One thing it is always hard to do is be critical of your own work, but here at FPS we spare no expense in quality over quantity - a mere glance at our array of conquered coffee packets reflects this most amicably. And so starting as we mean to go on we have this week seen ourselves going back over some elements of the game and totally revamping them.
The biggest feature we have successfully changed is the lighting system, which is now a tangent based system. What resembled a drunkenly written maths encyclopaedia on Jules' desk steadily grew alongside his number crunching induced stress level until both were dangerously close to completely engulfing the office but determination cracked it in the end, the tangent calculation worked and the new lighting system was born. This allows for much more realistic and dynamic lighting effects to be implemented in the game engine (Jules – “Normal Maps! Woah!”). To reflect this, the textures for each level are now being repainted by Rich with a much higher detail level than they previously had - their detail is now 4 times that of the previous textures. New layers, more vibrant colours and a higher diversity of terrain features are all being added true to form of Rich's unique approach to creating highly original content. Also being edited is the geometry which forms the physical part of the terrain. Higher polygon levels, rounded edges and a more natural appearance have all being sculpted into each level. We wanted each level to be consistent in detail and quality as well as reflect each setting realistically. Animated textures are now working fully enabling us to create a much more realistic ocean surface as well as other geographical features. The fog system is now operating with higher functionality, allowing such features as adjustable height. We realised this method of evaluating the suitability of various game elements is an important step to ensure we maintain an outsiders opinion of what we are doing - it proved highly successful when looking at the original music tracks for the game which it was immediately apparent needed some restructuring and editing which after doing so integrated the music into the game much more fluently.
Reworking these vital parts of the game will open up the path for us to move onto the final gameplay adjustments and cloud formations, which I have myself been working on. We have decided to expand the accessible area of each level to give a more open feel to the game, and alongside this the clouds will be more widely dispersed to encourage long gliding paths through the sky which should effectively heighten the tranquil ambience. The process involved positioning clouds in 3D space but the coordinates then have to be fed manually into the level files which although a laborious process will be interesting to see how various formations are affected by the basic cloud AI system. It will most likely take several incarnations before a playable formation is settled upon for each level - play testing will reveal what needs to be changed and what works.
We are not so fortunate as to not encounter any new bugs but nothing too hindering, simply a few menu/game transition related issues which shouldn't pose too much of a problem in eliminating. Funding is a large problem for the whole games industry right now and FPS is no different, although we wouldn’t have such an issue if the various divisions of the Government actually paid us what they fucking owe us! We are fortunate however in the most charitable effort of multiplayer gaming amalgamation www.5frag.com in their efforts to promote FPS - thanks guys! Head over and check out their site, if multiplayer gaming is your thing they provide a whole range of services and features. Until next time.
