I have modified the GTTR (Get To The River) level to include a static and dynamic light, plus a new scripted entity so you can switch the dynamic light on and off. Really happy with the overall work done on lights, and aside from some gaps I am sure still exist, we are getting closer to a V1 for the lighting stuff.
I certainly need to include the grass in the dynamic lighting fun to blend it all together, but at over 90 fps with dynamic lights and pre-baked good definition shadows, and dynamic shadows for dynamic entities to the floor, I'd say V1.009 is certainly going to leave it's mark.
I know there are more effects I can do with the overhead lamp machine, such as lens flare, volumetric light rays, some subtle sound effects and maybe the occasional moth flying about the bulbs, but the mission has been and will remain the completion of the core elements of the product, which means drawing a line on this one for the time being and moving onto other urgent matters like memory management, overall system compatibility and the remaining missing features of the engine/editor.
Also, I added a new slider called Fog Intensity, which turns out to be pretty cool as it allows me to make atmospherics effects without washing out the distant mountains. Notice how the characters (which are not presently using Fog Intensity) are washed out, but the rest of the scene is bathed in a soft fog.
I have another 20 minutes of coding, and then I am off to play a few racks of pool to unwind and study the miracle of Guinness up close. Thursday will see the various shader tweaks applied and tested, plus a slew of additional critical fixes reported so far by the alpha testers.
Dynamic lighting sounds good so far. Can we get the ability to change the light position, light color, and light intensity Lua script? That would allow us to do flickering light effects that follow the player around (i.e. a simulated torch).
ReplyDeletenow t scott that is 2nd ed aka +1
ReplyDeleteThe fog looks better there, looks much more like it. All we need now is some Zombies to emerge from it :) Well, that and a lot of civilian characters. I hope in future TGC release a civilian pack, so we can have for instance some inhabitants for the City Pack. The Zombie pack would be great if it included normal pre zombie versions of the characters as well. Good for someone turning in game, just adds that bit of class to proceedings.
ReplyDeleteLooks very much like good progress there overall.
ReplyDeleteThe fog intensity is something that will be very welcome.
On a Fog note I can see in the image that the characters are washed out with heavy fog showing no detail as opposed to the other scene entities which react correctly to it - I guess the character reaction will be updated so we can see them through it properly......
Similarly I had noticed in Reloaded recently again and it came to mind but I forgot to mention it - Water reacts the same as Characters to fog so if you are higher than water and look down into the distance and view water or the sea - it looks like the characters do and is washed out standing out like a sore thumb and not blending to the landscape.....
Can we get that fixed sometime so we can see water correctly through fog?
Anyway scene there looks good and almost as good as the Guinness
:-)