The Repopulation October Development Update
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Vehicles in the Repopulation allow for multiple mounted players. This means you can have a driver, gunners, and passengers. They can be used for both combat and non-combat purposes. Some vehicle types are intended for transportation, and others for war. You will be able to "trick out" your vehicles using a vehicle upgrade system. This includes passive upgrades such as improving the steering, speed, shields, or armor of a vehicle, as well as active upgrades such as adding weapons, or usable vehicle perks such as mines, cloaking devices or turbo boosters. It is a complex system that is still mid-implementation at this point. We do have the basics covered now though, and have tackled the larger issues of synching the mount positions properly and allowing vehicles to transfer smoothly across seams. We'll cover these features in much more detail in the upcoming feature.
The entire world has undergone some large scale changes this month. In an effort to boost performance and improve scalability we have restructured the world into 768x768 meter grids for each area, rather than the previous 1km x 1km grids. We also reduced the terrain density by half, as we found there was very little visual difference between the two, and it gave significant performance increases. These changes have allowed us to restructure the area grid, and provide a better seamless experience. Along the way though we wound up changing many of the paths, knocking down some mountain barriers, and causing the world to look very different in many places than was the case at earlier stages of alpha.
In addition to these large world changes, we also integrated a new spawn system which refer to as Dens. Most areas have either been converted to Den based spawns or will be very soon. So what are dens? Dens spawn monsters on demand, when players enter certain regions. What makes these different from traditional spawns though is that dens can randomly choose between a number of different mob types appropriate to that area. Once spawned those dens can grow in size and strength if players do not eliminate them. They can also scale in strength based on the number of players in the area. Dens can provide rare mobs, mission opportunities, and can spawn visual cues or alter areas in other ways. They encourage exploration, and the move to them is making our world more dynamic than was previously the case.
Crafting is a huge part of The Repopulation, and it has receive a significant overhaul this month. The individual changes are described in the Crafting build notes, but the main theme here is that we have streamlined the system to be easier to use, while still retaining the variety and customization of the original system. Blueprints are also now craftable, allowing you to craft structures and furniture items.
