Remaining Work

[mdgunn]

In general I think we are getting ever closer towards the point where we could bring things to a close if we wanted.  Or for a phase one anyway.  I suppose that it could be argued that what we have here doesn't match the wizards and islands ideas that were booted around earlier on.  However I think what we have is taking queues from the design doc still and has something of a coherent concept.  

I see the following things as the main things to be done.  There are plenty of others that could be named, or even brought in for work but these are the things that seem on the way to being done as part of a first version:

• More music and/or sound effects - I have not yet tried to pin down exactly what missing or should be upgraded but I think we probably need more.
• Finalise Menus - mostly there but need some final tweaks to home screen animation (cube was not meant to crash into planet during menu and I've not yet done anything about that).
• Finish Intro cut scenes - I'd done some demos and need a final version with fade in/out working probably and all linked together. 1) Planet approach, 2) landscape flyover and ship decent, 3) Cube at underground ship with tracking shot into cryo room and stopping near pod.
• Finish sorting progression in cryo room - Need alarm situation and lighting set up in cryo room.  Need to reinstate the cube/light travel - i had envisioned the cube opening outside the ship probaly with some claw/holding device and going up a tube into the ship and along the tube to second (hangar room).  Need a few more bits of progression in cryo room joining together with VR room. May need some further discussion around this.  We've had a few but thing I'm not quite 100% sure what we need and how we co-ordinate things between levels.
• Better integrate hangar/robot/device room (second room) - is a bit unused currently need to integrate that better.
• Further upgrade VR level to have some visual progression -  Had planned to do a changing VR level with some new bits getting shown until VR room in better more room like state.  Will see if this practical. Also bit of an upgrade to teleporters with effects would be nice. Think I have something I could do there.
• Better combat would be good - Some basic combat is possible though it would be good to be better. E.g. better death animations and I'd have liked the tank to be better (was just a quick 10 minute model).  Think a bit more work would be useful and some further improvements to AI.  You can pick up energy and health currently (I think the arena level is setup to show this). 
• Reworking of combat/weapons to be less generic - I'd never really planned it to be a basic shooter but first it seems easiest to do that bit then modify from there and maybe go with plasma ball and other less standard combat (e.g. temporarily shock enemy who may then come back rather than just killing everything).
• Finish ship to surface levels - I am working on some ship to surface levels to get to a point where the game might come to a natural conclusion. I have a temple like bit which was going to lead up to an excavation area but this becomes blocked and I was going to re-use a re-hashed version of old original level I did as an alternate route up and out.  There are also some other part levels around which we might be able to integrate.
• Accreditation of resources - Need to know of any open source resources which require acreditation.  In general I have done everything from scratch apart from possibly a few sound effects (some I generated myself).  I usually look for zero accreditation assets first so wouldn't need to be mentioned but I would need to review my stuff in case there is anything that is not. This can then be added to credits.

I will continue to try to bring the stuff I've had a hand in together and will continue to try to reflect work on the Trello board and here in the forum.  I'm not using Discord much at the minute (just generally) but it might have been handy to have a real time meet up there.

If anyone has anything further to add to comment on the above or to add to how they'd like things to progress towards a first alpha release please mention it below.

 

[aiaf]

Comments and new stuff:

• Finalise Menus - add back the power by leadwerks image bottom right of menu screen (Materials\Menu\PoweredByLeadwerksLogo.tex) or credits screen
• Finish sorting progression in cryo room  - Agree may need discussion

Also want to remind Vr level activation should be after some physcal action in cryo room (button press,lever etc), then terminal can be pressed to enter VR.

Some visual effect after start/activate computer command given in vr that will be seen in cryo room.

• Better integrate hangar/robot/device room (second room)  - we will need a terminal/panel to access vr level from here also
• Dream world - second level -  working on this , will be some exploration mechanic.

You will climb a tower, walk on top of level, talk to 3 robots , use a teleport , restore power to some generator and a few other things.

And purpose of this level will be to introduce some simple mechanics,  and learn a VR level command , im not finish with this may change but this is the idea so far.

 

What i dont know for sure is how to integrate this with the other levels.

Im thinking this level should be after some event in cryo room , but before accessing the VR level.

Maybe give the player the choice to go to sleep and this level will show up, any idea how to handle this ?

Make sense in a way ,the first dream level you are still inside the cryo device sleeping. story wise.

• Accreditation of resources - dont know for sure , model wise i dont think we have 

 

 

 

[Slastraf]

About the Menus. I found a minor bug that when you press new game , it will not load in the spell icons. I don't know how it is handled in the back end but if you try it out yourself you will see it . Also maybe make an option to hide the spell icons in levels where it is not needed.

About the combat .  I have made some basic  combat already, I dont know if you tried it out because it doesnt work on the current branch. But it worked pretty stable and I will do my best to repair it so that it will be future proof and not easily changed.  So please work on something else right now before adding the fps prefab.

Accreditation of resources ::PLEASE:: Always directly add what you put in the project in the .txt file ".COPYRIGHT ATTRIBUTION NOTICE" in the main directory. It will not lie there like that in the end but to keep track of everything and maybe add a menu later.

[aiaf]

Thanks for reporting, fixed.

[mdgunn]

3 hours ago, aiaf said:

Comments and new stuff:

• Finalise Menus - add back the power by leadwerks image bottom right of menu screen (Materials\Menu\PoweredByLeadwerksLogo.tex) or credits screen
• Finish sorting progression in cryo room  - Agree may need discussion

Also want to remind Vr level activation should be after some physcal action in cryo room (button press,lever etc), then terminal can be pressed to enter VR.

Some visual effect after start/activate computer command given in vr that will be seen in cryo room.

• Better integrate hangar/robot/device room (second room)  - we will need a terminal/panel to access vr level from here also
• Dream world - second level -  working on this , will be some exploration mechanic.

You will climb a tower, walk on top of level, talk to 3 robots , use a teleport , restore power to some generator and a few other things.

And purpose of this level will be to introduce some simple mechanics,  and learn a VR level command , im not finish with this may change but this is the idea so far.

 

What i dont know for sure is how to integrate this with the other levels.

Im thinking this level should be after some event in cryo room , but before accessing the VR level.

Maybe give the player the choice to go to sleep and this level will show up, any idea how to handle this ?

Make sense in a way ,the first dream level you are still inside the cryo device sleeping. story wise.

• Accreditation of resources - dont know for sure , model wise i dont think we have 

 

 

 

Think I agree with all this.  Added powered by logo back to screen. It's in level rather than a screen drawn item currently so potentially when the camera is engaged you fly past it.

Will soon move to try to figure out how and what actions to link actions in cryo to vr.

I will add some vr link (headset) item in the hangar room and I think maybe they need to use this to enable access to the 3rd room (as I imagine it currently), the AI room where you need to get to somehow physically enable overides against the invading virus/ai and allow the ship AI to establish enough control to disable airlocks doors (in hangar) and for you to be able to get out and then through other temple/cave levels to surface.

For second sleep level. How about they enter second sleep level due to blackout due to not being fully fit, or not being able to handle the heath station restore. Something like that would probably do.

 

[mdgunn]

1 hour ago, Slastraf said:

About the Menus. I found a minor bug that when you press new game , it will not load in the spell icons. I don't know how it is handled in the back end but if you try it out yourself you will see it . Also maybe make an option to hide the spell icons in levels where it is not needed.

About the combat .  I have made some basic  combat already, I dont know if you tried it out because it doesnt work on the current branch. But it worked pretty stable and I will do my best to repair it so that it will be future proof and not easily changed.  So please work on something else right now before adding the fps prefab.

Accreditation of resources ::PLEASE:: Always directly add what you put in the project in the .txt file ".COPYRIGHT ATTRIBUTION NOTICE" in the main directory. It will not lie there like that in the end but to keep track of everything and maybe add a menu later.

Accreditation - I will review my stuff for the copyright file.  In some cases I most cases I had planned to end up using my own stuff as final replacement but in some cases I think I have attribute zero - which I/we could attribute anyway I suppose.  If not on title screen then in accompanying file (may depend how many there are).

Combat - I will leave this alone for now.  Note there was missile code which included dealing with spawning, removal and area damage in a generic way (I think) there is a test map in MDG_Missile/maps/start.map .  In that the missile is mostly just a prefab item that could be something else.  There was some generic explosion code there.   You might want to hook these into what you use or maybe you have your own thing.

They may have been usable for some sort of ceiling mounted turret.  Could be that the tank fires missiles and the turret is more of a hit-scan type bullet weapon.

[aiaf]

For sleep level 2:

Seem good solution the blackout, so probably will let the player wonder a bit in the cryo room then blackout (and prevent him doing other actions).

If he still doesnt activate the health station after sleep level , we could blackout again without the level just an effect.

And slowly loosing health, die after some time if you dont heal.

[mdgunn]

Are we planning to bring in more of the old maps at this point?  I plan to see if my original map can integrate with a temple like level I will do a different post I think about progressing any further levels.

 

 

[aiaf]

Please do, i don't remember what maps we have, I know i did some but not that good.