This update is accessible via the "Live" release of Boundless on Steam.



If you have switched to the "Testing" Steam beta, then please disable this.

Please report all issues discovered with the update to this support thread.

Please restart Steam to make sure you get the latest version of Boundless. If the update happens whilst Steam is open it's unlikely you'll get the latest version.

Comment:

This is the Live release of Testing 29, which in turn was a testing release of the Boundless PS4 PlayStation Experience demo.

The Sanctum is the most significant new feature. It acts as the starting point for each play session. For new users the Sanctum offers an initial tutorial that allows players to create and transit a Warp in their first session. For returning players the Sanctum gives players control over how they want to re-enter the online universe. The Sanctum also acts as the recovery point when killed in combat.

The Worlds and player progression have all been retained.

Please note the major known issue about Entity Blocks within beacons and the current work around - details below.

Release Notes:

• Art + Animation + Assets:
  
  • Added support for multiple weather effects simultaneously.
    
  • Lowered lava light radius to reduce speed impact of large lava pools.
    
  • More emotes:
    
    • /point now supports optional directions. You can /point up, down, left, right, and back. Just /point without a direction to point forwards.
      
    • /beckon to encourage others to join you.
  • New meshes for different tiers of creatures, including multiple tiers of Hopper, Roadrunner and Cuttletrunk.
    
  • New textures and FX for Warp Conduit block.
    
  • New visual effects for the wooden and gem torches.
    
  • Ribbon trails added for projectiles.
• Crafting + Resources + Equipment:
  
  • Added gem weapons an tools.
    
  • Added Starberry, Cooked Starberry, Healing Brew and Dark Blood items.
    
  • Balanced durability of tools and weapons so higher tiers last longer.
    
  • Balanced healing amounts for Starberry, Cooked Starberry, Cooked Meat and Healing Brew.
    
  • Beacon plotter is now two separate items.
    
  • Chisel can now chisel any edge allowing more shapes to be constructed.
    
  • Made eating consumables slower.
    
  • Slingbow overhaul:
    
    • New models added for stone, metal, alloy, and gem based slingbows.
      
    • All slingbows have infinite bolts. Arrows have been removed.
      
    • The basic ammo does the same damage as arrows.
      
    • Slingbows can be loaded with powerup gems which will buff the slingbow's damage for 20 shots.
      
    • Any stacks of arrows in your inventory or loaded in your slingbows will be replaced with a 20 charge gem, regardless of its original size.
  • Steps / Slabs and Walls are now crafted on either the Crafting Table or the Workbench.
    
  • Stopped creature drops, plant drops and raw / cooked meat stacking with each other.
    
  • Totem planet selection changes:
    
    • Now need to target the planet before charging the item.
      
    • New effects.
  • Warp mechanics updated to support different sized warps with new visuals and a more involved mechanic by smashing the warp open to reveal the portal inside.
    
  • XP reward when the player discover a new region
• Creatures:
  
  • Added knockback to Hoppers and Wildstock.
    
  • Can now grapple to creatures and block drops, the creatures will be able to resist your movements and the grapple to creatures is not a rigid rope like when grappling to the world, but it is functional enough to be able to drag entities around. Multiple players cannot grapple to the same entity and players cannot grapple other players.
    
  • Creatures can now play particle effects.
    
  • Fixed NPC's spawning stuck inside blocks.
    
  • New creatures:
    
    • Cuttletrunks: A tough aerial opponent with ranged attacks. Remember to pack your slingbow!
      
    • Hoppers: Keep your distance or you'll make them angry. You wouldn't like them when they're angry.
  • Support for different NPC types on different worlds.
• GUI + HUD:
  
  • Added objective system with fifty initial objectives defined.
    
  • Added new information in the Hud:
    
    • Added damage direction indicators.
      
    • Added warp location picking.
      
    • Added break block information.
      
    • Added crafting machine information.
  • Added new GUI elements:
    
    • In-game entity portal information
      
    • Warp to location info
      
    • Small selection planet info
      
    • Contextual Button prompt
      
    • Added News Flash when:
      
    • Discovering a new region
      
    • Player level up
      
    • Objective completed
  • GUI performance optimisation
    
  • Updated GUI elements:
    
    • Held item
      
    • Chat bubbles
      
    • In-game entity information
• SFX + Music:
  
  • Fixed 3d audio positioning on surround sound systems.
• Engine:
  
  • First person items are in the same location irrespective of chosen field of view.
    
  • Fixed game sometimes hanging when travelling through a portal.
    
  • Fixed lighting issue on breaking decals causing strange coloured cracks.
    
  • Improved initial load / portal load so that draw-distance and fog are smoothly interpolated out to show only as much of the world as is available to render.
    
  • Massively improved the feeling of steps/slabs so that camera/entity motion is no longer snapped to the tops/bottoms of steps but nicely smoothed.
    
  • Particle systems that leave trails will now appear smoother at lower framerates for inter-frame emission of particles.
    
  • Portal transitions are now much smoother.
    
  • Refactoring of the internals of the Boundless client's networking to try and ensure that low, high or variable frame rates have a much lower impact on the latency of the client's communication with the servers.
    
  • Specularity in shaders overhauled to not be overblown and to generally be much more consistent through different lighting settings and to retain better colour information, especcialy for metallic materials like gold which are now fully dialectric in specular calculations keeping gold looking gold even even strong white lighting.
• Sanctum:
  
  • Players now start in the Sanctum when running the game, with a tutorial for the first time they play the game. If rejoining the game, they will be provided a warp to the location they left the game at, or they can choose to open a different warp to another location or world in their saved locations.
    
  • Players will also return to the Sanctum when they die, and the 'Emergency Warp' button has been replaced with a 'Return to Sanctum' button instead.
  World Builder:
  
  • Fix connecting client to a prefab from within a Custom Instance config file.
    
  • Fixed DELETECHUNK having disappeared from item selection in prefabs for World Builder
• Bug fixes:
  
  • Fixed crash scrolling locations list when interacting with the warp.
    
  • Fixed not being able to interact with beacons after server reboot.
• ... and much more.

Resolved Known Issues:

• HP and SP bars are briefly stretched when opening settings or inventory menus.
  
• Occasional crash after choosing to join client from World Builder.
  
• Scrolling up and down the Warp Locations menu may cause a crash.
  
• Smart stacking does not update recipe information from with the compactor without closing and reopening the menu.
  
• Some items in player hands in 3rd person view are huge (e.g. Power Core).
  
• Sometimes the animation for left handed tools do not swing continuously.

Known Issues:

• Cannot smart stack walls.
  
• [NEW] Hard to tell bottles apart (glue, dark blood, healing brew).
  
• Shift-clicking an item from the selling plinth will show odd numbers and will not always go in the shopping basket.
  
• Shift-clicking and dragging on the coin icons from within the trading menus may cause a crash.
  
• [NEW] Some interactive blocks (crafting table, machine, beacon control) have become corrupted during the migration. This will result in at best those blocks not being able to be interacted with, at worst the game crashing when interacting with those blocks. To fix the issue the block(s) in question need to be re-placed. In the case of anything other than a beacon control the block can simply be broken, picked up, and then re-placed. In the case of a beacon control this will work, although it would result in all the plots having to be re-placed one at a time and during that process the contents being unprotected. A better workaround for a beacon control is to craft a new beacon control, place that, and then break the old one, which will keep the beacon's plots placed throughout the process.
  
• Some of the items are not positioned in the hand correctly when the players are seen in 3rd person view.
  
• Some of the items displayed in the inventory screen are not positioned correctly.
  
• The recipes are not final.
  
• Z-fighting with some items (workbench and other machines) when placed underwater.

Release Notes 149.1:

• Fixed an issue with players with negative money walking through Warps causing the client and server to crash.

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

This update is accessible via the "Live" release of Boundless on Steam.



If you have switched to the "Testing" Steam beta, then please disable this.

Please report all issues discovered with the update to this support thread.

Please restart Steam to make sure you get the latest version of Boundless. If the update happens whilst Steam is open it's unlikely you'll get the latest version.

Comment:

This is the Live release of Testing 29, which in turn was a testing release of the Boundless PS4 PlayStation Experience demo.

The Sanctum is the most significant new feature. It acts as the starting point for each play session. For new users the Sanctum offers an initial tutorial that allows players to create and transit a Warp in their first session. For returning players the Sanctum gives players control over how they want to re-enter the online universe. The Sanctum also acts as the recovery point when killed in combat.

The Worlds and player progression have all been retained.

Please note the major known issue about Entity Blocks within beacons and the current work around - details below.

Release Notes:

• Art + Animation + Assets:
  
  • Added support for multiple weather effects simultaneously.
    
  • Lowered lava light radius to reduce speed impact of large lava pools.
    
  • More emotes:
    
    • /point now supports optional directions. You can /point up, down, left, right, and back. Just /point without a direction to point forwards.
      
    • /beckon to encourage others to join you.
  • New meshes for different tiers of creatures, including multiple tiers of Hopper, Roadrunner and Cuttletrunk.
    
  • New textures and FX for Warp Conduit block.
    
  • New visual effects for the wooden and gem torches.
    
  • Ribbon trails added for projectiles.
• Crafting + Resources + Equipment:
  
  • Added gem weapons an tools.
    
  • Added Starberry, Cooked Starberry, Healing Brew and Dark Blood items.
    
  • Balanced durability of tools and weapons so higher tiers last longer.
    
  • Balanced healing amounts for Starberry, Cooked Starberry, Cooked Meat and Healing Brew.
    
  • Beacon plotter is now two separate items.
    
  • Chisel can now chisel any edge allowing more shapes to be constructed.
    
  • Made eating consumables slower.
    
  • Slingbow overhaul:
    
    • New models added for stone, metal, alloy, and gem based slingbows.
      
    • All slingbows have infinite bolts. Arrows have been removed.
      
    • The basic ammo does the same damage as arrows.
      
    • Slingbows can be loaded with powerup gems which will buff the slingbow's damage for 20 shots.
      
    • Any stacks of arrows in your inventory or loaded in your slingbows will be replaced with a 20 charge gem, regardless of its original size.
  • Steps / Slabs and Walls are now crafted on either the Crafting Table or the Workbench.
    
  • Stopped creature drops, plant drops and raw / cooked meat stacking with each other.
    
  • Totem planet selection changes:
    
    • Now need to target the planet before charging the item.
      
    • New effects.
  • Warp mechanics updated to support different sized warps with new visuals and a more involved mechanic by smashing the warp open to reveal the portal inside.
    
  • XP reward when the player discover a new region
• Creatures:
  
  • Added knockback to Hoppers and Wildstock.
    
  • Can now grapple to creatures and block drops, the creatures will be able to resist your movements and the grapple to creatures is not a rigid rope like when grappling to the world, but it is functional enough to be able to drag entities around. Multiple players cannot grapple to the same entity and players cannot grapple other players.
    
  • Creatures can now play particle effects.
    
  • Fixed NPC's spawning stuck inside blocks.
    
  • New creatures:
    
    • Cuttletrunks: A tough aerial opponent with ranged attacks. Remember to pack your slingbow!
      
    • Hoppers: Keep your distance or you'll make them angry. You wouldn't like them when they're angry.
  • Support for different NPC types on different worlds.
• GUI + HUD:
  
  • Added objective system with fifty initial objectives defined.
    
  • Added new information in the Hud:
    
    • Added damage direction indicators.
      
    • Added warp location picking.
      
    • Added break block information.
      
    • Added crafting machine information.
  • Added new GUI elements:
    
    • In-game entity portal information
      
    • Warp to location info
      
    • Small selection planet info
      
    • Contextual Button prompt
      
    • Added News Flash when:
      
    • Discovering a new region
      
    • Player level up
      
    • Objective completed
  • GUI performance optimisation
    
  • Updated GUI elements:
    
    • Held item
      
    • Chat bubbles
      
    • In-game entity information
• SFX + Music:
  
  • Fixed 3d audio positioning on surround sound systems.
• Engine:
  
  • First person items are in the same location irrespective of chosen field of view.
    
  • Fixed game sometimes hanging when travelling through a portal.
    
  • Fixed lighting issue on breaking decals causing strange coloured cracks.
    
  • Improved initial load / portal load so that draw-distance and fog are smoothly interpolated out to show only as much of the world as is available to render.
    
  • Massively improved the feeling of steps/slabs so that camera/entity motion is no longer snapped to the tops/bottoms of steps but nicely smoothed.
    
  • Particle systems that leave trails will now appear smoother at lower framerates for inter-frame emission of particles.
    
  • Portal transitions are now much smoother.
    
  • Refactoring of the internals of the Boundless client's networking to try and ensure that low, high or variable frame rates have a much lower impact on the latency of the client's communication with the servers.
    
  • Specularity in shaders overhauled to not be overblown and to generally be much more consistent through different lighting settings and to retain better colour information, especcialy for metallic materials like gold which are now fully dialectric in specular calculations keeping gold looking gold even even strong white lighting.
• Sanctum:
  
  • Players now start in the Sanctum when running the game, with a tutorial for the first time they play the game. If rejoining the game, they will be provided a warp to the location they left the game at, or they can choose to open a different warp to another location or world in their saved locations.
    
  • Players will also return to the Sanctum when they die, and the 'Emergency Warp' button has been replaced with a 'Return to Sanctum' button instead.
  World Builder:
  
  • Fix connecting client to a prefab from within a Custom Instance config file.
    
  • Fixed DELETECHUNK having disappeared from item selection in prefabs for World Builder
• Bug fixes:
  
  • Fixed crash scrolling locations list when interacting with the warp.
    
  • Fixed not being able to interact with beacons after server reboot.
• ... and much more.

Resolved Known Issues:

• HP and SP bars are briefly stretched when opening settings or inventory menus.
  
• Occasional crash after choosing to join client from World Builder.
  
• Scrolling up and down the Warp Locations menu may cause a crash.
  
• Smart stacking does not update recipe information from with the compactor without closing and reopening the menu.
  
• Some items in player hands in 3rd person view are huge (e.g. Power Core).
  
• Sometimes the animation for left handed tools do not swing continuously.

Known Issues:

• Cannot smart stack walls.
  
• [NEW] Hard to tell bottles apart (glue, dark blood, healing brew).
  
• Shift-clicking an item from the selling plinth will show odd numbers and will not always go in the shopping basket.
  
• Shift-clicking and dragging on the coin icons from within the trading menus may cause a crash.
  
• [NEW] Some interactive blocks (crafting table, machine, beacon control) have become corrupted during the migration. This will result in at best those blocks not being able to be interacted with, at worst the game crashing when interacting with those blocks. To fix the issue the block(s) in question need to be re-placed. In the case of anything other than a beacon control the block can simply be broken, picked up, and then re-placed. In the case of a beacon control this will work, although it would result in all the plots having to be re-placed one at a time and during that process the contents being unprotected. A better workaround for a beacon control is to craft a new beacon control, place that, and then break the old one, which will keep the beacon's plots placed throughout the process.
  
• Some of the items are not positioned in the hand correctly when the players are seen in 3rd person view.
  
• Some of the items displayed in the inventory screen are not positioned correctly.
  
• The recipes are not final.
  
• Z-fighting with some items (workbench and other machines) when placed underwater.

Release Notes 149.1:

• Fixed an issue with players with negative money walking through Warps causing the client and server to crash.

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

Testing 29 release
This week we've released the latest version of Boundless into a Steam Beta called "Testing". The release is accessible to all players and reporting issues you discover is super helpful.



Testing 29 contains as many features from the PSX Demo that we feel are stable enough to be included in the game. It also represents the build we used to create the latest Boundless trailer. There are many large and small changes that will be listed in the release notes when the build is promoted to Live.

Live 129 release - pending
Our plan for the coming week is:

1. Promote Testing to Live on Tuesday 20th December.
   
2. Take the Testing worlds offline.

The team is already winding down for a break between Christmas and New Year. Hopefully we will have enough devs left to get the release out the door. There are no updates planned until 2017.



PlayStation re-announcement
We also made a couple of posts reintroducing Boundless to the NA and EU PlayStation blogs. Please take a look at them and let us know how well you think we introduced Boundless in less than 500 words.

Did we miss something important?
How would you introduce Boundless to someone new?

Code
Introduced a new flow for players starting the game, re-entering the game and respawning after dying via the Sanctum. Whilst this may seem outside the Boundless world it gives the player:

1. Control over when and where they respawn into the world after dying. You can pick your moment before jumping through the warp.
   
2. If you don't want to return into the world in the same location you have another Warp ready to take you home or any other saved location.
   
3. You can even bump the Warp to a safer location if you died in an extremely tricky place, for example in lava. (Press 'E' to access the bump option.)
   
4. If you start the game and your previous world is offline or full you have control over selecting an alternative entry point.
   
5. More features will be coming to the Sanctum in the future.

We've been working down a list of bugs attempting to get more quality into the game client and servers.

We've also spent time attempting to track down a loading failure hitting a few players (including me - James!!) We're gradually getting there, but the issue seems to be triggered when the client is making too many connections and some of them fail. When this happens the client doesn't get sufficient chunk data from the world, and the client refuses to start whilst some of it is outstanding. If you get stuck in the Sanctum with the Warp never completing the loading process then you're also hitting the same issue. (Previously you'd simply be stuck on a grey loading screen - but now you're stuck in the Sanctum - a tiny step forward.) If so, please send us your log files and details about your networking hardware + OS.

We're attempting to squeeze a few last minute SFX into the game so that the Creatures and mêlée attacks with the tools are no longer silent. The SFX have all been made - we've just not spent enough time to hook them up to the events in the game. We'll make a big push for the next next update to include all the outstanding SFX.

Design
This week has been about getting all the work we’ve done for the trailer in a state so that we can release it.

Ollie has been balancing damage and health for the new creatures, and setting up on which worlds they should spawn. Also expanding the healing, with the addition of fruit, and the healing brew with new recipes. It’s now worthwhile stocking up with supplies before venturing to further flung worlds which have the more powerful creatures. He’s also integrated the gem level of weapons and tools.

Luke has been looking after the release process in Yota’s absence, as well continuing to improve the tutorial and initial objectives.

Rob has been working with Mark on more update and polish on the HUD, as well as firming up the final design and polish for the inventory system.

Art
This week the art team have been busy preparing the Steam release.

We’re also hunting for a talented 3D artist to join the team making creatures, characters and props to populate the Boundless universe!

We've also been working on the follow areas for future releases:

Elemental versions of the Wildstock





Final spanner models



Tier 2 Roadrunner tinted and ready in game



Concepting of the worms continues. Here's a sketch of the large worm progression:



Monday is the new last Friday.

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

Testing 29 release
This week we've released the latest version of Boundless into a Steam Beta called "Testing". The release is accessible to all players and reporting issues you discover is super helpful.



Testing 29 contains as many features from the PSX Demo that we feel are stable enough to be included in the game. It also represents the build we used to create the latest Boundless trailer. There are many large and small changes that will be listed in the release notes when the build is promoted to Live.

Live 129 release - pending
Our plan for the coming week is:

1. Promote Testing to Live on Tuesday 20th December.
   
2. Take the Testing worlds offline.

The team is already winding down for a break between Christmas and New Year. Hopefully we will have enough devs left to get the release out the door. There are no updates planned until 2017.



PlayStation re-announcement
We also made a couple of posts reintroducing Boundless to the NA and EU PlayStation blogs. Please take a look at them and let us know how well you think we introduced Boundless in less than 500 words.

Did we miss something important?
How would you introduce Boundless to someone new?

Code
Introduced a new flow for players starting the game, re-entering the game and respawning after dying via the Sanctum. Whilst this may seem outside the Boundless world it gives the player:

1. Control over when and where they respawn into the world after dying. You can pick your moment before jumping through the warp.
   
2. If you don't want to return into the world in the same location you have another Warp ready to take you home or any other saved location.
   
3. You can even bump the Warp to a safer location if you died in an extremely tricky place, for example in lava. (Press 'E' to access the bump option.)
   
4. If you start the game and your previous world is offline or full you have control over selecting an alternative entry point.
   
5. More features will be coming to the Sanctum in the future.

We've been working down a list of bugs attempting to get more quality into the game client and servers.

We've also spent time attempting to track down a loading failure hitting a few players (including me - James!!) We're gradually getting there, but the issue seems to be triggered when the client is making too many connections and some of them fail. When this happens the client doesn't get sufficient chunk data from the world, and the client refuses to start whilst some of it is outstanding. If you get stuck in the Sanctum with the Warp never completing the loading process then you're also hitting the same issue. (Previously you'd simply be stuck on a grey loading screen - but now you're stuck in the Sanctum - a tiny step forward.) If so, please send us your log files and details about your networking hardware + OS.

We're attempting to squeeze a few last minute SFX into the game so that the Creatures and mêlée attacks with the tools are no longer silent. The SFX have all been made - we've just not spent enough time to hook them up to the events in the game. We'll make a big push for the next next update to include all the outstanding SFX.

Design
This week has been about getting all the work we’ve done for the trailer in a state so that we can release it.

Ollie has been balancing damage and health for the new creatures, and setting up on which worlds they should spawn. Also expanding the healing, with the addition of fruit, and the healing brew with new recipes. It’s now worthwhile stocking up with supplies before venturing to further flung worlds which have the more powerful creatures. He’s also integrated the gem level of weapons and tools.

Luke has been looking after the release process in Yota’s absence, as well continuing to improve the tutorial and initial objectives.

Rob has been working with Mark on more update and polish on the HUD, as well as firming up the final design and polish for the inventory system.

Art
This week the art team have been busy preparing the Steam release.

We’re also hunting for a talented 3D artist to join the team making creatures, characters and props to populate the Boundless universe!

We've also been working on the follow areas for future releases:

Elemental versions of the Wildstock





Final spanner models



Tier 2 Roadrunner tinted and ready in game



Concepting of the worms continues. Here's a sketch of the large worm progression:



Monday is the new last Friday.

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

We've had a super busy 2 week period.

Demo, Trailer and PSX:
In the week commencing Monday 28th November - we were heads down desperately trying to complete a new trailer to show at the PlayStation Experience in Anaheim, Los Angeles and polish up the first playable presentation of Boundless for PS4. Sounds easy? It wasn't. The effort it takes to shine a working game into a polished game is significant (bordering on insane).

Simply fitting Boundless with multiple open portals and hence loaded worlds in the fixed memory of a PS4 (which is shared between the CPU and GPU) is an example of the issues we needed to resolve.

We attempted to make the trailer and demo share the same presentation. The aim was to allow people at PSX to play the trailer live on PS4. We wanted to make sure it wasn't possible to claim that the trailer didn't reflect the status of the game. Whilst people were waiting for a spare machine to play on, they could watch others play or watch the trailer and get a similar experience.

The entire trailer was captured in game.

The original ambition was to actually have the PS4 demo connect to the live Boundless worlds and invite everyone in the community to experience the live demo together. "Come and inhabit the worlds we've put online for the trailer." After all it's an online game - and it should be presented as an online game. But we needed to abandon this idea once we started learning about the connection performance available to us at the event. (And it's a good thing we did!) In the end it was safer to simply connect the 4x PS4s to a mini-clone of the Boundless universe running locally. Players loved bumping into each other in the game - and obviously instantly started trying to grief each other.

We took our 2x designers Ollie and Luke to present the game, 1x hero programmer Dave to make sure it actually ran (and present), and myself to carry the bags.

The schedule was:

1. Thursday - fly from London Gatwick to LAX.
   
2. Friday - setup the booth, setup the PS4s, and demo.
   
3. Saturday - present the demo all day.
   
4. Sunday - present the demo all day.
   
5. Monday - flyback to London Gatwick landing Tuesday lunch time.

The entire team contributed to creating the trailer and demo - and I'm super proud of it and them. Whilst neither were perfect and littered with little issues - I think they did the game justice.

We shared some pictures of the booth before the event started in this news item.

Everyone we presented the game to seemed to be genuinely impressed. For me the standard conversation was: "So what is Boundless", and my stock initial answer was "Boundless is an epic sandbox, where everyone players in a single online universe." At this point the standard response was "wow". The players we met: loved the visual presentation, the real time portals, the variation between the worlds, the beacons and regen system, travelling between worlds by the planets, and they thought that everything they saw was created by another player. The booth was continuously busy and the 4x PS4 were always occupied with people waiting to play.

Here are some pictures that we took during the event.


Some final checks before the hoard arrived.

We had new Boundless Oortlets and some fetching headpieces for players to wear. (And they did wear them!!)

Players playing.

More players.

Even more players.
In case you missed it - here is the latest Boundless trailer - (comment on the news thread):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-deAhnHXZw
The trailer includes a load of new features, assets and polish.

In the week commencing Monday 5th December, whilst we were travelling home, the team has been preparing the demo version for release on Steam. The majority of features shown in the trailer will be included or modified to make them more suitable for the game. For example, we had a shortened tutorial for the demo, we stocked your inventory with a collection of basic equipment, and we also made sure that when players entered the first world from the sanctum that they warped in close to each other. We think this stuff was necessary to give players an experience of Boundless in minutes rather than hours.

The Hunter and Basher will not make it into this release. Unfortunately, their AI and navigation are still a bit premature to release them in the wild. However, there is a long list of new and improved things that you can check out in next week’s release.

Come New Year, we will be focusing our efforts on the following:

• Completing the GUI overhaul
  
• Combat system improvements including addition of the Lance and creature balance.
  
• Add creature variants and new creatures.
  
• Add the sign, donation box, ladder, etc.
  
• Add more VFX / SFX
  
• Complete the overhaul of the smart staking / inventory system.
  
• More sophisticated progression system including achievements.
  
• Add Guilds system
  
• ... and many more tweaks and improvements!

Code
Mainly cleaning up the code that we implemented for the trailer and demo to prepare for the release next week. However, we have been adding new things such as:

• VFX for the roadrunner and cuttletrunk
  
• New News feed in the HUD (level up and world information)
  
• You always leave and restart the game from the Sanctum
  
• New animations for the Hopper and Cuttletrunk
  
• New impact and hitting VFX
  
• Other than that, we are all bug fixing

Design
Much of last week was taken up with PSX, with Luke and Ollie both flying to Anaheim and doing the show, and Rob working long hours with Jim preparing key artwork to go with the trailer.

This week was mainly about recovering from that experience, and fixing and polishing the work we’ve done so it can be released:

• Luke has been polishing up the Sanctum and the tutorial so that new players will have a nice introduction to the game.
  
• Ollie has been looking at some balance work, especially to do with creatures.
  
• Rob has been working on the areas of the HUD and GUI that didn’t make it into the demo, but that we want to get in soon.

Art
After working on the trailer over the last few weeks the art team is now getting ready for our next release. We’re very excited to bring you the playable version of the Boundless trailer!

We’re creating progression models of the creatures.

• Here’s the Hopper from Jess:
  
  
  
  
• The standard and elemental Cuttletrunk from Jess:
  
  
  
• More Wildstock tiers from Claudio:
  
  
  
• Dom has been re-working our block breaking effect. Here’s a work in progress proof of concept using flipbook textures replacing the current block break effect:
  

For the end solution we plan to use a 3D shader that we can use for breaking both voxel blocks and polygonal meshes for props, plants etc. We’ll be developing this in the New Year.

For future release Amanda is concepting the block parasite and worms. More of this to come in a separate post very soon.

Also for release in the New Year we’ve completed the progression models for our new grapple.
Here’s a sneak peek of the gem version (again from Jess) :


So an extremely busy couple of weeks.

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

We've had a super busy 2 week period.

Demo, Trailer and PSX:
In the week commencing Monday 28th November - we were heads down desperately trying to complete a new trailer to show at the PlayStation Experience in Anaheim, Los Angeles and polish up the first playable presentation of Boundless for PS4. Sounds easy? It wasn't. The effort it takes to shine a working game into a polished game is significant (bordering on insane).

Simply fitting Boundless with multiple open portals and hence loaded worlds in the fixed memory of a PS4 (which is shared between the CPU and GPU) is an example of the issues we needed to resolve.

We attempted to make the trailer and demo share the same presentation. The aim was to allow people at PSX to play the trailer live on PS4. We wanted to make sure it wasn't possible to claim that the trailer didn't reflect the status of the game. Whilst people were waiting for a spare machine to play on, they could watch others play or watch the trailer and get a similar experience.

The entire trailer was captured in game.

The original ambition was to actually have the PS4 demo connect to the live Boundless worlds and invite everyone in the community to experience the live demo together. "Come and inhabit the worlds we've put online for the trailer." After all it's an online game - and it should be presented as an online game. But we needed to abandon this idea once we started learning about the connection performance available to us at the event. (And it's a good thing we did!) In the end it was safer to simply connect the 4x PS4s to a mini-clone of the Boundless universe running locally. Players loved bumping into each other in the game - and obviously instantly started trying to grief each other.

We took our 2x designers Ollie and Luke to present the game, 1x hero programmer Dave to make sure it actually ran (and present), and myself to carry the bags.

The schedule was:

1. Thursday - fly from London Gatwick to LAX.
   
2. Friday - setup the booth, setup the PS4s, and demo.
   
3. Saturday - present the demo all day.
   
4. Sunday - present the demo all day.
   
5. Monday - flyback to London Gatwick landing Tuesday lunch time.

The entire team contributed to creating the trailer and demo - and I'm super proud of it and them. Whilst neither were perfect and littered with little issues - I think they did the game justice.

We shared some pictures of the booth before the event started in this news item.

Everyone we presented the game to seemed to be genuinely impressed. For me the standard conversation was: "So what is Boundless", and my stock initial answer was "Boundless is an epic sandbox, where everyone players in a single online universe." At this point the standard response was "wow". The players we met: loved the visual presentation, the real time portals, the variation between the worlds, the beacons and regen system, travelling between worlds by the planets, and they thought that everything they saw was created by another player. The booth was continuously busy and the 4x PS4 were always occupied with people waiting to play.

Here are some pictures that we took during the event.


Some final checks before the hoard arrived.

We had new Boundless Oortlets and some fetching headpieces for players to wear. (And they did wear them!!)

Players playing.

More players.

Even more players.
In case you missed it - here is the latest Boundless trailer - (comment on the news thread):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-deAhnHXZw
The trailer includes a load of new features, assets and polish.

In the week commencing Monday 5th December, whilst we were travelling home, the team has been preparing the demo version for release on Steam. The majority of features shown in the trailer will be included or modified to make them more suitable for the game. For example, we had a shortened tutorial for the demo, we stocked your inventory with a collection of basic equipment, and we also made sure that when players entered the first world from the sanctum that they warped in close to each other. We think this stuff was necessary to give players an experience of Boundless in minutes rather than hours.

The Hunter and Basher will not make it into this release. Unfortunately, their AI and navigation are still a bit premature to release them in the wild. However, there is a long list of new and improved things that you can check out in next week’s release.

Come New Year, we will be focusing our efforts on the following:

• Completing the GUI overhaul
  
• Combat system improvements including addition of the Lance and creature balance.
  
• Add creature variants and new creatures.
  
• Add the sign, donation box, ladder, etc.
  
• Add more VFX / SFX
  
• Complete the overhaul of the smart staking / inventory system.
  
• More sophisticated progression system including achievements.
  
• Add Guilds system
  
• ... and many more tweaks and improvements!

Code
Mainly cleaning up the code that we implemented for the trailer and demo to prepare for the release next week. However, we have been adding new things such as:

• VFX for the roadrunner and cuttletrunk
  
• New News feed in the HUD (level up and world information)
  
• You always leave and restart the game from the Sanctum
  
• New animations for the Hopper and Cuttletrunk
  
• New impact and hitting VFX
  
• Other than that, we are all bug fixing

Design
Much of last week was taken up with PSX, with Luke and Ollie both flying to Anaheim and doing the show, and Rob working long hours with Jim preparing key artwork to go with the trailer.

This week was mainly about recovering from that experience, and fixing and polishing the work we’ve done so it can be released:

• Luke has been polishing up the Sanctum and the tutorial so that new players will have a nice introduction to the game.
  
• Ollie has been looking at some balance work, especially to do with creatures.
  
• Rob has been working on the areas of the HUD and GUI that didn’t make it into the demo, but that we want to get in soon.

Art
After working on the trailer over the last few weeks the art team is now getting ready for our next release. We’re very excited to bring you the playable version of the Boundless trailer!

We’re creating progression models of the creatures.

• Here’s the Hopper from Jess:
  
  
  
  
• The standard and elemental Cuttletrunk from Jess:
  
  
  
• More Wildstock tiers from Claudio:
  
  
  
• Dom has been re-working our block breaking effect. Here’s a work in progress proof of concept using flipbook textures replacing the current block break effect:
  

For the end solution we plan to use a 3D shader that we can use for breaking both voxel blocks and polygonal meshes for props, plants etc. We’ll be developing this in the New Year.

For future release Amanda is concepting the block parasite and worms. More of this to come in a separate post very soon.

Also for release in the New Year we’ve completed the progression models for our new grapple.
Here’s a sneak peek of the gem version (again from Jess) :


So an extremely busy couple of weeks.

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

We're proud to share the new Boundless trailer. It was created for the PlayStation Experience where we showed Boundless on PS4 for the first time. All footage was captured in game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-deAhnHXZw

The whole team made a huge effort to create the PS4 demo and capture the trailer footage in the past few weeks. All the latest features seen in the trailer will be released to Steam Early Access for everyone to checkout next week.

Thank you for your on going support and we hope you enjoy it!

We're proud to share the new Boundless trailer. It was created for the PlayStation Experience where we showed Boundless on PS4 for the first time. All footage was captured in game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-deAhnHXZw

The whole team made a huge effort to create the PS4 demo and capture the trailer footage in the past few weeks. All the latest features seen in the trailer will be released to Steam Early Access for everyone to checkout next week.

Thank you for your on going support and we hope you enjoy it!

This week lots of small refinements have gone into the game. On top of the new features and improvements we mentioned in the last update, we have added the following to the list.

• New weather effects including hail and sandstorm.
  
• New fog effect (low, medium and high height fog).
  
• New colour palettes for the worlds.
  
• Visual improvements to the existing HUD.
  
• A fresh visual update to the Warp conduit (2nd iteration).
  
• GUI optimisation to make it run smoother.
  
• Smoother portal / warp transitions.
  
• More creature animation integration.

Other than that, we have been preparing for the PlayStation Experience that will be held in Anaheim, California on December 3rd and 4th. We will have some swag to give away. Come see us and play the bleeding edge version of Boundless on PlayStation 4.

We're planning to update the game in Early Access very soon after the PlayStation Experience. Sorry, we are working hard to prepare for the trailer, the demo and the game update.

Code
Lots of work on the trailer! We been spending time on a time lapse regeneration of the world to show it being rebuilt by reversing it. We added bespoke scripts for entities in the trailer scenes. This is used for positioning and animating players, creatures and VFX. Various bug fixes to support the demo and trailer have been worked on including more issues fixed for portal transition glitches. For PSX we’ve been setting up new servers and demo kits.

The HUD has had more polish and the GUI optimised for PlayStation 4. The controller mappings have been revamped and the virtual keyboard support added for PS4.

Additionally we’ve added more VFX and features including a new warp activation effect and attachments of effects to skeleton joints. The Totem behaviour for planet picking is being reworked and the Slingbow has also been polished up including some new animations.

Design
This week has all been about the trailer and the demo for PSX:

• Luke has been working with Gerry on scripting a market scene to try and show the economy and social aspects of the game.
  
• Ollie has mainly been working out what is needed for the hands-on demo, including PS4 / pad controls and some AI work.
  
• Rob has been working on artwork for our demo stand, branding, and idents for the trailer, as well as more work on the HUD implementation.

Art
The art team has been hard at work supporting the trailer and demo for PSX:

• Dom’s been working on the Hopper VFX progression to clearly present the hoppers’ behaviour states.
  
  
  
  
• We've also be working on the Totem's location marker creation process:
  
  
  
  (LEAKED without permission.)
  
  
• We’ve been developing a new warp conduit block for the next release. Concepted by Claudio, modelled by Jess:
  
  
  
  Amanda has been concepting more creatures for Boundless 1.0. Here’s an exploration of the worms:
  
  (Head for high ground!)

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here

This week lots of small refinements have gone into the game. On top of the new features and improvements we mentioned in the last update, we have added the following to the list.

• New weather effects including hail and sandstorm.
  
• New fog effect (low, medium and high height fog).
  
• New colour palettes for the worlds.
  
• Visual improvements to the existing HUD.
  
• A fresh visual update to the Warp conduit (2nd iteration).
  
• GUI optimisation to make it run smoother.
  
• Smoother portal / warp transitions.
  
• More creature animation integration.

Other than that, we have been preparing for the PlayStation Experience that will be held in Anaheim, California on December 3rd and 4th. We will have some swag to give away. Come see us and play the bleeding edge version of Boundless on PlayStation 4.

We're planning to update the game in Early Access very soon after the PlayStation Experience. Sorry, we are working hard to prepare for the trailer, the demo and the game update.

Code
Lots of work on the trailer! We been spending time on a time lapse regeneration of the world to show it being rebuilt by reversing it. We added bespoke scripts for entities in the trailer scenes. This is used for positioning and animating players, creatures and VFX. Various bug fixes to support the demo and trailer have been worked on including more issues fixed for portal transition glitches. For PSX we’ve been setting up new servers and demo kits.

The HUD has had more polish and the GUI optimised for PlayStation 4. The controller mappings have been revamped and the virtual keyboard support added for PS4.

Additionally we’ve added more VFX and features including a new warp activation effect and attachments of effects to skeleton joints. The Totem behaviour for planet picking is being reworked and the Slingbow has also been polished up including some new animations.

Design
This week has all been about the trailer and the demo for PSX:

• Luke has been working with Gerry on scripting a market scene to try and show the economy and social aspects of the game.
  
• Ollie has mainly been working out what is needed for the hands-on demo, including PS4 / pad controls and some AI work.
  
• Rob has been working on artwork for our demo stand, branding, and idents for the trailer, as well as more work on the HUD implementation.

Art
The art team has been hard at work supporting the trailer and demo for PSX:

• Dom’s been working on the Hopper VFX progression to clearly present the hoppers’ behaviour states.
  
  
  
  
• We've also be working on the Totem's location marker creation process:
  
  
  
  (LEAKED without permission.)
  
  
• We’ve been developing a new warp conduit block for the next release. Concepted by Claudio, modelled by Jess:
  
  
  
  Amanda has been concepting more creatures for Boundless 1.0. Here’s an exploration of the worms:
  
  (Head for high ground!)

Cross posted from devlog forum which can be found here