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Work in Progress / Et Sulium Sao Eterniae

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Ortu
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Posted: 21st Oct 2016 05:27 Edited at: 21st Oct 2016 05:28
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@punkyb

I'm using the 2015 March 25th release of AdvLighting, with both Vanilla U77 and 9Ex over Vanilla U77 versions of DBpro. I have not tried the Open Source version.

I've run AdvLighting on everything from integrated intel gpu on a Celeron windows XP laptop, a Radeon HD 5470 on i3 Win 7 home and Win 10 Home upgrade, integrated intel on an i5 Win 10 Pro laptop, some old AMD card on an i3 Win 8.1 Pro desktop, through an NVidia GTX 770 on an i5 Win 10 Pro gaming PC.

I have seen some users report black screen issues but I haven't really encountered this myself across a wide range of hardware, drivers, and systems, other than the issues discussed earlier in this thread regarding an occasional black or scrambled strip on the right side of the screen at certain shadow map resolutions.

Both of the cards you mention should have no issues with AdvLighting, I'd suspect something else is causing problems here, possibly directX version or DBpro version.

@all

So I am wrapping up the conversion of the inventory system to the new code base, and as mentioned, I've simplified it a bit both from a frontend UX standpoint and the backend data handling. It wasn't the easiest system to work with and build upon in it's initial state, but I've cleaned it up a bit and am pretty happy as it stands now.

I've been breaking the character module down into a more manageable size, splitting portions of code off into sub modules such as characters-inventory. I also had way too much data handling tucked away into the UI controllers, I've moved this into characters-inventory to firmly split the model from the controller.

Further simplifying things, I've decided to drop my initial design in which each character entity (including NPCs and enemies) had its own separate inventory. The player will now have a single inventory shared among the characters in the player's party. This refers to pack space only, each character still has separate equipment slots of course.

Lastly, I've overhauled the UI a bit. Inventory is now a full screen menu which pauses gameplay rather than the original panel which could be managed during gameplay. Aside from looking better I hope, it will make it easier for all characters in the party to access the pack. It does however complicate things if I want to pass an item from the pack to a non-party NPC, I'm not entirely sure if that functionality is even needed for this game. If it is, I'll work something out.

Lastly lastly (for real this time) moving items from slot to slot is no longer drag and drop, it's now click and click. I am thinking I'd like to add controller support at some point and drag and drop doesn't really play nicely with controllers.

Anyway, I still need to adjust some of the element positioning, add tool tips and selection indicators and the like, UI media type stuff, but progress is moving along nicely again, inventory is just about redone and next up will be the conversion of the AI module. I am hoping to have the rewrite complete by the end of November, putting me back to where I was previously in terms of gameplay, with the improved performance of code optimizations, and with an ever more maintainable and expandable code base.

How does it look?






A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.

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wattywatts
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Posted: 21st Oct 2016 17:54
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Looks good!
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Ortu
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2016 05:26 Edited at: 22nd Oct 2016 06:39
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*sigh*

So I've run into another crazy as eff conflict with AdvLighting. I've mentioned previously that using the matrix 1 call function name / ptr commands have caused graphical issues with AL, tonight I've run into similar issues after adding in a few of the native music commands, though only on one computer. 2 other machines are loading and playing the music with no effect on AL.

Not really sure yet what the problem is, but it breaks blur, anti aliasing, and puts sort of a blueish outline around objects. removing the music commands returns the graphics back to normal.

Edit: Enhanced Audio plugin to the rescue I suppose. this loads and plays the music without issues on the PC that was having the issue with the native music commands.


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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Chris Ritchie
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Posted: 24th Oct 2016 16:50
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Looking real good Ortu , very professional looking style.
I use Enhanced Audio for all my sounds, for one thing the volume controls with EA work

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Dimis
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Posted: 4th Nov 2016 11:48
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Those screens look very good Ortu, very professional.

I suppose that a lot of things can go wrong using the Adv Lighting. That conflict with the music was strange, but good to know that the problem is fixed. Are you using the Adv. lighting dll on your project?
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Ortu
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Posted: 4th Nov 2016 17:59 Edited at: 5th Nov 2016 19:20
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Thanks guys, not currently using the dll, though it is on my list to test and evaluate.

So I've got the combat/ability system converted over now, just working on stamping out a couple of new bugs between the character controller and the animation system, but for the most part I am down to just the AI module remaining to be updated.

I've also taken some time to polish up the front end with nice fade in/out title load, title menu, level load screens.


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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punkyb
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Posted: 5th Nov 2016 02:56
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Ok noted and thanks Ortu! It's been a while since I checked this thread but wow, great job on the inventory system you got there!
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Ortu
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Posted: 6th Nov 2016 20:45 Edited at: 6th Nov 2016 20:47
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Quick update to the inventory screen:



A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.

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Dimis
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Posted: 7th Nov 2016 19:46
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Looks good. Maybe for the item's / weapon's title you might need a font that matches the mood of the game, maybe a calligraphy font. Not for the smaller text just for the title.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 10th Nov 2016 19:04
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Looking very lovely
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Ortu
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Posted: 12th Nov 2016 21:08 Edited at: 12th Nov 2016 21:09
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Well gents, it has been a hard fought week of bug squashing but I am wrapping up in pretty good shape I think.

Most of it centered around the previously mentioned interaction between character controller and animation handler when dealing with abilities. It has been through several iterations now and grows more organized each time, but ultimately it is a complex system that will always be somewhat complicated to work with simply because it integrates so deeply with many different systems. There are one or two animation hitches remaining, but these are fairly minor along the lines of flashing an out of place frame during a transition between states.

The camera now moves into an offset over the shoulder viewpoint while in combat and has been brought in a bit closer to the character in general.

Inventory tooltips will now adapt to smaller screens by attaching vertically to the left side instead of the default horizontal on bottom right. The default position covers some of the inventory slots on screen heights less than 1000. My minimum supported resolution is 1024 x 768, and with 1366 x 768 being a common laptop resolution, properly accomodating smaller heights is an important bit of UX.

Next week I will begin the refactoring of the AI module and all in all I think I am still on target to wrap up the rewrite by the end of the month.

Also, work has begun on a new character, Lucitello:



A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 12th Nov 2016 22:30
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Quote: "There are one or two animation hitches remaining, but these are fairly minor along the lines of flashing an out of place frame during a transition between states."


Only one or two; brilliant, I have about one or two hundred hitches remaining. Wobbling bones, vertex weight issues, enhanced animation crashes, crashing upon loading certain characters.

Quote: "The camera now moves into an offset over the shoulder viewpoint while in combat and has been brought in a bit closer to the character in general."


That probably looks really cool
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Dimis
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Posted: 29th Nov 2016 16:43
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Cool looking model. What is this character's story?
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Ortu
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Posted: 1st Dec 2016 17:13
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Well, December 1st. It has been a busy couple of weeks over here. Hope everyone that celebrated the holiday had a good one. Got a pretty killer deal (around 50% off!) on a ts-451+ NAS myself. Price has already gone back up again on all the major sites and I am on back order, but they haven't cancelled it yet so fingers crossed

I am happy to say that the AI module has been re-written now and so the grand refactoring is complete. Actually finished this up about a week ago, but wanted to wrap up a few other things before posting.

Project now weighs in at 18345 lines across 18 modules and 5 UI controllers totaling 401 functions.

Previously was 24057 lines across 15 modules and 3 UI controllers totaling 379 functions.

In both cases, Advanced Lighting accounts for about half of it I still need to look in to using the AdvLighting .dll which should cut a lot of this down.

FPS fluctuates between 80-100 (previously 70-85) on an i3 3.4GHz + AMD HD6870 @ 1920 x 1080. In both cases, each additional NPC onscreen drops it by about 7 FPS (they cost about the same previously as well), which seems a bit much compared to the cost of tree clumps which are not terribly different in polycount. There is still lots of room for optimization when it comes to media though. I'm guessing the high bone count (mid 50s?) is part of the issue, adding a simpler LoD should help. It bottoms out around 40-45 FPS with 7 characters + 20-30 trees + house all in screen together.

Over the course of the refactoring, there have been a number of tweaks, adjustments, and filling in of stubs and TODO comments. There are still plenty of these loose ends left throughout the code, but I've knocked out some neat things that I wasn't really planning to get to yet.

When it comes to filling in TODOs for instance, the AI module: AI visual detection is now implements peripheral limits, detecting in a frontal arc only (previously they would cast LoS in 360) If a potential target is not in the visual scope, the AI can attempt to detect by sound in 360. This now allows for the player to use the crouch/sneak stance to sneak up on AI from behind without being detected, and to pass closer to them before detection outside of sneaking with careful flanking.

Detection is also hooked up to character stats: focus will improve the distance of the visual range, while awareness will improve the width of the visual peripheral arc. awareness also increases the distance of earshot range.

The removal of 360 visual detection caused some issues with the AI ability to select and maintain targets which took a few days to fully resolve. There was one point in which a fairly minor change to world scale values some months ago manifested a bug in which characters could land attacks from a couple of hundred meters away. It was slightly amusing to snipe enemies all the way down the beach from the porch with a dagger. This was quickly fixed but shows how little changes that you don't really think about can have big unintended effects later.

I had mentioned before that I have spent some time polishing up the front end loading screens and added a title menu, as well as reworking the inventory UI. This is another area that I hadn't planned to spend any time on at this point, but ends up I am glad I did. It helped boost my morale and excitement for the game that it is becoming, and was a welcome break from the tedious refactoring of code. Pushing this even further, I've now got the basics of an official site up.

It's still WIP, missing some content and features, but it's a start and I am quite pleased with how it is shaping up. It does feature some exclusive new concept art for you all to check out, with more to come.

http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

So, what comes next? Progress continues on modeling the new character Lucitello. clothing is blocked in, I will be working on sculpting out the cloth pieces off and on this week. Mostly though, I think it will be time to turn back to the editor for a bit. I need to merge over some of the changes made in the game code back over to the editor codebase. I will also be adding in the ability to load and configure characters / AI now that those modules are on the new version.

Once I've got characters up and accessible in the editor it will be time to focus in on implementing and managing conversation and dialog.

@Dimis,

Lucitello is Carliet's father. He is a somewhat prosperous trader often away at sea. He may or may not occasionally engage in a bit of smuggling but he is mostly on the up and up and is well respected within the Mercantor's Guild. More details to come


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hakimfullmetal
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Posted: 19th Dec 2016 00:49
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Funny that you're having clashing issues with music and Advanced lighting.
For me when I try to play videos with native DBPro commands, AdvLighting bloom crashes. It became permanent bloom smudges on the screen whenever a video is being played.
Too bad i can't find 3rd party replacement for video player commands...
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Ortu
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Posted: 19th Dec 2016 03:41
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Hmm, yeah I haven't tried any video alongside AdvLighting, though I was planning to add some eventually, i guess I'll need to do some testing. thanks for the heads up.

Are you playing it to the screen directly or textured to an object?

It's really pretty strange the way it conflicts with seemingly random and unrelated things: music commands, matrix 1 function pointers, video playback, I feel like there was something else I had conflicts with but dont recall at the moment


A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium
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hakimfullmetal
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Posted: 19th Dec 2016 08:49 Edited at: 19th Dec 2016 08:50
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I played t after texturing it to an object. I could have sworn that it works fine with video before, but suddenly one day it just appears.
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Ortu
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 05:39
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Happy holidays all!

Just a quick little update here. I've mostly been working on the editor and am finding that the editor demands much more functionality from the UI than the game itself does. It was getting to where I was spending more time mucking about with the inner workings of the UI module than I cared to at this point. I've been working with CEFsharp (C# port of the Chromium Embedded Framework) lately on some unrelated work stuff which essentially implements embedded web applications that can interface with the parent windows app (and yes, you can even pull up the Chrome dev tools just as in a browser F5 for live refresh of changes is a huge time saver all by itself!) so I decided to go ahead and set it up to provide the UI layer for the editor.

Seen here is the new editor style, focusing on the Scene Layer which allows me to set up the initial state of a level's environment such as time, weather, camera and the like.

I need to add additional controls for fog, and color for all of the things. AdvLighting provides a ton of customization for color for everything from sky, sun, fog, water, different colors for different times of day, different types of weather, but this can probably wait until later prototypes, the setting for this first one is pretty basic / fair weather.

Thoughts?





A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 30th Dec 2016 05:53
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The editor is coming along quite nicely. I really like all the effects and look forward to seeing how things progress.
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Ortu
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Posted: 4th Jan 2017 07:19 Edited at: 4th Jan 2017 07:20
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Thanks man, here is a bit more progress:

coloring all of the things is in, mostly.
fun new sliders!
terrain sculpting and painting has been hooked up to the new UI.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85498207/Sulium20170104a.jpg


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85498207/Sulium20170104b.jpg


Also took some video of tonight's coding session hooking up the color picker to configure Advanced Lighting, may get them uploaded in a day or two.

It's coming along, and much much faster than if I was trying to manage all this UI in DBpro directly.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Chris Ritchie
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Posted: 5th Jan 2017 23:40
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Loving the editor, very professional looking.

Lead programmer ULIDIA
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Ortu
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Posted: 6th Jan 2017 07:46 Edited at: 6th Jan 2017 07:53
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Quote: "Loving the editor, very professional looking."


Thankee thankee!

The controls, design and what not are all rather inspired by Blender to be honest.

Tonight added some fog controls

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85498207/Sulium20170105.jpg


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85498207/Sulium20170105b.jpg




I'm thoroughly enjoying being able to take hold of all these settings and play around with them in real time without having to do the whole 'change value -> recompile, change value -> recompile' junk.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Stab in the Dark software
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Posted: 14th Jan 2017 13:50
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How did you get CEFSharp to work with DBPro?
The coffee is lovely dark and deep,and I have code to write before I sleep.
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Ortu
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Posted: 14th Jan 2017 15:18
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I use networking sockets over localhost to pass data and commands.

The better solution would probably be to make a plugin wrapper around the native c++ cef library and load it directly, but that is a bit beyond me and this works well enough for my needs.

Quick update: Currently I'm working on the object/entity layer. List selection, base data, basically finishing up the last of what was seen in the native dbpro UI version.

After that I'll be adding configuration for character data
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Posted: 15th Jan 2017 00:14
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Back when I was still using DBPro I made a C# dll that was called by DBPro and the DBPro became the child of the C# window.
I had to convert the C# dll so DBPro could call it. Since you mentioned CEFSharp in your post I am looking at integrating the native CEF lib C++ into a AppGameKit Tier2 C++ template.
I am hoping it will work with windows and android since is supposed to be platform independent. The communication between AppGameKit and CEF should be easier, I hope.
I will let you know how it works out.
The coffee is lovely dark and deep,and I have code to write before I sleep.
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Ortu
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Posted: 15th Jan 2017 05:06 Edited at: 15th Jan 2017 05:15
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I'd be interested in checking that out and seeing how it progresses

I've looked at a few utilities and methods for getting a C# dll to work in dbpro but haven't had much success.

For the editor, I'm currently having the parent C# application (which is running CEF in a panel) start a process for the dbpro application and capture that into another panel for the viewport like so:



winforms doesn't allow for a transparent background in the cef panel which prevents it from being layered over the dbpro panel, but this should be fixable by using WPF instead.

There is probably a better way of going about the communication, pointer to shared memory or something, but I've never gotten familiar with that sort of thing and didn't want to get too bogged down into 'cool but unnecessary' tech beyond what was needed to get it working quickly.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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I used this .net converter to convert a C# dll for use with DBPro.
It was the easiest way I found to communicate between DBPro and my C# window.
https://forum.thegamecreators.com/thread/85711
The coffee is lovely dark and deep,and I have code to write before I sleep.
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Ortu
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Posted: 19th Feb 2017 06:09
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Just a little update, shows some of the title loading polish added a while back as well as a bit of level building. It is interesting how even just a few simple props like fences and walls makes the area feel lived in and gives it some identity.

I'm using cube and cylinder primitives to block out structures. One of the next things I plan to work on is merging objects/meshes and exporting a blockout model to pass back into blender with a basic form and scale to work off of when creating the detailed assets.

http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Chris Tate
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I enjoyed the video. The game and editor seems to be coming along rather well as expected. I look forward to seeing this do well in the market when released.
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Ortu
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Posted: 20th Feb 2017 00:08
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Thanks man, me too
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Ortu
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2017 05:42 Edited at: 22nd Feb 2017 05:42
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Took a bit of time tonight to finally get around to adding the AdvLighting cube mapping

http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 25th Feb 2017 21:32
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Lovely. That always enhances the quality of the rendering.

If you do not mind me asking, what are those 3 indicators are the bottom right; health, armour, and? And what is the RAM consumption like?
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Ortu
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Posted: 27th Feb 2017 00:18
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Stamina, it is a resource used for sprinting and for using abilities in combat.

There are 3 basic locomotion speeds: walking, running, sprinting. Stamina will regenerate while stationary or walking, it doesnt regen while running but also doesn't drain, it drains quickly while sprinting. If you run out you become exhausted until you recover at least 20% meaning you have to either stop or drop to a walk to rest a bit and recover. you cannot sprint while exhausted.

Combat abilities are currently not affected by exhaustion, but that may change. (they can trigger it)

As for ram, I want to say it was running at about 800 mb last I checked, I've added a bit since then, but know of several places I can cut some usage as well.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Ortu
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Posted: 27th Feb 2017 16:11
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Standing idle, sysinternals process explorer clocks it in at 10% CPU (3.4ghz i3), 774588 K private bytes, 558736 K working set
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Posted: 27th Feb 2017 18:09 Edited at: 27th Feb 2017 18:18
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What would you say consumes the most RAM?

I am finding that textures and vertex dense clones (not instances) consume the most RAM in my game. Cubemaps and DBP's bone synchronization has caused the highest amount of frame-rate loss. I have had to produce my own cube-map and bone optimization code. But so far the other aspects of the game are quite efficient.

On a simple game level, the only reason my old AMD A10 will not run my game at 100 FPS+ is whether or not there is a detailed boned character on screen or if there are high res cubemaps. Once 4 or 5 detailed characters get displayed, its 40 FPS or below. My performance target on this machine is 40 FPS; so that it would run at 60 FPS on modern hardware; but it would be nice to run it at 60 FPS so that I can make smooth video footage.

It would be nice if one could synchronize the system with better optimization because quite franking, the Sync command does way to much than it needs to at times.

RAM is quite a disadvantage of 32bit architecture; but there are plenty of great modern games built upon it. Plus you can build your server in 64bit in c#/vb.net if a developer sees fit.

So endurance it is. Player's will have to plan their getaway if they intend to out run a superior opponent.
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Ortu
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Posted: 28th Feb 2017 14:28
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Characters are definitely one of the biggest hits: high poly count, high bone count, high frame count, large textures, a lot of character data that integrates into systems throughout the application...

So far I am using only a single, fairly small static cube map (256px per face) and it doesn't seem to have much perforce impact even on low spec machines. I would like to get it more dynamic eventually if I can maintain performance targets.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Ortu
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Posted: 9th Mar 2017 23:12 Edited at: 9th Mar 2017 23:13
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Hey guys, just a quick little update covering the last week or two:

Improved handling and behavior of camera in combat for better feel and better visibility of the enemy.

Fixed a bug which caused certain 'forced movement' abilities to end too soon.

I'm getting some odd seams and incorrect face display from the cube map on large surfaces, work continues. For now I've switched to a more generic and tileable sky and clouds image instead of a positional capture.

Minor updates to tree model variations.

Minor updates to character model, textures and animation. Bigger changes are planned.

Next up: level unloading, reloading, and transitioning. I expect a few crashes and memory leaks will pop in and need to be worked through, but this is an important function that will be good to get completed.

After that, I will likely implement save and load from save data instead of from the default initial data.

That's it for now, happy coding all
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
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Ortu
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Posted: 25th May 2017 17:08
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Geez... never set a project aside when in the middle of something that leaves it in an unplayable state until that something is finished...

Coming back to this after nit touching it for nearly two months, I find I forget exactly what I was doing and find that I've managed to completely break jumping and introduced serious bugs to the overall character state handling.

I'm going to have to fix the character controller before I can resume work on level unloading/transitioning , but I hope to get updates coming again soon.

For anyone still following this, i do really appreciate the patience!
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Chris Ritchie
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Posted: 26th May 2017 13:59
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Ill be following until im playing it bud , sucks that you've broke something but you'll get it sorted. I am at the point in my project where I break something every time I add something new. Good luck with the fix .

Lead programmer ULIDIA
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Ortu
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Posted: 26th May 2017 20:27 Edited at: 26th May 2017 20:28
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Did manage to find the cause, it's a case of fixing thing A broke things B and C.

Issue A was that movement was not being restricted during certain stance transitions like sheathing/unsheathing a weapon, which caused the animation to be skipped or cutoff early. Locking this down then caused issues for transitions that do allow or involve movement such as jumping.

Im debating whether to try adding logical rules to the controller or to manually define move/ no move flags in the animation data file.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 30th May 2017 17:25
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Quote: "Im debating whether to try adding logical rules to the controller or to manually define move/ no move flags in the animation data file."


Interesting.

To offer my humble opinion, I'd ask whether most situations in the game require animations need to be composited, say for example walk animation applied to the legs, sword holding animation on the arms, hands, upper torso... , and, the head facing the direction of the camera. I am guessing that you have long-already handled this which would not likely exist as a single animation.

In which case I'd use a little bit of both. There would be multiple branches of compositions of animations, local transforms and events; some situations would be easier to implement and maintain as a tree of rules; and others with an excess of branches of possibilities as flags as animation data.
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Ortu
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Posted: 6th Jun 2017 19:21
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I am happy to report that I now have working a live unload/reload of levels, data, and media without crash or memory leak (as far as I can tell) and so o can now transition between levels and/or exit out to the title menu to resume or load a different save without ever having to close and relaunch the application.

Nothing much shiny to show, but this is an important and exciting step.

I'll next be working on saving and loading persistent game profiles as well as auto-save features.
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 9th Jun 2017 10:16
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Quote: "transition between levels and/or exit out to the title menu to resume or load a different save without ever having to close and relaunch the application."


Those levels look really big and incorporate a lot of detail; I imagine when ready you could play for hours in just one level.
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Ortu
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Posted: 11th Jun 2017 06:21 Edited at: 11th Jun 2017 06:29
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For this short story, I am planning on 4 zones / levels which require loading transitions between. The outer world region of the island is quite large and will certainly have a good bit to explore around. Another will be inside the walls of a port city, it will be smaller, but also more crowded and dense and so will still likely have quite a lot to explore and do. These will be pretty open and sand-boxy while the other two areas will be much shorter and more linear and will primarily drive key parts of the story line.

You will go back and forth between these levels as the game progresses over a 12 - 15 (in game) hour time period, starting in the morning and ending well into the night. My original target was about an hour of game play, but I'm thinking what I have planned so far will be closer to 3.

Quick bonus, I felt like working on a new tree and added these cypress:

http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 11th Jun 2017 09:24 Edited at: 11th Jun 2017 09:25
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Very nice, quality trees really help make the out door levels look better.

Quote: "You will go back and forth between these levels as the game progresses over a 12 - 15 (in game) hour time period, starting in the morning and ending well into the night. My original target was about an hour of game play, but I'm thinking what I have planned so far will be closer to 3."


Is that 3 real time hours of game play per in-game 12-15 hour (awake time day) period?

The FPS is look good.
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Ortu
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Posted: 11th Jun 2017 20:03 Edited at: 12th Jun 2017 18:26
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No, 3 total real time hours of game play for this story.

Keep in mind I'm currently working on the first of 4 planned short episodic 'prologues' leading up to the eventual full length game.

You will explore the island and city from early morning through sundown, at which point things will progress into the key events and decisions of the main story line and the final areas.

It is as always a branching storyline and at sundown you will begin moving down various branches towards the final events. Choices and actions made here can be imported into the main game later to maintain continuity and affect the initial state and branches of these characters there as well.

By the end of it all, the story of various play throughs will be wildly complex and divergent

I am very pleased with the fps so far, on the production build which strips out a lot of debugging and logging code it bumps up over 120 in that same spot/view (this is on a GTX 770). I have not made much in the way of graphical optimizations so far, no LOD, billboarding, and the like yet. I am keeping to strict poly count budgets in the models and am constantly working to optimize the underlying data and logic code.
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Chris Ritchie
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Posted: 13th Jun 2017 16:39
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Looking really good Ortu.
I am liking the sound of the game play and the new tree model looks great.
As I am also working my way through the mysteries of the Advanced lighting engine its exciting for me
to see what someone else is doing with it. I am very impressed with what you have so far. Looking forward
to trying a demo some day.

Lead programmer ULIDIA
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Ortu
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Posted: 20th Jun 2017 23:07 Edited at: 21st Jun 2017 04:18
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Thanks Chris, I'm also looking forward to getting it out for some external testing, it's getting closer but i want to get combat a bit more polished and fleshed out and the basics of conversation need to be in place. We're getting there!

Had some vacation time recently and felt like working on something a bit more casual than coding, so I started updating Carliet. There has long been a growing list of problems with the old model from bad UV layouts, WIP textures, animation rig not doing everything I need it to etc etc and I've particularly never really been satisfied with the hair.

So, I've taken my new base mesh posted a while back, fixed some ongoing proportion issues (orangutan arms sheesh!) and resculpted her from scratch. She's not finished yet, but the mesh and sculpt is already much cleaner and with improved anatomy. I am finally starting to feel a bit confident in the quality of the hair, still a few trouble spots, but I'm getting a better handle on the process and technique.

New is to the left, old to the right. Let me know what you think, critiques are welcome

http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 21st Jun 2017 10:25
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Very lovely.
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Ortu
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Posted: 29th Jun 2017 06:33 Edited at: 29th Jun 2017 16:31
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Thanks Chris.

Progress continues this week on updating the character. I've continued to work the head and face in particular, the body to an extent, and have also completely remade the boots, pants and belt so far. I am getting ready to begin the rebuild of the corset and shirt next.

The main goal with all the clothing is to apply what I've learned from the previous issues encountered in baking and animating to get cleaner, better made models that are easier to work with. So far so good I think.

For the most part, I am keeping with the same look and feel, just hopefully better executed. I am remembering all over again what a pain it is to position all those little studs, laces and grommets. I am also not particularly looking forward to retopologizing, but I am rather excited to finally be getting around to fixing the UV and updating the textures.

Here are some current headshots with the newest to the left, oldest to the right. The middle two were looking a bit alien I think, too long in the lower half and the nose didn't really have enough depth. The current revision on the left is perhaps a bit too rounded in overall shape now, but the proportions are doing much better I think and it is interesting to see the progression.

I've also been working to improve my lighting and rendering set up.

http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.

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