Hey guys, it's been a while since the last update I know. I've made a lot of progress. I also have a new video for you guys to scope out.

Here is the link to the video & a preview image -



Click here to download video (18MB .MPEG)

I had some really trippy techno music dubbed over the video, though the version I uploaded has no audio...I recommend playing something in the background ;-D

As you might be able to tell from that preview image I've done some work on the sun / sky / fog setup. The sun's line-of-sight is calculated every frame, and I render the sun in two stages...the 'brighter' bloom gets faded out if the sun's view is obstructed.

Here is another screenshot of the new sun at various times of day...


Also the city shown in these screenshots is new...this city is called 'Suburbia' a large portion of the map consists of residential areas.

In addition to working on a new city, and finalizing the sun/sky rendering...I've been putting a lot of hours on the netcode. I made a huge advance, fixing a server-side slowdown bug that has been nagging me since the netcode re-write. I had some poorly designed code that was brining the server-side FPS down to ~20 w/ 6 clients no matter what...I fixed the issue, and now a game server should be able to maintain 100+ FPS easily with 6 clients connected. I'm very happy about that.

Also I've been working on adding collision detection + reaction between bullets and vehicles/streetside objects. I'll have some more interesting footage of this soon enough, I just have to finish adding 'sparks' to the particle engine. I have 90% coded up the ability to add bullet holes on vehicles...but some problems come up, when the damage models + animated doors / trunks come into play, so I scrapped it.

Speaking of animated vehicle doors/trunks...that was one thing I recently added back into the game, in preparation for adding drive-by shootings, which are coming along nicely. Also you can now switch between any of the seats in your current vehicle. If you're not driving, you can shoot out of the car.

Lets see what else...I've mostly just been cleaning things up. I say it all the time, but I need to post more frequent updates :-) I hate cramming lots of stuff into a single entry...

Anyways, here are some of the latest screenies...these are all from the new city I'm working on...there is no variety in the houses...I only have one house model created right now. I'm going to crank out a few of them tommorow.

Here are the work-in-progress screenshots of the new city...











- Dan