Welcome back to another week of development! This week I got fully back into the groove of development and put out a build with code fixes in it. It took a little while to get full acquainted with the code base again (it is close to 100k line), but once I was the fresh eyes made finding some long standing bugs pretty quick. Here are the fixes in this week:
* Uplink networks will now properly show allies and enemies. Before there were issues if a unit was inside a the Uplink Network, but not directly in range of a ComSys part.
* Fixed turning being tied to frame rate. I noticed this because my new computer has such better frame rate. Before, the faster your frame rate, the faster you could turn. This seems to have always been in the game, so it’s weird it was never noticed before. Now, turn rate in frame rat independent. This required a re-balance of the turn rates. I tried to keep them the same, but it’s hard to tell if it’s exact.
* I added additional checks for handling issues / crashes when you are spectating a player that dies. I feel it’s 100% solid in single player, but there are still some race conditions in multiplayer that can cause it to mess up.
So, not only is there a new update today, but the T-Shirt contest is closed for submissions! Soon I will set up a voting thread and the winner will get a free shirt and thier design will go on sale in the MAV store!
As for continued development, this coming week I will be focused on upgrading to Unity 4.5 and getting started on a proper remake of No Man’s Pass.
I am doing this now because there are features that are part of siege mode and the commander update that I want to test on a ‘proper’ map. The last new map was Giant Leap, and it’s not up to size of what I had in mind for a proper siege game. It is likely Giant Leap will also see some optimizations and enlargement.
Also, I want to take advantage of the bug fixes in Unity 4.5 and use some of the new tools I have to revisit the shaders I have created. This should put me on the final path to getting ‘final’ art. I have already accepted that while the models in the game now are nice, it is likely they will all be replaced with higher quality assets. They currently lack a lot of the character that I feel the really old models have, even if they are higher quality models in general.
See you next week!