Tested Hytale exploration mode gameloop this morning for 2 hours, no crashes, lots of fun moments. Still lots of work ahead to make it good, focusing on small wins for fast development. Large scale QA starts tomorrow.
Morning notes: NPCs are still acting weird sometimes but can be fixed over time. Knockback on enemies feels wrong, needs complete overhaul. We added back shovel tool but made it AoE dig, now it’s actually useful and fun. Mining still feels bad, needs to implement momentum feature and potentially have the signature ability system to tools as a whole (like weapons) so we can have fun coming up with abilities (probably post launch).
Side note: Non-creative (exploration mode) building improvements are happening. Block placement is starting to feel good, rotations and connected blocks works well. Today I need to test our builders bench with new changes. The problem is that we have way too many blocks for building and honestly its a mess, dozen of edge cases for crafting and I want to simplify and make it fun, not tedious so players feels like empowered when building and not restricted, but need to keep immersion in mind. Its critical to get it right because its a game where building is core to the game experience and at the moment its not there just yet. Months ago it was very very frustrating to build, now its actually decent but still need improvements. Today we have small changes that might just make it work well.
Extra note: Massive progress over the past week, being on our own PC has accelerated progress by so much. However it has personally slowed me down because I have been dealing with interviews, clips, screenshots, QnA and other things. It was important to do, communication is critical so everyone understands the state of the game. The team has been very busy anyway so it was probably a good thing I didn’t put more on their plates.
Will do more reports as we progress if you guys like it.