The Biomic Man

As discussed last time, in the interests of getting the 42 Unstable out of the door we are limiting the number of new craft disciplines that will be initially available and then dripfeeding others (alongside polish, balance etc) in updates to the beta. We have done a bit of a stocktake on what we have done, and are aiming to have the following finished off for a first release. (The contents may settle and change, of course, but we feel this is still a fair assessment.)

• Metal smelting and Blacksmithing

• Pottery

• Weapon-related carpentry skills, such as carving handles and shafts for crafted weapons

• Small-scale bone carving to create sewing needles, fish hooks, cutlery and materials for some fun armor types.

• The essentials when it comes to agricultural production: flour, oil, thread, twine etc.

• Weapon crafting performed on in-game surfaces that don’t necessarily require a particular workstation

Not all of these will come with 100% precise animations at first, and direct character interaction with the larger crafting workstations is reliant on the ‘GrappleTech’ we showed previously with dragged corpses and will therefore be mixed in later down the line. Craft disciplines we will be bringing in during Unstable will include Brewing, Glassmaking and Butchery. Bowyery meanwhile (which clearly will require far more animation, tech, combat and design work) will be at the back of the queue, and is most likely to appear in a later version. We also believe that, seeing as we have a good art pipeline running, we can relatively easily introduce a wide range of decorative craftable building items to the mix for Unstable – which will likely be of interest to MP and RP players who want to make their bases a little more personalised. When we put all this out to the public beta we intend to do so alongside a comprehensive modding guide (as we will also for the MP changes) as the refresh here will be fundamental, and new to all.

In pursuit of this, and to generally expedite the process and aid in polish/fixes, we have also reached out to our friends at TEA Games who are providing some extra manpower. Finally, a quick look at the current status of the UI that appears when you choose to craft on a surface – a table, a worktop, an exposed tree stump if you’re in a forest and such. (This will become more refined, clearly, and crafting options will also be available as text rather than icons if you prefer it as such.)

BIOMES / FORAGING

One aspect of 42 is that we no longer have a rigid black border, and instead have generated wilderness at the map’s edges.

As a part of this we also needed ways to ‘zone’ these areas, meaning to automatically mark them as a particular area so that the game knows, for example, which sounds to play and which foraging area to allocate.

Having foraging being mapper-defined, and a laborious job to mark up, has always been an issue. It’s a big annoyance for players who like to stray from the beaten path only to discover they’re no longer in a foraging zone.

Here, for example is an overview of some of the 41 map’s current zoning. To the east is a large swathe of unzoned (and therefore unforageable) land – while the zone squares of dark green forest and light green woodland is lumpy, boxy and unnatural.

Now in B42 then ProfMobius, he of Minecraft origin, has