Drew, so much is improving all the time. Just wait until you see what the next beta has ^_^
Some good work is being put in to the game without a doubt.
Hey Andy, got Resident Evil 4 yesterday (yeah next freaking day delivery! didn't expect that). About 7hrs in, just got to this beasty you have to freeze with LN2 and shoot apart.
The game is so different from the other games in the series, but still it's very Resident Evil. God knows how they kept the same feel of the game, Capcom - Production Studio One... you officially have my sincerest respect!
Well anyways it's given me even more ideas for
that project. Given how I hit a brick wall trying to interface my Dynamics Engine, god knows what I'm going to do with it.
I need IanM's Interface, but without it being updated... it lacks alot of functionality. Waiting for TGC to create thier own damn Interface, well lets just say I don't expect it any time even remotely soon. (true f**ked me off that has, as you can no doubt understand mate.)
How the hell I'm going to Interface atleast just the Skeletal Animation System... right now it's beyond me. I need direct access in order to Bind the Skeletons for use so that it can move the objects internally. It's far too much code for Dark Basic Professional to handle at a reasonable speed to.
It like cuts my FPS in half, and as you know this project is heavy shader dependancy. It just made it totally unplayable on my FX5200 when before I was getting a reasonable 50fps.
Well anyways I've got some new ideas, not sure how I'm going to do the Skeletal Animation. Especially given there is still not fix for Maya's exporting.. without an example of DBO Animation (which was promised) I can't even get the DBO MEL Script to export correctly.
Keeps crashing DBP, and I don't want someone else to go over my code or whatever I just need some examples.
DBO as a format is bloody horrible. I'd much rather work with GLM, and that's not a particularly fun format to work with..
:: shakes fist at Quanterions ::
Right now I'm having to export Static Models to Milkshape3D, then rig in that. Export to DBP, use an internally created editor to create the IK structure and animation data. Then use the plug-in I created to load this data and alter based on the I/O of each bone position.
It's a bloody pain in the ass what I've had to do, it's also extremely inefficient given I have a tool I developed in C# that does the job just as well.
It's ridiculous to think the one point that was appealing to me about DBP was the ability to extend the language, but the one thing I can't physically do right now is extend it in a way that would be easy to operate with or even let anyone who doesn't have technicaly knowlage achieve. Well either ridiculous or just ironic.
I'm still dead set on the May 12th Release, so like 2.5weeks. This is going to bloody ROCK! Started work on a shader pack, given everyone is actually interested in one now (unlike when I suggested it like 2years ago) so that should be sorted in the next week. Should help break the rent problems, eh? heh
Well regardless, should be able to show you some visible results by next week. Actually scratch that, not just visible... but playable!
I've put together the design for the train section, with a single player. So it'll be a pure demo level, not something I'll add in the end-game. Kinda like how Half-Life has Uplink.
I've been thinking alot about the controls for it too, because I really like the 'action' button thing, that allows you to interact with the environment changing based on the situation. Definately think the updated Item System should help too.
I mean I mocked up one section where you can shoot out the wall, but there are pipes, and you shoot each one. They control different things. So like one will shoot out steam across the carraige and hurts the enemies as well as causing a nice mist that obscures the vision. Another one is the electrical that cuts the power to the back of the train.
The steam wears off after a while, but the electrical one you have to use the repair action to fix in order to get power back. This is quite cool because it means that some areas would become unaccessible because they're powered by electricity to open doors and such.
That probably sounds better than the actual current implimentation, but hopefully after a week it should work really effectively. It's nice getting the whole 'dynamic' atmosphere of world design without having to script everything.
