Wednesday 16 April 2014

Plenty V1 Tweaks Tweaked

Work

A good day today with plenty small fixes made which just polish the edges and make the software feel a little more compact and friendly.  As this is a quick blog I will just reel off the stuff I did which includes a new superflat mode of 2 which will completely remove the terrain from the engine (entirely) so you can import your own ground or other floor surface. Added in some static floor entities and it worked a treat (and gave a monster speed up). Improved FPS Warning so it only strikes once the game loop is well established. Deleting zone entities in zoomed mode no longer leaves area zone marker in map. FPSCR will now only accept and load levels created exclusively in Reloaded, and will produce a warning for Classic FPM files. Flash light now works for LOWEST and MEDIUM shader techniques, and I have added a new MEDIUM shader technique for entities to allow a cheap flash light and a real flash light effect to be chosen. Amazingly, FALLOUT3 only used a proximity flash light rather than conical one!  Ambient settings no longer lost when loading, saving and creating new terrains. When setting low shader techniques in test game, this choice is carried back to the editor so you can have faster editing experience (though it does not look as good from high up).

On top of this, usual forum checking and delegating and testing tasks for Dave and Simon which are making good progress in their own right. Dave just fixed the download system so it now uses a cool check-sum feature to ensure the download is 100% successful and also allows us to detect when an entity has been modified by the original artist and the software automatically updates it for you. Simon has solved the floating grass issues and made some performance improvements which he was in there :)

Thursday is the last official work day in the UK, so our combined plan is to crack on with our list of super-A critical items and giving us enough time to check in and test what we have before the Easter break.  We've all worked like crazy people these last weeks and the break will do everyone some good, recharge those batteries and come back stronger (at which point we have to remember what exactly it was we we're coding) ;)

9 comments:

  1. I did a test with my own entities and noticed if dynamic they suddenly float. Wonder why that is.

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  2. wow Lee you guys did all this in day. thank you for the lowest setting upgrade. now only if I had some fog.

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    1. to get a fog, play with the fog sliders in metrics panels 2nd tab, or at least you could before.

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    2. ah I see now, after a quick test the fog only works on "entity shader" set to highest right now for whatever reason ingame test mode... sorry about that.

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  3. I like the idea of terrain removal. i also would love the ability in the future, to tweak the player movement values; ie; jump height; turn ON/OFF gravity; turn ON/OFF jump; speed of movement; etc. This might give some nice ideas and twists for an alternative to a straight out run and shoot creator. (also could be adjustable; so if you got in vehcile - you could just adjust settings runtime; without all new code for driving/flying etc)

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    1. you can change speed and jump and all sorts now in beta 6 player marker.

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    2. ah. thanks for that tip.

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  4. Love the latest upgrade. Everything looks beautiful. I am learning a lot about my system and how to use all the new improvements. Thanks to you and your coworkers for giving us such a great engine to play with. I can't wait to see more!

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  5. Can't wait to be able to remove the terrain and use my OWN floor! ;) Still kinda miss the simplicity of FPSCx9's painting system of creating rooms, but hopefully when we get the construction kit we'll be able to create rooms NEARLY as fast :)

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