Absolutely!
E-mail sent
Since I posted, I thought I should give an update too, but didn't want to double-post
Where things are at:
There's very little actually left to do in terms of New Code that needs to be written or integrated from unit tests. I know that sounds hard to believe, but that's really where things are at in terms of coding.
I'm really just adding more and more of everything that's already there - more art assets, more gui widgets and controls, more Lua scripts, etc....
The route I took with coding world interactions was similar to "The Sims" where all "intelligence" for world objects is encoded in the object itself (stored on server, of course) so when a client clicks on something, the object "knows" the Take state required, therefore defining what the client has to Give in order to successfully use the object. The upshot being that all the code for world interactions is "virtualized" into these Take masks (client state is stored on server as the Give mask). Two additional fields are defined for the scripts (Lua) to be run on success or failure and that's all there is to it. So, levers can be pulled to activate huge robotic hands, innocent pumpkins can be smashed to bits, and whole sections of the world can be opened up by spinning an enormous rusty cog -- which is all a lot of fun, as the alpha testers will tell you
I know some people have had concerns about Lua's speed before, but it hasn't been an issue for me. Every script I've written so far runs in under 1 millisecond - including the Bad Word script that checks new usernames and accountnames for profanity and that's doing regular expression tests against over 270 patterns and that's still under 1 ms
So... what I'm working on Right Now...
Graphics Improvements! I've integrated the FastBone vertex shader with a per-pixel lighting shader and an RGB mixer shader -- for which I have a devious plan in mind
I don't have it working 100% the way I want yet, but hopefully I'll be able to really blow some socks off with the results. More to come on that...
DBPro 7.1 also delivered on making fullscreen post-process shaders a piece of cake... so Bloom is in, and it really allows a
lot more flexibility in lighting. It's a hit on framerate, but with integrated limb culling and the new distance-based alpha-fade shader, it's actually pretty good. The screenshot below is on my "low end" ATI Radeon 9600, P1.4, and it's 70 fps - so not too shabby.
Here's an early screenshot of integrated Bloom with one of the new character models. It's a little "overblown," but I was trying to see how bright I could get it in this test -- yeah, that's too bright:
Integrated Bloom + One of the New Character Model
The FPS models and animations are gone, so custom animations are in and working nicely with the emote broadcast system.
Normal mapping for characters is coming soon... and clothing
Let me know if there's other things you'd like me to talk about in these updates, or if there's anything you'd like me to discuss in more detail.
