Internal Alpha Testing: Boba’s Pearls of Insight

It’s been another busy (and fun) week of testing as we’ve been devotedly hammering away at a few issues as well as working through a few new items in the latest build.

Issue #1: Ambient sounds

As you may have gathered from the previous posts, we are currently testing on the “Shiprekt” level, so our intention is for there to be a pleasant, distant sound of the ocean in all areas of the map to accompany the cacophony of gunshots and destruction. This is currently functioning fairly well for the host, but we are trying to troubleshoot some inconsistencies on the client side.

Additionally, the waves should progressively start getting louder as you approach the beach and fade to silence as you move back onto the grass. Most of the issues here are also stemming from the host/client interaction, so we’ve spent some dedicated time standing in various positions on the edge of the grass, in the sand, and in the water as both the host and client to provide detailed feedback to the lead game devs of the different issues we are experiencing. The main goal we want to achieve with sound currently is to at least have a solid framework in place so Gibs can create more elaborate or realistic sound fields by implementing FMOD.

Boba, happily working on ocean sound testing as the battle wages on in other parts of the map.

Issue #2: Damage tagging

I don’t even know how to begin describing this one as it was one of the goofiest bugs we’ve seen so far. Essentially, in certain circumstances Player 1 could “tag” Player 2 with bullets and if at least some damage was dealt then Player 2 would remain “tagged”.  Both players could then go on with their merry lives and as long as Player 1 didn’t “tag” anyone else, they could eventually kill Player 2 just by shooting their gun into random open space.  This was such an odd phenomenon, but we finally pieced it together and successfully reproduced the core issue in a meeting with one of the lead game devs and he appears to have already found the issue in the code. We’ll see how the updates look in the next build.

There are a lot of other items being added, tested, and resolved. Here’s a list of just a few of them:

  • Visual consistency between host and client for shooting
  • Damage for shots at point blank
  • Volume balance for footstep sounds on different surfaces
  • Camera stays on your body when you die
  • Added Striker to weapon list
  • Added gamepad support
  • Hiccup in host movement
  • Death effect between host/client
  • Added sprint and stamina

I’ll leave you with a little team deathmatch footage recorded by Gibs at the beginning of a testing session. The sprint feature is so satisfying!

What’s my burst style?