Hello one and all, its that time again: Update Announcement OClock! So without further ado, here are some of the upcoming features in Update 3!
Quest System Improvements
Several Characters now also have quests AFTER theyre unlocked. This will allow us to author more interesting quests down the line and even allow for us to create random events that occur within the worlds. Perhaps youll find some spooky goings-on?
Updated Skybox
A huge overhaul to the skybox system shows off much improved visuals during both day and night and sees a vast improvement to the natural lighting. From the warm glow of sunrise, through to the twinkling starry nights, your world looks drastically more alive. And fear not, the improved lighting is actually more efficient than the previous setup, so performance wont suffer because of it.
Vehicle Camera Fixes
Weve improved the vehicle physics and sharpened up the camera while youre in vehicles. The controls still remain the same for now with options to come a little later but these changes mean the vehicles now handle more like youd expect when using WASD.
Fixtures and Fittings
Does your house have a noticeable breeze/blizzard/volcanic burn running through it? Not sure we can do much about the last one without some industrial air conditioning, but for the rest there is now a selection of working doors and windows in the Brick Building tool! Time to renovate your existing models and make some new ones too! Well add more to future updates, and we certainly havent forgotten about other bricks see the notes below.
More Varied Item Discoveries
Tied in to the quest system, some item discoveries now make more sense. For example, we recently unearthed the shocking revelation that apples are actually found on trees rather than in chests as previously thought, so youll have to find a suitable tree and give it a whack. There are a number of other examples, but were not telling you all of them, thats your job to figure out.
Picture Album
Remember those pictures you took with the camera? Now you dont need to go foraging for them on your computer, you can view and delete them on the front end.
Items Backpack
Were adding a very simple but much quicker way to get to your items. Like many of you, we feel its important for gameplay that we dont keep them embedded in the menus any longer, especially now theyre becoming more fun and useful.
Minimap Update
Weve added a nice little feature to the minimap. If you click on it (mouse & keyboard only for now), you will be given a 3D overview of the areas in the world youve visited, similar to the preview when you choose your world on the front end. Its great for tracking progress and finding your bearings!
Content
There are several new characters (which are SPOOKILY relevant to the time of year), vehicles and props available to discover and unlock too. Make sure to consult with other players to see where they can be found some of them are really quite rare!
When?
Weve now entered our pre-rollout push for these new features in which were just taking a bit of time to make sure everything is working as intended without any side-effects, so well be sure to let you know once the update is live. It does mean that (as usual) we cant give a firm date, but hopefully not too long!
Whats Next?
However, thats not all that we want to share with you. Were also keen to share some additional plans with you all that were looking to include in Update 4, and well beyond. Well provide a more detailed Stuff were working on thread here sometime soon to go into more detail, but wed like to give you a rundown on some of the features that are still in development so that youre able to see where our focus lies. In no particular order:
- Further camerawork improvements.
- More Bricks youll be pleased to hear that weve have had tests up and running, but we need to resolve the side effects which will take a bit of time.
- Quests More quest types and variety, including creative quests and further improvements to the adventure ones. And, better quest rewards studs are cool for now, but we want players to be surprised or feel a sense of progress, or maybe both at the same time, so well share more on this soon.
- Ongoing work on a system that supports towns and other structured layouts.
- GUI & input improvements categorisation in the tools, better controller support, remapping options and so on.
- More Build tools were looking at the best ways to quickly build walls, and you guys have given us heaps of other ideas and inspiration too.
- Multiplayer both local (split screen) and online.
- AI & behaviour improvements, including underwater creatures, creatures of flight, more interesting NPCs, better fighting for players that crave action and so on.
- Ongoing landscape generation improvements not just new biomes but improved use of water, more structural variety and of course all without compromising performance the tricky part!
- Better integration of the character customiser.
As you can see, theres lots to do, and the aim is to really kick on with our discussions with you guys once the dust has settled from the next update. This will include some new Dev Diaries, Tutorial Videos, Demo Videos, Build Challenges, etc. Were also trying to find a moment where were all sat together to potentially do some sort of Q&A/AMA, so keep an eye out for that.
As always, feel free to discuss your thoughts here, and well be sure to answer what and where we can! And once again, we want to thank everyone for their continued responses and feedback! Its been very fun reading and watching everyones various comments and videos!
Many thanks,
The LEGO Worlds Team
