Brutal Nature Development Blog

This is our development blog! We have been maintaining this blog with updates for over 1000 days now, starting June 10th, 2013. Here you can read about the work that goes into making a game as complex as Brutal Nature:

2014 May 27th

Changed projectiles damage to depend on the exact speed at impact instead of the speed at the end of the server frame so that point blank damage is correct as air drag was reducing it slightly. Added ETA to recipe info.

Started work on a trading menu.

2014 May 26th

Redid the main HUD to take up less room. Separated radar from HUD and redid the radar texture. Fixed health bar stretching.

2014 May 25th

Did play testing. Fixed some bugs relating to the new inventory and tree list changes. Removed hidden blunt damage reduction and instead gave ammo a higher pierced damage modifier.

Added new info panel to smelter and inventory crafting menu that shows info on the item to be crafted.

Added player health/endurance regeneration settings to server.cfg. Added "Damage at point blank range" to info for weapons.

2014 May 24th

Added sorting to tree lists. Hence the inventory and containers are now sorted.

2014 May 23rd

Now can build your own containers. Randomly spawned treasure chests in the world are set so you can't pick them up, only take there contents and they will disappear when empty.

The tree list menu has been changed to remove categories that only have one item in them and just display the item directly. This simplifies the inventory early on in the game and in containers.

2014 May 22nd

Finished the basic functionality of the container menu. Tweaking the different types of containers to act differently now.

Changed category of swords to Sword. Added ability to see whats in a container spawned by dropping an item by mousing over it.

2014 May 21st

Finally got most of the server side code for transferring items done.

2014 May 20th

Still working on the container code.

2014 May 19th

Did some refactoring of how containers where handled by the engine and more work on the container menu.

2014 May 18th

More work on the container code and research into building games.

2014 May 17th

More work on the container menu. Additional research into other building games.

2014 May 16th

Spend the day designing the new container menu. Researched other building games for inspiration on how to handle building mechanics in the future.

2014 May 15th

Started work on a container GUI menu.

2014 May 14th

Players now drop carried object on death. Removed Colt Python and Winchester Model 1897 from starting inventory and replaced with Beretta PX4. Did some play testing.

2014 May 13th

Added support for armor to be used as recipe ingredients. Added recycle recipes for armor.

2014 May 12th

Did play testing and took screenshots for media page.

2014 May 11th

Did last minute checks and packed up a new version of Brutal Nature for release!

Released: 0.41

May 11th, 0.41 is now released:

Fixed all known bugs
Added a basic simple player mode to the game. It spawns a server in the background that will close when you disconnect. Single player mode does not use the central authorization server and just connects directly. Single player maps can be loaded by multiplayer servers and vice versa. Single player mode has its own unique player so username/password authentication is not used.
Added client side collision/gravity prediction for NPCs to prevent NPCs from flying all over the place.
Added server description to server browser.
Added ping display to server browser.
Added ability for electric powered smelters to make some fuel based recipes, having a PowerPerHeat variable that determines if they can produce heat from power and how much.
Added text to tell you when you enter/exit wire editing mode.
Added new rock type terrains: Dacite, Quartzite.
Added Grass Flowers surface terrain.
Added meadow sub-region.
Added compression to files send to client.
Added compression to server map save, reducing its size by 90%.
Added sliding down the side of mountains.
Added some additional security to the login procedure.
Added server.cfg setting for Bullet drag and gravity.
Added server.cfg setting for Player drag, gravity and jump height
Added server.cfg setting for Fall damage.
Added DX10.0 fallback for the water shader when multisampling is enabled.
Added better error reporting when a user tries to run the game on a DX9 card.
Tweaks to terrain generation and textures.
Changed ceramic armor to tier 4 and steel armor up to tier 3.
Changed steel sword/pickaxe to tier 3 and HSS sword/pickaxe to tier 4.
Changed several guns up to tier 4.
Changed bed spawn points to be restricted to 1 player per bed. If you try to use a bed someone else is using, it will tell you its occupied and who is currently occupying it. It will also refuse to allow you to move it.
Changed electric smelter to produce tier 4 tech.
Changed crafting in the inventory now takes time instead of being instant. The hope is to make crafted buildings feel more important, encourage thinking ahead and working together.
Changed size of forges to be smaller.
Changed the file system to allow the client to use files from the data\shared directory if the hashes match. This will allow the server and client to share the same file structure and be distributed together in one archive.
Increased Fire rate of semi-auto weapons to 240rpm.
Updated fmod version.
Turned on fmod distance and directional filtering.
Users now updated if spawn point is moved or destroyed.
Prevented NPC's from spawning within 200 feet of player regardless of line of sight.
Objects now retain there health value when picked up and placed again.
Some objects can no longer be picked up into inventory after being placed. You can pick them up but you are forced to place them again. Logging out will place the object where you stand.
Wire editing mode and terrain editing mode are now mutually exclusive.
Made chat text and join/quit messages yellow for better visibility.
Can no longer climb up very steep mountains but can walk along the side of mountains if you have a grapple set to keep you from sliding down.
Tweaked drag for players and projectiles.
Increased amount of wood that tables need to make.
Removed requirement for server to have a second port open.
Removed muddy grass terrain
Fixed some minor rendering bugs.
Fixed bug where NPC's would spawn with line of sight to player.
Fixed basic smelter not having enough fuel capacity for a full charge of wrought iron.
Fixed bug where drag was cubic instead of squared with speed.
Fixed electric smelter recipe.
Fixed bug where NPC attack code still considered users to be logged in after they logged out. This should help reduce the number of times you log in to find yourself swarmed by waiting animals.

2014 May 10th

Today marks 11 months that I have worked on Brutal Nature every day.

Fixed weapon recycling recipes. Limited player inventory crafting to a max of 1 recipe quantity. Recipes with smaller then size 1 could still have multiple be made however.

2014 May 9th

Tracked down and fixed some minor rendering bugs. Gave the NPCs client side collision/gravity prediction to prevent NPCs from flying all over the place.

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