Wednesday 22 January 2014

Reloaded Now Has Save Standalone

Work

So what work has been done today I hear you ask? Well I finished off the standalone saving if you must know. There is a new item in the FILE menu called Save Standalone which when selected will take the currently loaded level and assemble all the files required to play that level independent of the main software. Hurray!

There are a few files that strictly don't need to be in there such as all 18 material sound effects, but in the main, the level is scanned thoroughly and only the files you actually need are transferred to the standalone level folder. You can find all your standalone executables in the Documents\FPSC Reloaded\My Games folder, filed under the name of the original level name. In later versions we will expand this to a full Build Game dialog system (that is, when we have a game to build).

I dare say I've missed a small pile of files I could further trim out but the only harm it does is to bloat the final executable folder.  The 'Get To The River' level compiles down to 100MB in size, which is okay considering the high resolution art assets in there, but when we get down in a few more versions of the standalone exporter, we can look at reducing texture files and other assets to allow a choice of destination file sizes.

As I write this blog, I am tackling one final bug which has the characters floating about with no animations. All the files seem to be there but they have decided to turn to stone. They still move after you, they just keep the same idle pose - very odd.

I have another two hours to tag on later this evening to start some VR work (at least get the hardware setup and HL2+Rift played, and maybe quickly check that the Reloaded VR flag at least does not crash anything).  I can then start Thursday with some VR fun.  Fortunately I created a small buffer for myself on the schedule so I am still okay for delivery of the promised beta features for the end of the month.

Play

Managed another 3 miles today, which is all good for the constitution. Managed to locate the cause of the electrical fault from last week, which turned out to be an outside pump. Makes sense given the recent Welsh coastal flood incident.  New one ordered and will go in this weekend. Sorted. Also downloaded Half Life 2 as apparently it does a rather good Oculus Rift VR experience, and I want to check that out first hand :)

12 comments:

  1. Excellent choice, Lee! Have you ever played HL2? If not, you'll find it's one of the best games in existence, despite its relative age. I've never tried it with a Rift, but I can imagine it would be just add to its awesomeness! HL2 is my favourite game of all time, and when Valve FINALLY releases Episode 3/HL3 the new HL game will probably instantly become my favourite :)

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  2. I gave it a quick blast and spent lots of time just looking at walls and floors, objects and things with the Rift. Seems HL2 is really down playing the emmersiveness you can get from the Rift and the stereoscopic view adjustment is pretty flat. Compare it with the OculusWorldDemo and you will instantly see what I mean. I do like the cursor idea though, and allows for some freedom of mouse movement without constantly spinning the players head about :) I think Reloaded would benefit from a similar system!

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    1. Knowing how Valve operates, they did that for a very good reason. I suspect it was something like finding that unrealistically strong 3D was uncomfortable after a while of playing. Maybe combat was harmed when your eyes have a long distance to refocus?

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  3. That is what I love about view environments with the Rift - so much more details is taken in and observed. I also find myself walking around looking at things and changing my view to take it all in lol! I do agree with the weaker 3d in HL2 - it is one of the demo's that I have no problems showing individuals that tend to feel simulator sickness in the rift. They did do a great job with the cursor though. From what I have read the new HD Rift with positional tracking has very much improved the concerns of simulator sickness in a major way.

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  4. I noticed something quite interesting about the next gen games coming out. They have this interesting graphics visual feature whereas if the player is too close to any object, that part of the object becomes out of Focus. Much like real life if you hold up any object way too close to your eyes. So anything that is nearer then 5 inches to your view would be out of focus. It is an actually awesome realistic feature.

    This link I think explains it a bit better:
    http://people.rennes.inria.fr/Anatole.Lecuyer/hillaire_vrst_07_short.pdf

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    1. It's called depth of focus or depth of field and is common on current-gen games as well :)

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    2. Since we can change the FOV be nice if we had a slider for DOF too :D

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    3. You do realise the two are completely unrelated, right? FOV is a hardware-based setting in the cameras and DOF is a shader effect. But yeah it would be nice :)

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    4. I know, I just was curious if a threshold slider could be added

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  5. how do you get barrels to explode, really new to the game

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  6. I have fps creator reloaded beta 1.004 thanks!

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  7. No DOF and no exploding anything at the moment. They're both on the list though ;)

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