Player and Quest Journal Available on Testing Branch

11:13 AM willsterling23 3 Comments


Ahoy Mateys!

We have just pushed the new quest and player journal to the testing branch. The cartography and map system still has some kinks we are knocking out before it's ready for testing, but we figured we would go ahead and push the journal for you to try!

If you aren't on the testing branch already, you can opt in by following the instructions here:

Testing Branch Instructions

Let me go over briefly some of the features you can expect to find in the player journal.

Journal Entries


One major feature of the new player journal is of course the ability to add your own entries! To open up your journal, you can press "J" or press "Esc" and click on the journal section of the menu. Once in the journal you can create an entry on any page and create sections as well with entries or more sections within them. This can be useful for noting down coordinates or any other information you find useful! You can edit and delete these entries also.

Quest Journal


The quest section of the player journal updates with entries as you get new quests. For example, you can start the main quest line by reading the strange journal in your inventory. This will add a quest title and entry within that title giving you an idea on what you need to do next. This portion of the journal will track main quests and merchant quests. 



Please let us know any bugs or issues you find with the journal so we can fix that up before public release! Cartography should be coming to the testing branch soon as well. We are finishing that up currently and getting it ready for player testing. 


- Will Sterling (Sound Lead and Game Design)

3 comments:

Friday Dev Update: Cartography Patch Coming Soon

9:05 AM willsterling23 2 Comments


Hey everyone!

We just wanted you to give you a quick update on our Cartography Patch and when that will be releasing.


Cartography Release Date


We are currently finishing up the mechanics and visuals of the cartography system this week and early next week. Our goal is to have it out to testing branch by late next week! Once it's on testing branch and we hammer out any last minute bugs you find, we'll push it to public shortly after.

We are very excited to finally have an in-game cartography system and can't wait for you to start mapping your worlds and sharing them with others!


Controller Functionality Changes


This week we've also been working on controller support for some upcoming features such as the map and player journal. We needed to free up some buttons on the controller, so we've changed the way you retrieve items from storage containers. Currently we have that set as a separate button, but we going to change that to where you hold the interact button. This is more intuitive and will work with other systems in the future.


Thanks for reading and as always let us know your thoughts!



- Will Sterling (Sound Lead and Game Design)



2 comments:

Friday Dev Update: Quest Journal and Boss Music

6:16 AM willsterling23 2 Comments


Ahoy!

It's been a fun and busy week over at Lavaboots. The Cartography Update is still under way and we are making some progress in some other areas as well. We are extremely excited about this year and some of the updates to come.

If you haven't already, you can read about our 2016 plans in a recent blog post. In short, the big updates coming in 2016 are cartography, a quest journal, finishing implementation of the main quest line, and multiplayer.

Today I wanted to talk about a couple new things we've been working on.


Quest Journal



As you may have read, we've been working on implementing a player journal into the game. This journal will give you the ability to write your own entries, create section links, and take notes of whatever you want in the world. If you're the type of player that likes to truly immerse yourself in a game and keep a log of your daily adventures, then the player journal is definitely for you. 

One feature we've been working on adding to the player journal is the quest portion. Salt has a main story quest line partly implemented (which we plan on finishing soon) as well as many different side quests from merchants, treasure hunters, fishermen, etc. It can be hard to keep track of what exactly you were supposed to, especially since much of the game revolves around you sailing long distances and having some down time between quests. 

So with that that in mind, what we've done is add quest entries as a portion of the journal. When you pick up a new quest or talk to a quest giver, it will update your journal with a short entry summarizing your task and an island location if one was given to you. This is mainly implemented for the main quest, but we'll be looking into using it for side quests as well.

Our goal with this is to keep the entries very short, but just act as a reminder of what you were supposed to do. We don't want to hold your hand so the entries will be fairly simple, but we also don't want you to be out in the middle of the ocean, forget the item you were supposed to be looking for and spend a lot of time trying to find the NPC again to ask.


Boss Music


This week we've also been working on some new boss music for the main quest. Progress on that is going well. You can listen to a preview of what we've got so far here: 




We get a lot of requests for the boss music in Salt, so we will include it in the soundtrack when it releases. In the mean time, you can listen to the ocean and sailing music here for free.


Thanks for reading and let us hear your feedback!


- Will Sterling (Sound Lead and Game Design)

2 comments:

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