WHF Updates:
BETA TESTING
We're currently getting ready to enter into the second official round of Beta Testing. DuneImp has joined the team as the lead beta tester. They're currently going through some basic training and becoming familiarized with everything.
WEEK 1 & 2
EASTER EGGS
Even though Washington Has Fallen is in the beginning of beta testing round two, with a hopefully soon to be release date, we're still adding interesting news and political events to this amazing parody Minecraft Bedrock Adventure game until we release it publicly.We'll do this as much as possible by adding in bonus "Easter Eggs", since adding new missions would take to long and we're really excited to be able to do a full public release soon.
"Easter Eggs" in videogame's are a tradition in which secret areas, hidden areas, special prizes are built into the game for the more ambitious player to attempt to locate. Some remain hidden for years.
We'll be thinking of ways to add a few in, there are lots of possibilities.
"Easter Eggs" in videogame's are a tradition in which secret areas, hidden areas, special prizes are built into the game for the more ambitious player to attempt to locate. Some remain hidden for years.
We'll be thinking of ways to add a few in, there are lots of possibilities.
Top Secret
Since SkyThrusters is currently doing design work on our next project INVERSE and waiting for Beta Testing round 2 to begin, he took an evening to build Joe Biden's Delaware Home into Washington Has Fallen.
Biden's Delaware home in the Minecraft Build had
limited space between two other buildings, so the profile is much smaller, but still has three floors.
This is the real Biden Delaware home, where the
Top Secret documents from when Biden was
Vice President were discovered in his garage.
Building space was limited since SkyThrusters wanted to add it into a specific community of Washington DC, but we think he did a darn good job. He said studied photos of the actual Biden home, but couldn't figure out where the garage is actually located, so he went ahead and just put the garage opening in the front as an attached garage.
No photos of the interior of the Biden Delaware home could be located, so he just did basic interior design that he felt fit the Biden's, including a pool in the backyard, a traditional brick BBQ and Jill Biden NPC making some food.
WEEK 3
MORE EASTER EGGS
LOCKING IT DOWN
We also locked down some key elements of the game to prevent those assets from being moved, mainly vehicles that are intended to remain in place. The majority of the other vehicles are intended to be usable for transportation, thanks to LIFE BOAT's built in mod package. There is one significant area of Washington DC that the vehicles being frozen in their location makes sense for the surrounding mood and environment. That took most of a day to accomplish.
LIGHTING UPDATES
Also worked were some lighting level improvements. Some missions of the game take place at night in Washington DC and need enhanced to improve the visibility of highlighted areas that players need to see easier that would otherwise be to dark. That took an all night/morning work session to complete. There will probably be other lighting updates required that will be discovered during the next beta test session, which will hopefully happen soon.
This is an example of one of the areas that was too dark
and needed a lighting level update.
NAVIGATIONAL GUIDES
During our first beta tests back in 2020, lead beta tester BlestHeart18402 recommended adding in NPC's to act as navigational guides. At that time there were no guides or directions to help locate missions or sites of interest. A significant amount of time was wasted running up and down the massive main world area trying to locate buildings and places using minimal signs.
The past two years, a large amount of time has gone into exploring and implementing different ways to assist players from one mission location to the next, including NPC's. Here at the end of development it made sense to add in a lot of additional "guides" to help players figure out where they are in relationship to sights and places directly around them. That has taken a week or more to implement.
INFORMATIONAL MESSAGING AND NPC
The original world that the Washington Has Fallen Minecraft Template overlays, used a network of NPC's and raw text messages at sights of interest. We always knew from the start that one of the last things to do in WHF would be to replace those messages. We replaced the NPC's in 2021 after an update from Minecraft broke the original NPC's that LifeBoat used for their Washington DC world. Their NPC's existed before Minecraft Bedrock had NPC's available. When Minecraft Bedrock was updated to include it's own native NPC system, we had to go and repair and replace all of the original NPC's that had broke. That was actually a good thing, because ultimately it gave us full control of NPC placement and customization. This week we are updating those internal raw text messages with content that matches the theme of the adventure. At the same time, the NPC's that work together with internal messages are getting a brand new 2022 look.
Our original NPC replacements were honestly ugly, fortunately the last update from Minecraft in 2022 also introduced a lot of new NPC skins, so we found a much nicer looking skin for those NPC's.