The Repopulation Screenshots and Progress
by J.C. Smith · 12/24/2008 (5:26 am) · 7 comments
I really want to keep updating my blogs here, but I rarely ever find the time. Since the last post here we've released one major patch and have a second nearing completion. I'm not going to clutter this post with all of the build notes, as they are huge but in quick summary some of the additions since the last blog:
- Completely revamped the combat system. The tick rate has been nearly doubled, from 6 ticks per second to 10 per second. This allows us to speed up the speed of combat and to make everything more responsive. Combat skills can now have skills based bonuses that work with diminishing returns. The generic Offense, Defense and Armor values have been replaced with Physical Absorption, Physical Absorption Percentage, Block Percentage, Dodge, Evasion, Parry, Counter, and Accuracy. Ranged offense is now determined by the weapon's accuracy and then adjusted by the character's skill levels, as well as whether or not you are within the effective range of the weapon. The new system scales much better as players gain in power, and makes it easier for us to balance. The skills caps are pretty high in every skill, but after a certain point the gains diminish.
- Done further work on our day/night system. Lights, billboards and sound can be turned on/off based on the time of day in each zone.
- Escalated the war of the two factions somewhat in order to provide more PVP opportunities. Documented further below.
- Added in a military system for each side. Players begin as Reserve Military, which means they are eligible to gain rank and medals for their faction, but they can not be attacked in many (about half) of the areas controlled by their faction. Active military members can be attacked by other active military members anywhere. It should be noted you may be attacked by guards for doing so, depending on the local laws, which are determined by whatever player association or nation controls that zone. The rewards for gaining military rank range from a unique set of items, unique robotics and vehicles, and special abilities such as being able to Radio in an Air Strike or an Emergency Evacuation for your allies.
- Added an Engagement system, which is similar to Warhammer's scenarios. On occasion players will receive Emergency Response broadcasts from headquarters, along with other players in the world offering them dynamically generated instances. If they accept they will be teleported into a generated instance where they must assist their team in a common goal. If your team is successful then you will receive military experience and a chance at items or medals. These instances can be either Player vs. Player or Player vs. Environment.
- Added a player title and achievement system. Players can gain titles by doing a variety of different activities. The achievement system varies from military medals, to other types of badges or rewards.
- Added in an auction system.
- Browsing over items will now pop up a tooltip automatically full information on that item. You can still right click items to leave an information window on your screen for up to 6 items or abilities for comparison purposes.
- Signicantly altered our in-game mail system. One of the notable additions during this process was allowing items to be attached to mail.
- Refactored a lot of code to make things more efficient and easier to adjust over the course of testing.
- We've integrated several great products from the GG community including the Green Ear SDK, Ubiq's Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and the Cliff Pack.
- Audio has been re-activated. This had been missing as of the 1.7 port, due to some issues with SFX and Python. This has been fixed.
There were many other changes, but this covers the major stuff.
The alpha servers have been down for about five months now, but we're hoping to be ready for beta testing early next year. Code wise, we're about 90% complete. The only major features that are not yet implemented are the siege, election and zone control systems. We have a couple other areas though that we are working to improve further, including a new Mapping System, and multiple Quest Tracking.
In preparation for a beta though we've been doing a lot of world building recently, and still need new graphics in many areas. We currently have new character models being built and expect that to be finished in mid-January. If anyone is interested in helping out on this project, we could use some world or content builders epseically. You can drop me an email if you are interested.
Below are some screenshots of one of the new zones, with a few shots from older zones thrown in there to provide some variety. This zone is still a work in progress, but it nearing completion. It should be noted that spawns have not yet been placed in this zone. This is for the most part, environment only shots.
- Completely revamped the combat system. The tick rate has been nearly doubled, from 6 ticks per second to 10 per second. This allows us to speed up the speed of combat and to make everything more responsive. Combat skills can now have skills based bonuses that work with diminishing returns. The generic Offense, Defense and Armor values have been replaced with Physical Absorption, Physical Absorption Percentage, Block Percentage, Dodge, Evasion, Parry, Counter, and Accuracy. Ranged offense is now determined by the weapon's accuracy and then adjusted by the character's skill levels, as well as whether or not you are within the effective range of the weapon. The new system scales much better as players gain in power, and makes it easier for us to balance. The skills caps are pretty high in every skill, but after a certain point the gains diminish.
- Done further work on our day/night system. Lights, billboards and sound can be turned on/off based on the time of day in each zone.
- Escalated the war of the two factions somewhat in order to provide more PVP opportunities. Documented further below.
- Added in a military system for each side. Players begin as Reserve Military, which means they are eligible to gain rank and medals for their faction, but they can not be attacked in many (about half) of the areas controlled by their faction. Active military members can be attacked by other active military members anywhere. It should be noted you may be attacked by guards for doing so, depending on the local laws, which are determined by whatever player association or nation controls that zone. The rewards for gaining military rank range from a unique set of items, unique robotics and vehicles, and special abilities such as being able to Radio in an Air Strike or an Emergency Evacuation for your allies.
- Added an Engagement system, which is similar to Warhammer's scenarios. On occasion players will receive Emergency Response broadcasts from headquarters, along with other players in the world offering them dynamically generated instances. If they accept they will be teleported into a generated instance where they must assist their team in a common goal. If your team is successful then you will receive military experience and a chance at items or medals. These instances can be either Player vs. Player or Player vs. Environment.
- Added a player title and achievement system. Players can gain titles by doing a variety of different activities. The achievement system varies from military medals, to other types of badges or rewards.
- Added in an auction system.
- Browsing over items will now pop up a tooltip automatically full information on that item. You can still right click items to leave an information window on your screen for up to 6 items or abilities for comparison purposes.
- Signicantly altered our in-game mail system. One of the notable additions during this process was allowing items to be attached to mail.
- Refactored a lot of code to make things more efficient and easier to adjust over the course of testing.
- We've integrated several great products from the GG community including the Green Ear SDK, Ubiq's Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and the Cliff Pack.
- Audio has been re-activated. This had been missing as of the 1.7 port, due to some issues with SFX and Python. This has been fixed.
There were many other changes, but this covers the major stuff.
The alpha servers have been down for about five months now, but we're hoping to be ready for beta testing early next year. Code wise, we're about 90% complete. The only major features that are not yet implemented are the siege, election and zone control systems. We have a couple other areas though that we are working to improve further, including a new Mapping System, and multiple Quest Tracking.
In preparation for a beta though we've been doing a lot of world building recently, and still need new graphics in many areas. We currently have new character models being built and expect that to be finished in mid-January. If anyone is interested in helping out on this project, we could use some world or content builders epseically. You can drop me an email if you are interested.
Below are some screenshots of one of the new zones, with a few shots from older zones thrown in there to provide some variety. This zone is still a work in progress, but it nearing completion. It should be noted that spawns have not yet been placed in this zone. This is for the most part, environment only shots.
#2
12/24/2008 (6:30 am)
On the tickrate, I was referring to Python's combat tick rate, not the Torque tick rate, my apologies for not making that clear. Torque's tick rate is actually slower than stock. In this case what was increased was your attack rate and the rate at which you can use your abilities. It obviously though will increase the horsepower required server side, but we felt that the original system was a bit slow and are trying to spruce up combat. 
#3
12/24/2008 (6:34 am)
Nice screenies man! 
#4
12/24/2008 (6:42 am)
Roger that, I guess that's what made it sound so interesting :) 
#5
12/24/2008 (8:50 am)
These look great! You need to post these over at MMORPGMaker ;) 
#6
12/24/2008 (10:54 am)
Wow JC, I am floored. Nice to finally get a good look at what you been working on.
#7
12/25/2008 (10:57 am)
What's really missing from this map though is trees. There's over 150 trees on that map, but it's not really enough. TGEA really needs a better tree solution. I've tried a few things, but never gotten the results I'd hoped for. Currently I'm just billboarding the distance trees and generating a lightmap for them using a slightly tweaked fxshapereplicator. I'm having problems though getting shadows onto the groundcover, because I haven't been able to figure out how to convert the generated atlas lightmaps into a bitmap format just yet. 
Torque 3D Owner Dave Young
Dave Young Games
Question: What did you consider about the ramifications of the ticks per second increase? Was this just a net packet granularity change? Sounds interesting, I'd love to hear more about it!