Engine work

Since my last entry my focus has been on my engine more than any RTS gameplay aspects. I did get level editing/painting stuff working and generating pathfinding information from the terrain done, but I'll talk about that more later when I get back to it.

The main reason I've avoided working on RTS stuff and also haven't posted an Outworlder post mortem is that I decided that I'd like to develop a complete game with the engine in a shorter period of time than an RTS would take and that will probably be a remake/sequel of Outworlder. Also, I thought there might be too many big RTS titles coming out soon for this to be the right time to make an indie RTS with delusions of grandeur.

Things have been progressing quickly with the engine when I've actually been working on it. I've got soft shadows working that I'm satisfied with using depth maps and VSM.


A shot of some shadowing from a transparent branch onto a monster

I've integrated PhysX after looking at Havok. Read into that what you will.

At this point I've got a pretty small list of things remaining to do for the engine before it's ready to make a game with. Fix LUA integration (make faster), add a console, create an AnimatingObject base class that entities can inherit from and create a particle manager.

At the rate things are progressing I'm pretty sure I'll work on it enough to get that done within the next couple of days. The only thing left to figure out is whether or not I develop tools any time soon.

I'm also planning on getting some sort of journal entry writing pipeline sorted :). Gotta get standardised image sizes (and thumbnailing) sorted out and also figure out how I'll be posting videos. I guess I'll also have to get around to sprucing up my journal template.

@Gaiiden, I missed your comment to my previous entry until just now. I don't think I'll write a post mortem to the original Outworlder anymore, but I'm going to be documenting the process of the development of this new Outworlder game and that will culminate into a post mortem. So a Feature Article might be an outlet for it at that point. Hopefully that won't be too far off. I'll be scheduling development soon so I'll have a better idea of when I expect to finish in my next journal entry.