Apr 20, 2018

Worlds Adrift - Bossa Julia

Happy Weekend Travellers!

It's been a fantastic week, and we hope you are enjoying the new hair and fixes of this week's update. There's more to come very soon - two week to be precise!

It's less than 4 weeks to Early Access launch, it's exciting! A massive thank you for your support across channels leading up to it, it means a lot to the team seeing you guys enjoying yourselves and the hype!

If you're still not on all our social channels, you're missing out and should come join, 'cause we have all of the AWESOME goodies, competitions and events lined up for you. Speaking of which, you should absolutely give the Dungeon Run Competition a try.

Surely some of you (daredevils) can ace this in a single go?

Reminder, that if you want to participate in or arrange an event, you can post it on the Community Events section of the forum.

What have the devs been up to last week?

Warning: Sparkly VFX gifs below may cause excitement.

More fixes to ship part placement preview - 0.1.12
Kioki revival chambers, 0.1.11 hotfix, and Kioki zone music
Adjusted understorm damage to clear up lingering shipyards more - 0.1.12
Adjusted effects of engine spin up stat - 0.2.0
Various cinematic introduction art/design tasks - 0.2.x
Fixing certain exploits. Various other minor bug fixes. - 0.1.12 and 0.2.0
Almost finished our first system on the new style of server. We'll eventually be transitioning a lot of the games server code over to this new style and in theory it should make it more performant and simpler to develop with. "The only flashy thing to come out of it so far is the wind gif we sent last week, but it should be the beginnings of a more stable Worlds Adrift." [themoreyouknow.gif]
Fixed the 'players cannot get in the game at all but only stay in a T-pose in an infinite loading loop' (0.1.11 hotfix)
Fixed more hidden reviver issues (technically, features)
Cinematic introduction code (0.2.0)
Getting another export done of islands
Fixing more Alliance implementation details
Writing a new UI framework
Chat analytics, new analytics, improving alliance and crew stuff and adding some ways to get information about if players are online etc.
Mysterious Saborian cosmetics:

Kioki Revival Chamber and variations for it 0.2.0 - 0.2.1
Crafting effects have been spiffed up some more - 0.2.0 (And will see more improvements in 0.2.1)

Swivel guns and explosives now trigger screenshake in the same method as cannons - 0.2.1

Additional new hair style, the braid bun, is now available (it missed 0.1.12) - 0.2.0 (Happy April 20th)

First pass VFX on the new Kioki and Saborian-specific engines
Working on some new Kioki and Saborian engine bodies. Finished the Kioki ones, just working on the Saborian ones now. (0.2.x)

That's all for now! So go forth, have a fabulous weekend!

As always, see you in the skies.

Apr 17, 2018

TECH TUESDAY: THE ARCHITECTURE OF WORLDS ADRIFT

Worlds Adrift - Bossa Ben

Greetings Travellers!

There's no denying that we're all very proud of the visuals in the game, his week's Tech Tuesday comes from our Art department, and explores the design considerations for the Saborian and Kioki Unity's architecture.

Enjoy!

I’m Klaudia, one of the 3D artists on Worlds Adrift. My main focus on the game has been the environment, and so today I’d like to share a few insight about the architecture we’ve developed so far.

Currently there are two cultural ruin sets in the game, the Saborians and the Kioki Unity. They both have a unique history and style, so let’s have a look at some of the differences between them:

Saborians

They saw themselves as superior to the other cultures of Foundation, but looked after their own: The architecture for rich and poor were similarly built. They liked simplicity, and didn’t show off wealth, therefore most of their buildings are plain stone, with no colours. Their structures consist of straight lines, tall, and pointy buildings, or ornamental pieces.

Here are a couple of examples of Saborian structures. They’re all simple, mostly narrow but tall shapes:

Kioki Unity

They were very different to the Saborians in the sense that they liked showing off their wealth. They were a merchant society based on trade and class. The richest would often flaunt their success.They built big, colourful buildings with huge domes. Gold was often used to decorate their walls.

They took a lot of inspiration from nature, so they have much more organic shapes to their buildings than the Saborians.Trees and birds (especially owls) are a recurring motif in their architecture.

Examples of Kioki ruin pieces, with nature-inspired decor:

I’m always amazed by the islands people build with these assets. Here are a couple examples for both Saborian and Kioki cultures, that were built by the community:

Saborian island called Monolith by rykaan

Kioki island called Zerzura by Synovus

Remember, we're always on the lookout for those truly awe inspiring islands that linger in our memories well after they've been made. So, now you have a bit more context behind why the Saborians and Kioki Unity are so different, will you try your hand at it over on the Island Creator?

See you in the skies!

Apr 17, 2018

The Stubble Trouble Update - (0.1.11.1 Patch Notes)

Worlds Adrift - Bossa Ben

Things are getting a little hairy in the Stubble Trouble update, which introduces new hair and beard options for men as well as a bunch of fixes and tweaks! Read all about it below:

NEW FEATURE

New male-centric hair and beard options have been added to character generation! We know the female character has been receiving the majority of customisation attention, so we’ve added some male-centric options.

NOTABLE BUGFIXES AND CHANGES

Previously, if a player’s reviver was destroyed while the player was logged out, the player would continue to get the option to respawn. This would result in an infinite loading screen. This bug has been fixed.
A registered reviver, when detached, no longer unregisters the character. It will instead become “inactive,” and will reactivate upon reattachment to a ship. Moving a registered reviver around the same ship should also no longer unregister the character. Now crewmates can move a logged off character’s reviver to a new ship, for example.
Revivers no longer automatically deregister their player if within the understorm. This does mean that if you choose to revive when your ship is down in the depths, you will immediately take a bunch of damage and die!
0.1.10 introduced a bug where repairing high-resilience objects would stutter your framerate. This has been partially fixed. More fixes to stuttering will come in future patches.
0.1.10 introduced a bug where pressing Esc would send a chat message instead of cancelling. This has been fixed.
Lots of shipyard permissions inconsistencies have been fixed. The most visible bug this fixes is not being able to grapple to your own shipyard dome. In addition, if your ship docks to a shipyard, or if you relog while your shipyard has a ship docked to it, you no longer need to first interact with the shipyard before using your shipbuilding tool.
Previously, when the character switched from the freefall to non-freefall states, there was a brief window where the character was invulnerable. This allowed people to divebomb onto islands and take no damage if they grappled to the ground at the last second. This has been fixed.
Fixed - for real this time - the ability to quickly regrapple after being atlas pulsed.
The grappling rope has a max length now, beyond which it will snap. This should prevent some bugs and exploits.
Swivel guns’ placement rules are now correct, and will no longer allow clipping.
A cannon being fired from hundreds of meters away will no longer shake your screen. Camera shake from cannon fire attenuates based on distance now.
Dragging items from a container directly to your hotbar will no longer lock your UI.
The Esc key once again closes the inventory menu! This is why they pay us the big bucks.

OTHER FIXES AND TWEAKS

Engine propellers would previously not animate if they were already “on” when the client loaded the engine in. This has been fixed. Reversing engines will also show animating propellers now.
Fixed some icon issues in the UI.
You can now chain-eat berries without having to swap to a different hotbar item and swap back. It’s all about the little things in life.
On the respawn menu, the random revival chamber option no longer shows “n uses remaining,” but rather the correct number.
The male character’s legs have been resculpted to be less slim on some clothing models. This will continue as we update all of the clothing pieces.
Ship panels would sometimes become excessively dark, as if they were not receiving any light. This has been fixed

See you in the skies!

Apr 13, 2018

Captain's Log: loads of news!

Worlds Adrift - Bossa Julia

Awesome News

0.1.11.1 - The Stubble Trouble Update - is dropping on Tuesday during maintenance (no wipe, we good)! Woooo!

More Awesome News!

And we now have a Community Events forum section to help y'all keep your events under one section: BOOM!

Use the powers wisely.

And More Awesome News!

We'd also like to introduce you to a new and awesome member of the mod/helper team - a Scribe! The Scribe tweets from a very dangerous universe and interviews pirates in the skies.

The Scribe risks everything to log history of the early Worlds.
@ScribeAdrift - Give the new account a follow to keep up to date on the previous and current doings of the in-game politics, and to help answer the questions like: Who's who in the skies and on lands? Who starts these wars? Who finishes them? What is the Age of Brutality? What was Freeport?

So, what have the devs been up to this week?

Implementing alliance radio (0.2.0)
Texturing Kioki-specific engines for 0.2.x
Fixing crew system bugs. No longer "crew 4 lyfe"
Many bugs for 0.1.12 (too many)
More for 0.2.0 (not so many)
Including new chest spawning animations along with new VFX from Jason (0.1.12)

Working on a new map for 0.2.0
Looking at people's islands
Kioki revival chamber for 0.2.0
Chat relay
Finding and fixing or avoiding bugs
Improving bots used in automated load testing
Fixed wind VFX, fixed bug on chest and container VFX timer
Added VFX when crafting item with crafting station
Making placement shader more opaque
Making secret art for the cinematic intro for new players!
Finalising sneaking/crouching/rolling.
Syncing current sky and atmospherics to island creator.
Finished up the emote system :

So, pretty rad, right?

Did you know that there's stream happening today as well? In fact, really soon (at 5pm BST) - twitch.tv/bossastudios

As always, see you in the skies!

Apr 10, 2018

BOOM: Early Access Trailer!!

Worlds Adrift - Bossa Julia

Dear Travellers

Following 4 years of development, 21,271,022 bullets fired, and no less than 671,086 mantas killed (all of which definitely had it coming!), we're very pleased to announce that...

WORLDS ADRIFT IS LAUNCHING INTO EARLY ACCESS ON MAY 17TH!!

We declared the news live at the London Games Festival today during a very special show, complete with talks from Bossa co-founder, Henrique Olifiers, and Lead Developer, Luke Williams, not to mention a live performance of the Worlds Adrift original soundtrack by Freja Frances and Murugan Thiruchelvam. In fact, you can catch the full event over on Twitch here!

Or if the skies are already calling, then skip straight to our our brand-new teaser trailer below! Careful though, the paint’s still drying...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsc7vteFS8o

Apr 10, 2018

Worlds Adrift swings to Steam Early Access in May

Worlds Adrift - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Antics.

After a year of swinging around in paid beta, Worlds Adrift will enter its next phase of development and officially launch on Steam Early Access on May 17th, developers Bossa Studios announced today. Our boy Brendy ventured into the sandbox explore-o-crafting MMO’s world of floating islands last year, swinging around with his grappling hook, building an airship, and getting into a fight over a parking space. You can’t take him anywhere. Officially going to Early Access will usher Worlds Adrift into the next phase of development as it seeks a wider audience. (more…)

Apr 10, 2018

Sea of Thieves-in-the-sky game Worlds Adrift launching in Early Access soon

Worlds Adrift

The ambitious new multiplayer sky-ships game Worlds Adrift, from Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios, will launch in Steam Early Access 17th May, and cost 19.50/€23/$25.

Worlds Adrift grew out of a game jam four years ago. Back then, Bossa was small and the idea was big: let players build their own flying ships to explore a vast fantasy world of floating islands. But steadily, with investment and expansion - and use of Improbable's much talked about but not yet publicly proven SpatialOS engine - Worlds Adrift was made.

The original idea for Worlds Adrift was to procedurally generate a limitless world - an idea conceived when No Man's Sky and procedural generation were buzzing. But somewhere along the line Bossa changed its mind, perhaps wisely, and now Worlds Adrift boasts a world created by players, courtesy of an Island Creator tool. Bossa calls it "the world's first community-crafted MMO".