As usual I've been working insane hours on this game. There are so many new things I've added into the game I'll let the screenshots do the talking [with a brief description below [grin]]. If anyone has questions I'd be glad to answer them...
Note: I just took this screenshot a few minutes ago, some of the others are a few days to a week old
GPU based procedural cloud rendering system
I've repleaced my static scrolling skybox with a fully dynamic / procedural cloud rendering system. You can adjust about 15 aspects of the cloud system to achieve any apperence in real-time [ video coming soon ]. You can get all kinds of really cool looking effects ... time lapse, thunder storms, clear skies, dramatic sunsets, etc. The lighting on the clouds are not technically mathmatically correct, I just do some hacks in the pixel shader based on the 'height' of the noise at the point. There were a lot of cool threads I read while working on this, including the infamous 'sky rendering' thread.
Beach Asssault map progress
I've been working on the most complex of the new map / gameplay modes...adding artillary to the defending team, adding the command points, working on the landing craft logic and animation system...there are a million details to still work out...but it is going to be GLORIOUS :-o
First person / remote robot command
I've redone the hand models and touched up the weapon model for when you jump out of your vehicle.
I've also recorded voices so your robot will communicate with you, it's pretty sweet :-D
Videos soon.... [grin]
New set of human animations & rendering with true hardware instancing
I replaced my shader based instancing with true HW instancing. I also implemented a new animation system I coded...as well as integrating a whole new set of animations. There were only 4 animations before, now there is a brand new set of 14 animations for the human models. This is all in addition to the robust dynamic imposter rendering system I added in the last journal update.
Heat Blur / Screenspace distortion effect
This effect is applied on fire, muzzle flashes, engine exhausts, explosions, and a ton of other places throughout the game.
This is what the scrolling screenspace texture looks like, red offsets on X, green offsets on Y. I scroll two in oppositite directions in the post-process shader and average them. The strength of the blur is modulated by various mask textures that are rendered to one of the channels in my misc texture [ depth of field, god rays, etc ]
Here is a example of the effect unmodulated, it sort of looks like an underwater effect.
Radial Motion Blur Post-Process
Implementation of a standard radial motion blur post processing effect. I'm thinking of modulating it based on the distance from the viewer.
Uber-Buggy / UberBot
A newly skinned version of this vehicle ... created by gamedev's own DogmaDZ
Unfortunatly I don't have the money to get the hovercraft, tank, or 6 wheeled buggy upgraded/retextured just yet ;-/
A million other things
So many other things from night sights on the weapon, to early work on squad based AI...there are so many things I've been working on. I'm gonna throw a few misc. screenshots here at the end of the post...stay tuned!!
- Dan
