So I spent today working on the Havok physics implementation, adding roads into the game, and a ton of other things. The game is really getting close to being releasable.
It looks like what I'll do is release a 'Alpha' tech demo, that is only offline, and only contains 1 robot type and a few weapons and maybe 2 levels in a few weeks. I suppose I will also be shopping around a much more complete version of the game to potential publishers by that time I hope. We'll see...
On with the update...
Main Menu Statue
I put this together today and setup the in-game rendering path...I just had a lame 2D bitmap stretched across the back of the main menu, it's now replaced by this sort of 'visualization'. I'm happy with how it turned out, it looks 10x better in motion :-o
These images are generated using the exact in-game rendering code. I'm still tweaking the ambient values of the object and of the background to get the HDR to play nicely.
Raw lighting output...lol...472 FPS :-}
Raw texture output...
In-game Roads
It is now also possible to dynamically add roads. I'm already blending between 3 sets of normal/color/specular maps for my terrain so adding another 3 for a road layer was out of the question.
I duplicate the terrain, sample the already smoothed normals from the modifed terrain heightmap, and calculate a blending value per-vertex. I also then pack another blend value into the heightmap texture that is used for some vertex fetching and sample that inside the road pixel shader to make it even smoother looking visually. If you don't smooth it out you can get some very nasty 'jaggies' you can see the road lines very obviously. I'm happy with how it turned out, I'm also working on getting some themed art assets made, so I can make 'levels'...think old worn down wind-farms, and abandoned radio stations...things like that.
I've left out all the Havok Physics stuff, like I said earlier I'll get around to posting part #4 with the "tuned vehicles" in the next day or two.
- Danny
