Plan for Ted Southard

Epic Frontiers update, finally!

Unfortunately there's no screenshots in this .plan, but the next one will have some nice ones... Specifically, missions. So far, here's some progress made since the last .plan:

- Got the dedicated server working. Not only is that routine, but I have it pulling assets from a database and populating the mission. This is very good on a couple of levels. First, it let's me not worry about what is in the .mis file on the client machine so much, as the cool stuff happens on the server and the client sees it only when they log in. Secondly, it also proves out what I need to do for adding assets to the world from the dynamic mission generator, which is starting to come together after 2 years of research.

- MySQL is installed, and I'm ready to start pushing data from Access to MySQL so I can finally stop getting those "too many client tasks" errors.

- Finally, things to kill besides clones: We have an animated character in now, as well as an animated bot or two, and with my new animator on board (Ezy and Kuba rock!), things are moving in the animation department, pun fully intended.

- Added the doubleclick support to the object selection resource, and added functionality behind it to transfer and delete items on the ground that are tagged for it. In other words, you can now pick up stuff ala any other RPG or MMO out there, and it winds up in your database.

- The mission generator architecture is falling into place. It's not far enough along for me to go into great detail yet, but it should work well enough to allow for not only sub-missions and plots, but for "branching" of plots as well, when partial-success is a viable option for the mission. This can help bring more realism into the game, and facilitate more complex mission types.

- I'm most likely going to move the project over to the TSE after they hit Milestone 2 for a few reasons. Not so much the shaders, though one reason does involve shaders for the character customization feature, where I can use a shader for colorizing parts of the character textures for individualized skin and hair colors. But also, it's the terrain. After installing the resource for disabling terrain tiling, I realized that my zones look horrible. Very horrible, because even if I rendered out the bottom of my skybox, you could tell that there's nothing down there, and that you're approaching the edge of the terrain.

What to do? Move the zoning triggers in closer? No, because then I lose real estate and the user gets a very noticeable "bump" from one area to another. What TSE can do by offering larger terrains is that I can now cut up my heightfield differently, so that you don't get near the edge of the terrain when you hit that zone trigger, and so don't notice the visual artifact. Also, it allows me to create irregularly shaped zones, since the entire heightfield will probably not be all used up by the zone.

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of MMO projects start out with lots of artwork, and that contributes to their "bling" factor quite nicely. Epic Frontiers, on the other hand, is slowly building momentum on the feature side while getting ready for what will probably be something like an "explosion" of art in the later stage of production. With the great artists I have on staff, as well as two new talented programmers who've joined, this project is starting to reach that tipping point where it's no longer a question of if we will suceed, but how well we suceed at launch.

We're still looking for talented 2D/3D artists and 3D animators to join the fun, and there's no shortage of work to do. So, if you're 18 or over and looking for a good project with real steam in it, then we're your team. I'm not shy about my plans for the game, so you can check my previous .plans for a good idea of the project's progress, and even hit me up for a .zip of the design docs to get an idea of what I want the game to ultimately be. Or, you can get on board another "best ever" game project ;)