As you may know I've been occasionally playing far Cry 3 single player mission to learn how a great FPS game is put together, and I can proudly proclaim that I have completed the single player mission and finished as a goodie goodie, an experience that really reconnected me with what makes good combat AI, weapon handling and general level content, and I am sure these subtle lessons will leak into my work as a games engine engineer.
Today has been mainly about very minor tweaks and a whole lot of testing on a build which was almost the one ready for release, but we've identified a few issues that simply could not be ignored, and so we have decided to get those fixed and repeat the testing circus again on Tuesday, with the hope to have something REALLY solid later this week, so watch this space for announcements and I think you will like what you see!
Monday, 2 February 2015
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Earliest Post Ever
Friday is going to be a busy day so decided to post my blog in the morning instead, and this way ensure that something gets posted as I will be leaving the office at 3PM today to celebrate someones birthday and help myself to the local mead.
My task list is quite meager today with just three crash bugs to attend (and as I write this at 7:30AM I have already fixed two of them), and currently looking at a report that the Fantasy Characters (third party content) was crashing the new character animation system, so that has been dealt with though you can see from the shot above that the relative difference in size between these and the new Reloaded once are causing the chappies to float a little. I dare say there will be a lot of work and tweaks to the engine as more custom content comes in and needs to be anticipated correctly when importing.
Given the 'seaming' abundance of time, I will be spending most of it building and testing versions, and of course uploading Steam editions as this will be our new testing ground in February in accordance with our plan to start testing the Steam infrastructure and the Multiplayer as part of the main experience.
The plan at the start of the year was to spend all January adding the remaining core functionalism and all of February testing it, with a release to Early Access in March in time for GDC. It's great that this plan has worked so far, and I am looking forward to making lots of maps and testing every corner of the software, and it's very rare I get a WHOLE MONTH to test something prior to release so done correctly I think we can assure ourselves of a stable release. Granted we still need to add lots of things, lots more optimization opportunities and increase the available content, but as 'core engine' products go, I think it will present as an interesting product to many Steam users who perhaps have had their fill of playing game after game, and would not mind making one for a change.
Exciting times ahead and looking forward to seeing how our 'very tentative' Steam pre-test goes this weekend with our alpha testers, as this will be the first time we have used Steam keys for a beta test! Fingers crossed :)
My task list is quite meager today with just three crash bugs to attend (and as I write this at 7:30AM I have already fixed two of them), and currently looking at a report that the Fantasy Characters (third party content) was crashing the new character animation system, so that has been dealt with though you can see from the shot above that the relative difference in size between these and the new Reloaded once are causing the chappies to float a little. I dare say there will be a lot of work and tweaks to the engine as more custom content comes in and needs to be anticipated correctly when importing.
Given the 'seaming' abundance of time, I will be spending most of it building and testing versions, and of course uploading Steam editions as this will be our new testing ground in February in accordance with our plan to start testing the Steam infrastructure and the Multiplayer as part of the main experience.
The plan at the start of the year was to spend all January adding the remaining core functionalism and all of February testing it, with a release to Early Access in March in time for GDC. It's great that this plan has worked so far, and I am looking forward to making lots of maps and testing every corner of the software, and it's very rare I get a WHOLE MONTH to test something prior to release so done correctly I think we can assure ourselves of a stable release. Granted we still need to add lots of things, lots more optimization opportunities and increase the available content, but as 'core engine' products go, I think it will present as an interesting product to many Steam users who perhaps have had their fill of playing game after game, and would not mind making one for a change.
Exciting times ahead and looking forward to seeing how our 'very tentative' Steam pre-test goes this weekend with our alpha testers, as this will be the first time we have used Steam keys for a beta test! Fingers crossed :)
Overtaker
Our new project management software Wrike has a pie chart and bar graph which shows the contrast between newly submitted tasks and tasks completed, and today we beat Week 2 in terms of completed items which was pretty cool!
My remaining tasks with a day to spare is to solve the Windows XP BSOD which relates to an issue with the engine crashing out on one of our alpha testers, and to make a build for the weekend and also transfer final files for a Steam build too, which is timely as I am pretty knackered from the last two days and looking forward to an early night's sleep for an early start Friday when I plan to start work at 7AM to get a little more done in the final day of 'functionality' development, from here on in it's all testing and minor tweaking.
My remaining tasks with a day to spare is to solve the Windows XP BSOD which relates to an issue with the engine crashing out on one of our alpha testers, and to make a build for the weekend and also transfer final files for a Steam build too, which is timely as I am pretty knackered from the last two days and looking forward to an early night's sleep for an early start Friday when I plan to start work at 7AM to get a little more done in the final day of 'functionality' development, from here on in it's all testing and minor tweaking.
Wednesday, 28 January 2015
Games Day - Three Done, Two Nearly There, More To Come
In addition to the various fixes afforded today, I took a serious look at the game levels we will be bundling with the core product and after I got the light-mapper to work again, the speed of the games where pretty good and I had a lot of fun running around as a player rather than a fixer, and aside from some AI and Performance tuning I think we're on our way to creating a great game play experience.
Also participated in a multi-player test this afternoon which successfully uploaded a new level to the Steam Workshop, hosted that game, joiners informed through the software that they need to subscribe to the item, which was then downloaded locally for them, and the game could be connected and run, complete with custom content in an encrypted package to protect the artists assets, and once again I see this as being one of the most fun and engaging features of the product, despite it being one of the last things we elected to add.
Also participated in a multi-player test this afternoon which successfully uploaded a new level to the Steam Workshop, hosted that game, joiners informed through the software that they need to subscribe to the item, which was then downloaded locally for them, and the game could be connected and run, complete with custom content in an encrypted package to protect the artists assets, and once again I see this as being one of the most fun and engaging features of the product, despite it being one of the last things we elected to add.
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
Some Great New Sample Levels Joining The Build
Another great day of fixes, and following on from a 15 hour day yesterday I only had a handful of issues left to deal with before the next big build, which mainly includes taking new assets, testing them and adding them to the core asset collection to be part of the installer, and including the new (very cool) levels that will be provided as samples for new Reloaded users, and example shots provided below as a taste of what is to come.
One tip suggested by Rick to share is that when you lightmap your scenes, and have a dynamic shadow such an animating tree casting on the floor, and your entity is not being shadowed that sits under the tree, make sure you set the Entity Shader Technique to HIGHEST as this is the only one which supports shadow-shading.
One tip suggested by Rick to share is that when you lightmap your scenes, and have a dynamic shadow such an animating tree casting on the floor, and your entity is not being shadowed that sits under the tree, make sure you set the Entity Shader Technique to HIGHEST as this is the only one which supports shadow-shading.
Monday, 26 January 2015
Content And Sample Game Levels
With the bulk of the 'functionality' work concluded last week, this week, the third since the start of 2015 will be about adding content, game samples and testing everything as we layer on the final fixes and polish before a major build for some serious testing during February.
Many of the sample levels created for us by third parties either through competitions or directly as a contribution sometimes dipped into legacy or custom content, and so we are painstakingly bringing those into the core asset library, renaming them, putting them in the correct category folder and using a cool new hack I created, the old levels can be instructed through a .REPLACE feature, to swap in the location of the new entity to replace the old one, avoiding the need for the level artist to have to go in and manually replace anything, which I thought was a very nice time saver (and sanity saver).
Many of the sample levels created for us by third parties either through competitions or directly as a contribution sometimes dipped into legacy or custom content, and so we are painstakingly bringing those into the core asset library, renaming them, putting them in the correct category folder and using a cool new hack I created, the old levels can be instructed through a .REPLACE feature, to swap in the location of the new entity to replace the old one, avoiding the need for the level artist to have to go in and manually replace anything, which I thought was a very nice time saver (and sanity saver).
Friday, 23 January 2015
Flea Swatting Stage
After the monster UBER Character work yesterday and last night, today was a little nicer with some opportunities to squash little bugs and tweaks, which has gone well so far, so the plan is to continue getting the list down to reasonable levels, and then make a test and build for the internal alpha testers for the weekend.
Finally finished at 3:30AM last night, but the Uber Character can now hold any weapon style, and when stood can pivot his upper body around to face and shoot you, and transition to normal animations, plus blend the two states together using a special frame override which can impose static frame poses onto a running model animations, which I thought was a nice touch!
Finally finished at 3:30AM last night, but the Uber Character can now hold any weapon style, and when stood can pivot his upper body around to face and shoot you, and transition to normal animations, plus blend the two states together using a special frame override which can impose static frame poses onto a running model animations, which I thought was a nice touch!
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