Repopulation 0.4.1 Build Notes and Images
by J.C. Smith · 08/17/2008 (11:32 am) · 2 comments
This is my first blog for The Repopulation here at GarageGames. I have been keeping a web log of all of the updates and patches at MMOWorkshop.com and MyDreamRPG.com for about a year now. MMOWorkshop has been down more than its up lately though, so shifting the blogs over to here. If you don't know about this project, it is a Massive Multiplayer game written with Torque and based originally on Prairie Game's code from Minions of Mirth. It's been in development since last March, and figures to be released in Q2 of 2009. Features include an advanced generated quest system, randomly populated dungeon instances, dynamic spawns based on players entering a region, and skills based gameplay. The project was recently ported to TGEA 1.7.1 in the previous patch and much of this patch includes fixes to features that were broken during the process.
If anyone was following my previous updates regarding the Hover Racing, this is no longer being considered to be released as a standalone product. It is instead going to be used as racing circuits for The Repopulation, as was originally intended. Getting python to work properly with 1.7.1 was a frustrating process that stretched out for months, and midway through that process I decided I needed a break from that port to clear my mind. As a result I began working on the Hover Racing portion of Repopulation and it was turning out well enough that I was considering releasing it as a standalone product this summer. Once I got over the major hump of the Python port I decided to keep this feature as a mini-game only. And now, to the build notes.
0.0.4.1 Build Notes
----------------------------
World
- The Plymouth area now has plenty of foliage, cacti and shrubbery
- Added a couple of small pouches of water caused by water run off in Plymouth.
- More than doubled the number of spawns points in Plymouth.
- Removed the trees from Plymouth and replaced them with rock formations.
- Added some animated water drilling devices to the Plymouth area.
Graphics
- In 1.7.1 a ColorMultiply feature was added to shadergen which we thought was basically just a port of the TintColor system we added for 1.03. There were some subtle differences though and in the end we decided to move back to port our original ColorTinting system back to 1.7.1 instead. As a result you can now see skin and clothing color variations again.
- Added a new layermap for Plymouth, there is now much more groundcover. We'll add in some a configuration slider for this soon, but for now, hopefully it doesn't kill older systems. If it does for you, email me and I'll tell you how to lower the percentage of foliage until we place it into the options menu. There will be various new options menus tweaks though and I'd like to convert them all in at the same time, wich means after I place in shapebase biasing you'll see all of the options appear.
- Added in four new mech models and various texture sets for those models. You can see some of these models on display at the training grounds in plymouth.
- New Specular maps and normal maps for each of the character texture sets. I didn't put a whole lot of time here. The character models, animations and textures here are temporary, but needed some variations to make sure everything was working properly.
- Integrated the latest version of CanvasFX into the new client.
- Atlas lighting was not being affected by the time of day, this has been fixed.
- Added in some new foliage and cactus types.
- Enhanced the groundcover so that billboards are now properly lit with day and night transitions.
- Groundcover will now set its quality scale based on the $pref::video::groundcoverquality setting every time the game loads. It will save this on exiting. Later this will be added to the options menu, for now you can set it by editing your client/prefs.cs manually.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the moon to never render.
- If a player logged in at night the sun and the moon would never become visible to them. This has been fixed.
- Previously function which sampled atlas' lightmap at any given location was resulting in overbright results. This has been fixed and should be more consisant with other scene lighting.
- Added two new rock models.
- When sampling lightmaps from atlas or interiors it was previously not adjusting for the time of day. This has been fixed. The lightmaps on charactesr are slightly borked when you are indoors in the city at the moment because the city does not yet have portals.
Equipment
- Added two new types of Light armor: Assassin's Armor and Energized Assassin's Armor.
- Added some night vision goggles. These goggles will grant night vision.
- Added a Night Vision Implant. This implant grants permanent night vision.
UI
- Tooltips are functioning properly again.
- Cursors now work thanks to some new code from Josh Halls
- Integrated various fixes to UI files that had some bugs from the port to 1.7.1
- Fixed a bug that was causing names in the group window to be off-center and some text to not appear
- Plymouth now has a loading image
- Plymouth now has a proper map.
- Added the Mayflower Bar and Grill, OWON Municipal Building, Crafting Center, Hospital, Housing Projects, Sewers Entrnace, Town Square, and Shady Lady Pub to the list of points of interest for Plymouth
- Your settings are now being properly saved again to config.cs on a game exit and reloading on a game start.
- Player armor, skin color and facial features are once again saved locally for viewing at the start/character selection menus.
- The map now defaults to being open for new characters.
Below is a shot demonstrating the day/night transitions and their effects on groundcover:
If anyone was following my previous updates regarding the Hover Racing, this is no longer being considered to be released as a standalone product. It is instead going to be used as racing circuits for The Repopulation, as was originally intended. Getting python to work properly with 1.7.1 was a frustrating process that stretched out for months, and midway through that process I decided I needed a break from that port to clear my mind. As a result I began working on the Hover Racing portion of Repopulation and it was turning out well enough that I was considering releasing it as a standalone product this summer. Once I got over the major hump of the Python port I decided to keep this feature as a mini-game only. And now, to the build notes.
0.0.4.1 Build Notes
----------------------------
World
- The Plymouth area now has plenty of foliage, cacti and shrubbery
- Added a couple of small pouches of water caused by water run off in Plymouth.
- More than doubled the number of spawns points in Plymouth.
- Removed the trees from Plymouth and replaced them with rock formations.
- Added some animated water drilling devices to the Plymouth area.
Graphics
- In 1.7.1 a ColorMultiply feature was added to shadergen which we thought was basically just a port of the TintColor system we added for 1.03. There were some subtle differences though and in the end we decided to move back to port our original ColorTinting system back to 1.7.1 instead. As a result you can now see skin and clothing color variations again.
- Added a new layermap for Plymouth, there is now much more groundcover. We'll add in some a configuration slider for this soon, but for now, hopefully it doesn't kill older systems. If it does for you, email me and I'll tell you how to lower the percentage of foliage until we place it into the options menu. There will be various new options menus tweaks though and I'd like to convert them all in at the same time, wich means after I place in shapebase biasing you'll see all of the options appear.
- Added in four new mech models and various texture sets for those models. You can see some of these models on display at the training grounds in plymouth.
- New Specular maps and normal maps for each of the character texture sets. I didn't put a whole lot of time here. The character models, animations and textures here are temporary, but needed some variations to make sure everything was working properly.
- Integrated the latest version of CanvasFX into the new client.
- Atlas lighting was not being affected by the time of day, this has been fixed.
- Added in some new foliage and cactus types.
- Enhanced the groundcover so that billboards are now properly lit with day and night transitions.
- Groundcover will now set its quality scale based on the $pref::video::groundcoverquality setting every time the game loads. It will save this on exiting. Later this will be added to the options menu, for now you can set it by editing your client/prefs.cs manually.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the moon to never render.
- If a player logged in at night the sun and the moon would never become visible to them. This has been fixed.
- Previously function which sampled atlas' lightmap at any given location was resulting in overbright results. This has been fixed and should be more consisant with other scene lighting.
- Added two new rock models.
- When sampling lightmaps from atlas or interiors it was previously not adjusting for the time of day. This has been fixed. The lightmaps on charactesr are slightly borked when you are indoors in the city at the moment because the city does not yet have portals.
Equipment
- Added two new types of Light armor: Assassin's Armor and Energized Assassin's Armor.
- Added some night vision goggles. These goggles will grant night vision.
- Added a Night Vision Implant. This implant grants permanent night vision.
UI
- Tooltips are functioning properly again.
- Cursors now work thanks to some new code from Josh Halls
- Integrated various fixes to UI files that had some bugs from the port to 1.7.1
- Fixed a bug that was causing names in the group window to be off-center and some text to not appear
- Plymouth now has a loading image
- Plymouth now has a proper map.
- Added the Mayflower Bar and Grill, OWON Municipal Building, Crafting Center, Hospital, Housing Projects, Sewers Entrnace, Town Square, and Shady Lady Pub to the list of points of interest for Plymouth
- Your settings are now being properly saved again to config.cs on a game exit and reloading on a game start.
- Player armor, skin color and facial features are once again saved locally for viewing at the start/character selection menus.
- The map now defaults to being open for new characters.
Below is a shot demonstrating the day/night transitions and their effects on groundcover:
Torque Owner Mike Rowley