Oct 18, 2020

Development Blog #3 - Season 3 Starts Soon!

XERA: Survival - IcedYoshi

Introduction

Greetings survivors! We wanted to take some time to update you on what’s been happening behind the scenes at Spotted Kiwi Interactive! A lot has changed with our development roadmap over the past month and our team continues to grow. The purpose of this development blog is to help pass along some new information, as well as outline the plans we have going forward on what you can expect from our team and with XERA: Survival.

First, we would like to address the concerns revolving around the low player counts, and would like to reassure you that we are dedicated to getting XERA: Survival through early access and to full release (1.0). Despite the low concurrent players we are very committed to the game, and our whole team is working around the clock. We’ve recently hit a massive milestone of over 60,000 unique players, so there are a lot of players sitting on the sidelines for major features such as Base Building and the new survival map.

Studio Expansion

With much excitement we would like to welcome another new member to the Spotted Kiwi team! Connor - who will be based out of our Dunedin office working alongside Joshua and Erekose. With the recent additions to the Spotted Kiwi team - we are now able to produce all our content in-house. Connor will be filling the gap that we’ve had with Animations, Character Art and VFX - so you will see a lot of improvements coming in those specific areas.

Here’s a few words from Connor: -
“What’s up gamers. Thanks for the warm welcome into this little community! Super excited to be here to help make XERA: Survival into something even more awesome.

I’m a spotted kiwi myself, born and bred in the North Island playing video games like Turok and Goldeneye at the age of 5 with my older brother, then hosting LAN parties through high school playing Halo and Half-life: Deathmatch with my friends. Aside from travelling and climbing mountains, I tend to stay inside a lot to avoid getting more spotted, and balance a hobby of drawing and creating art along with gaming. I also like to dabble in sports but the last few weeks I’ve been recovering from a sprained ankle so hopefully I can return to the basketball court soon and get some revenge. At some point I realised I could combine two things I love as a job and I’ve been doing that for almost eight years now. I spent four of those eight working with Erekose and many other awesome game devs at Rocketwerkz on a ton of different projects including Out of Ammo and Out of Ammo: Death Drive before moving on to bigger projects with super talented people from AAA companies in the states, and created the environment for this Golem trailer and a bunch of other things that I am not allowed to share with you unfortunately!

At Spotted Kiwi I’ll be making you all look beautiful while you’re blowing up robots or betraying newly made friends out in the wilds.

Catch you out there.
-Connor”

Roadmap Changes (Timelines)

With the addition of two new team members we’ve had to adjust our development timelines to support a larger team. With more internal capabilities in the studio we’re able to create higher quality content for the game. As a result, we have made some changes to our public roadmap by organizing the upcoming content into seasons, which should give a better idea of when new content is coming and which season to expect it in. Features in the Season section will be either implemented at release of the season or throughout the season.

https://trello.com/b/yGBsrAZF/xera-survival-public-roadmap

Development / Gameplay

We’re constantly looking at ways to improve existing mechanics in the game, specifically the dynamic events. Erekose has worked on a brand new layout of the compounds which will integrate with the new reactor compounds. Compounds will now require 4 generators to be activated, each with a chance of failing and generating noise (which the robots will be attracted to). Completing the event will produce radioactive byproduct which can be extracted from the core and used to craft items as well as sell to the vendor. Radiation will still be emitted from the compounds after the reactor has been activated, so completing the event and leaving the area as quickly as possible is recommended.

This moves us into a brand new game mechanic that we will be introducing alongside the compound update, the “Radiation” character core stat. While near the compounds your character will slowly absorb radiation, and over time this builds up and can start to deal damage. This will also occur when players are in areas which contain radioactive materials. You can reduce your radiation exposure by wearing protective equipment or by taking specific medical supplies - some of this will be implemented in future patches. We also plan to extend radiation implementation into the new map by having some areas with higher tiered loot around radioactive areas.

The art team has been hard at work behind the scenes working on new assets for the new survival map and deathmatch maps. Connor has hit the ground running by completing a pass on our throwables particles which has allowed us to implement 4 new throwables.

Animations

Joshua and Connor have been working towards a full pass on the animation system that will allow us to create unique animations for each weapon. The new animations will be rolled out throughout Season 3. Check out the video below for a sneak peak at some of the new animations that have been finished!

Throwables

Mikhail (Wargr) has done some great work designing some new throwables with Connor designing the detonation VFX. We are happy to share a preview of some of the recent work they completed on the new Smoke Grenade, EMP Grenade, and Gravity Pulse (GP) Grenade all of which will be coming at the beginning of Season 3! Connor has also implemented a new throwable prediction line VFX.

New World Assets / Buildings

Karan has also been hard at work updating some of our older buildings as well as creating new ones that will be featured in the upcoming map! Including a whole new selection of road assets, which we will be swapping out in the current map as well. Here’s a preview of some of the new assets that will be coming in the near future! Erekose has also been working on the interiors of the new buildings to be detailed with multiple objects being searchable.

New Map / Deathmatch

Erekose has been hard at work on blocking out our upcoming Deathmatch / Arms Race maps while he familiarises himself with internal workflows and assets. He is also experimenting with a new terrain generation tool (World Creator) which we are using for our new survival map. This tool allows us to create a large realistic terrain with various erosions and other filters to bring the map to life.

While we’re still some time off from having a completed new survival map - we want to design it with base building in mind so it will release around the same time as base building.

Base Building

Most of the modular pieces which will be used in the base building system have been completed by Karan. We’re working through all the technical elements for the implementation of bases, which involves storing all the persistent data to be loaded and unloaded at run-time, and stored in our master servers. We are also finalizing the overall design of the base building system - this will be detailed out in future development blogs and with this in mind, we are designing the base building around the new map which will include different biomes that will grant advantages to bases.

Raiding of course will play a huge part in the base building design. Building defenses to protect your base from other players and potentially roaming Humanoids. Your base will be vulnerable at all times, normal defenses will protect against a Humanoid raid while you are offline, but when someone is active in the base, more challenging humanoids may turn up requiring reinforcements or manual defense. You may also encounter other players raiding your base which will most definitely require manual intervention, your base will be your livelihood (your source of currency). Once your base sustains enough damage, it will go into a “capture period” where you can defend your base and whoever wins the battle will be able to claim the base to be their own. Stock up, rebuild and take it back when you are able.

Bases could be built on multiple servers allowing you to create an empire of bases, but this would mean an increased upkeep to make sure your bases do not degrade or are raided by Humanoids or other players.

Season 3 Launch Content

Redwood Valley

We’ve made some improvements to the current map, and most notable, we’ve moved some of the old compounds, and bunkers and have changed some old compounds into the new reactor event. We have also added some brand new event locations throughout the map. In addition to the changes with the event locations and addition of new events, we have also added some new apartments to Redsville, Riverton and Riversdale. These additions will bring a new element of pvp action to some of the less frequented points of interest on the map.

We’ve also gone ahead and swapped out the main road asset for our new ones that have been designed in-house and were prepared for the new map.

UI Updates

There have been some UI changes to help new players understand more about the different points of interest that can be found throughout the map. Also we have implemented indicators above the NPCs at the safe settlements as well so players can navigate to them easily.

Reactor Event

As we mentioned earlier in the development blog, the new reactor event is ready to go! Fight off the AI while repairing the damaged generators found throughout the compound surrounding the reactor and you’ll be rewarded! Remember, this is a radioactive zone so be sure to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

Radio Tower Event

One of the other new events that has been added for Season 3 are radio towers that are found throughout the map. Radio towers provide communication from the settlement and can be jammed by the AI that guard the area. Once an AI has jammed a radio tower, you will be tasked with bringing the radio tower back online by removing 4 jammers that are blocking communications. Disabling each jammer will grant the player an XP reward and once the last jammer has been removed, a bonus reward including XP and currency will be granted.

Updated Civilian Bunkers

One of the common things we’ve received feedback on is that the civilian bunkers do not feel rewarding when completed due to the randomness of the loot that can be found in them. When we first concepted out the design for the civilian bunkers, it was the start of bringing together multiple aspects of progression by having players complete one event in order to unlock another one. The original concept was designed with the option of adding a lootable crate inside the bunker that would function similar to a supply drop, however it would guarantee weapons and gear that are sought after for their rarity. At the time of developing the original civilian bunker events, we did not have the tools and systems in place unfortunately to make this happen, thus civilian bunkers were instead filled with loot from one of the highest tier loot tables in the game.

We now have the systems in place with the recently added container system from Season 2 to be able to implement the civilian bunker rewards as they were originally intended. It is our goal to make these events feel more rewarding by having lock pickable safes inside the civilian bunker that will guarantee some of the more rare items within the game and in turn feel more satisfying as they will be an event that players will want to work towards being able to complete. In addition to adding the safes to the bunkers, we have also relocated and added additional Civilian Bunkers around the map as well as increased the spawn rate of the Civilian Bunker Key.

New Weapons/Binoculars

Mikhail has been working on various weapons for implementation, including the SVD, Mosin Nagant and all the Knuckles variations. He is also currently working on a Shotgun which will be released later in Season 3. All with brand new animations created by Connor, including some new punch animations to polish off the Knuckles.

SVD

The SVD is a long range sniper rifle utilizing .308 rounds and doing a medium-high amount of damage.

Mosin

The Mosin is a short range rifle utilizing .762 rounds and does a medium amount of damage.

Knuckle Melees

Utilized in hand to hand combat, these different knuckles output straight damage to your enemy! Each knuckle has a different amount of damage output and the damage is applied as straight damage no matter where you punch the enemy.

Binoculars

Binoculars will give you an advantage scoping out the terrain ahead. Use them to gain an advantage over your opponents before engaging in combat!

Season 3 Cosmetics

As we prepare for the start of Season 3, we are excited for the next rotation of skins. Mikhail has grown over the past year with his skills and has been focused on designing several highly detailed skins for the next skin box. As well as many other skins for the season - there are many awesome looking skins to collect. We are excited to preview 2 out of the 31 new skins that will be released in the Season 3 skin crate.

End of Season 2

We are excited to announce that the end of season leaderboard skin has been selected! Those who place in the top 25 on any of the 3 leaderboards will be granted the special edition Imperial Drone skin!

We hope that you have enjoyed reading about all of the exciting things that are coming over the next few months and look forward to reading your feedback. Remember, as a community driven game, we count on everyone for your feedback and suggestions as we expand the content available to all of our players. Feel free to connect with us via our discord at https://discord.gg/xera and let us know your thoughts!

Cheers,
Spotted Kiwi Interactive