Devlog #14: Wildlife, a scrap bow, and forests you can get lost in

This round covers 17 October. It was a long day: armour you can modify, building tiers finished, the first animals, a bow, and a big pass over how the map looks.

Vests you can modify, like guns

Body armour now works like our guns. Each vest has attachment slots, from 1 on a fabric vest up to 5 on a plate carrier. Into those slots go pouches, grenade pods, shoulder pads, bracers and thigh armour.

• Attachments come in three tiers: Scrap, Forged and Military.
• Each one gives you something and costs you something. Heavier plates protect more but slow you down. Pouches carry more but don't stop bullets.
• They show up on your body when fitted.
• You can craft them, and they also turn up as loot.

Building: four tiers, and doors that just open

Every building piece now has all four tiers: wood, stone, metal and armoured. Armoured is the metal piece with dark, heavy plating over it. Your hammer upgrades a piece one tier at a time.

• Swinging the hammer at your own walls no longer damages them. It's for repairing and upgrading.
• Press E on a door to open or close it. It swings away from you and everyone else sees it move.
• Like Rust, crafting stations are open to anyone who gets to them. Whoever placed one is still recorded and saved.
• Bench recipes are now made at the bench, not from the inventory menu, and the bench tells you when your bag is full.

Animals

The world has wildlife now:

• Deer run when you get close.
• Stags are tougher deer.
• Wolves and bears are predators. They chase you and bite.
• Boars take a lot of killing.

Animals spawn in the wild around players, as herds and packs, and wander until something spooks them. When one gets hit, the whole herd runs. They flinch when hit and play a proper death animation.

Kill one and you can harvest meat and leather from it. Carcasses clean themselves up after a while, and animals far from any player despawn. Early on the animals were sliding around in a frozen pose. We tracked that down and they now animate as they move, but this is still early. Their numbers, how close they come to towns, and cooking are all next.

The scrap bow

A compound bow put together from scrap, as the first quiet weapon. It's in the game as an item you can pick up, hold and carry. Drawing and firing it hasn't been tested yet, and scrap arrows and a quiver are still to come.

New forests

We swapped every tree on the map for a new set of pines, spruces and broadleaf trees that suits the world better. Each one leans very slightly, like real trees do. Then we planted a lot more: the map went from about 15,000 trees to about 50,000.

Forests are dense now and thin out gradually towards the roads, so driving still feels open but walking off the road puts you in real woods. Clearings, water, towns and buildings stay clear. You can still chop every one of them for wood, and fallen logs land on the ground like before.

Grass, plants and ground

• More grass: about two and a half times as much as before.
• Better wind: the grass used to sway slowly, like it was underwater. Now it moves faster and in smaller amounts, more like a breeze.
• Meadows: wispy wild grass mixed into the meadows, tinted a washed-out blue-green so it matches the rest.
• Ferns: new, bigger ferns.
• Wildflowers: clumps of wildflowers and clover.
• Undergrowth: nettles, a bush and wild carrot.
• Ground texture: the darkest mossy ground is now brown leaf litter.

Some plants we tried rendered almost black in our lighting, so we left them out. A walk-around in play to check it all up close is next.

What's next

• Test the bow properly, then make arrows and a quiver.
• Tune the animals: how many spawn, keeping them out of towns, and cooking the meat.
• A walk-around to check the new plants, then a frame-rate check after all the new trees and grass.
• The rest of the scrap armour set.