards  outsourcing music/art and improve the quality of the game.

Rewrite

As you all know Blackwake was a mess two years in the making at the time of the Kickstarter. This was a result of on/off  development and rushing to get the game presentable and playable so we could  pitch the idea. As a result we're now working on  rewriting  nearly all of it. At the same time we're switching to a new networking solution that is still in beta, and working closely with its developers as we move forward.

The rewrite is progressing well, here is where we are as far as rewritten features go:
  • Player sync  + interpolation
  • Player animation support
  • ​Chatbox
  • Destruction
  • Cannonballs
  • Grappling 
  • Ticket/time HUD
  • Sinking
  • Player damage
  • Player death + ragdoll camera
  • Respawning
  • Climbing
  • Swimming
  • FPS weapon system (so far only the pistol set up)

We're nearing the end of the rewrite, as  many of these features listed above share core functionality with the rest of the game and needed to be written to account for that in the future. 

If you're curious for a glimpse of the game itself,    you may enjoy this neat bug.

Music

Garrett has been a bit busy with other matters this month, but he has been finishing up  our newest track:

Proximity voice chat

 In Blackwake we will have two forms of communication,  text chat and voice chat. Voice will have 3 categories:

Proximity  -  Your voice will be broadcasted in a radius around you, to both  friendlies and enemies
Faction  (Captain only) -  Used by captains to talk with other friendly captains
 Global - For players to annoy/trash talk each other and play music over the microphone

We will also have a set of mute options you can take advantage of  if need be.

For now we have finished proximity chat and have it  implemented, with global and faction coming soon (they require  a display). Here is one of our test videos while making it:

Captain voting

We've began  roughing out  how captain nomination and voting will work. Players will be able to nominate themselves and also include a personalized note to display during voting. We will have more information on what  dictates your captain rating in the future, but rest assured it will allow new players the opportunity to become captain. Keep in mind captains can be overthrown  with  a mutiny vote at any point during the match.
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Volumetric smoke

We had some time while waiting on networking patches to work towards something we thought would help the visuals of Blackwake greatly, volumetric smoke.
This system is still  in it's testing phases, but we do have it in the game currently. Some things about it may be changed though (see: hideous shadows from the smoke).
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left: standard right: volumetric

Art

After redoing all of our textures to fit with  a better version of  physically based shading, we've been able to begin making progress on new weapons. Here are some of the gold weapon skins and a new pistol, the duckfoot.
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November

By the end of November we hope to have the rewrite  completed. Afterwards we will  begin testing multiplayer  internally, as many of the current features have not been tested for proper synchronization and there will be bugs to work out. Finally we can then begin moving on to Steam integration  and working towards eventual distribution  to our backers, which we are quite excited for.

Thanks for reading,  we hope to see you in the next update! If  you have any questions or just want to comment on the update be sure to visit our Reddit post below!  :)

​Dakota & Tyler
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