It has been a very busy 8 months but it is finally time to release the new version of Disinfection: 0.07 a.k.a. The Overhaul.
Pretty much everything has been at least touched upon and updated. There's a lot of ground to cover here so lets take it bit-by-bit.
The Visuals:
We have switched from Leadwerks to Godot 4. With a new game engine also comes a new rendering engine and Godot’s has all the modern features we need such as:
Global Illumination in full realtime,
SSAO,
Volumetric fog and lights,
Realtime reflections,
Improved bloom,
Resolution AI upscaling, so it's easier to play in 4k without huge performance hit.
Modern Anti-Aliasing such as FXAA and TAA.
Despite all this new graphical flair the game performs similar or better than the old version in most cases. We have a dedicated testing PC now, with somewhat older hardware (i3 dual core, GTX750ti and AMD equivalent) and the game ran perfectly fine on that on low setting.
We’ve been able to implement much more detail in the models and textures, this is especially obvious in the new Lobby and Tutorial.
The “Afterlife vision” players have when they are dead has been replaced with an experimental new style, inspired by Tron and System Shock. Of course for version 0.08 (Afterlife) this will be further improved and expanded upon.
The Code:
Switching to a new game engine means rewriting all the code as well. Although this took tremendous effort and time it also allowed us to take a fresh look at how we approached features and implementations, upgrading and changing as we went. This has fixed a lot of core issues and bugs (especially in the networking code) and, of course, introduced some new bugs. Overall the core is much more stable now and we have a much better basis to further improve and build upon.
The Level Generator:
The level generator, which builds the mission ships, has been largely revamped and now allows for much more consistent ship designs. It also allows for new features such as looping hallways and more ship-like arrangements. We've added some new decorations and details to the mission ships too, though some are still unfinished and/or missing. These will be further added upon in the coming weeks.
The AI and Infection:
The AI for the infection and monsters has been rewritten from scratch as a lot of things changed in how the infection works at its core: The Infection Source not always morphs into a monster to hunt players, instead some of the monsters are separate entities. This makes the gameplay more dynamic and interesting as players can be both hunter as prey at the same time. It makes hunting down the infection and killing more challenging. Currently only the Hunter monster is implemented, the other monster will be implemented soon as well.
There’s a new pathfinding system for the AI to use, which the Hunter especially benefits from as it needs to navigate the ships interior to reach its target. The Hunter will now try anything it can to reach its prey, having the new ability to force open doors. This will delay it for a couple seconds, depending on mission difficulty. It is also able to do short sprints when having a direct line-of-sight to its target, how long it can sprint again depends on mission difficulty.
With the new engine we can much more easily implement the hiding mechanics that we wanted, which will offset the extra challenge to balance things out. This mechanic will be implemented for 0.08 (Afterlife).
The Tools and Weapons:
Most of the Tools and Weapons function similarly to the old version of the game, but have been polished somewhat. The Reprogrammer has been completely changed however as we felt it was too lacking and a pain to use. Instead it now works like so: The infection will grow so called 'Lymph Nodes' over time, which are detected and displayed by the Reprogrammer. You'll have to move close to each Lymph Node and use the Reprogrammer on it to hack and weaken the infection. Once enough Nodes are hacked the infection will be destroyed. This change makes for more tactical and dynamic gameplay, especially with the new AI. The hacking mini-game or animation itself is still a work-in-progress, the rest is fully working and you can already use it to kill the infection.
The Animations:
The player character and the monster(s) have been given new animations. These animations have all been made from scratch as the new game engine supports much more complex animation transitions and blending.
At some point we want to implement inverse kinematics more properly for the player character (we’ve experimented with this already) to make the interactions with the world around you more immersive.
The Sounds:
Most of the sounds have been given some overhaul and we’re making good use of the new game engine’s audio system. It has allowed us to finally implement more proper dynamic audio that changes and adapts to the environment.
This means things like your footsteps and other sounds reverberating differently depending on the area you’re in, far away sounds becoming more and more muffled the farther away they are and sounds outside your space suit becoming very muffled when you’re in a vacuum. Just like real life!
The Interfaces:
The Mission Control, Team Stats, Store and Ship System interfaces have been completely redone from scratch: you no longer have to press "buttons" on the models, instead your character will look at the screen and you will be able to use your mouse cursor to interact with the new interface. These interfaces are much more dynamic and are an actual UI rather than static textures. This should improve both easy-of-use as well as immersion.
The Computer Core now requires you to enter a password, which is given by the Mission Control mission information or found within the mission ship, before you can access the data dump. In the future we may expand on Computer Core functionality, to allow you to turn on/off various parts of the ship or other things.
The Lobby:
The Lobby has been given an overhaul, making it slightly smaller but more detailed and immersive. A lot of detail models have been added and the existing models have been given an upgrade. The textures have all been given a grime pass, making things look more worn and well-used to increase immersion.
The downstairs area has been completely removed, as most of you didn’t like the long walk up to the main mission area every time. We also felt the downstairs area was too under utilized and didn’t fit the narrative very well as the transport ship that takes you to the various missions is supposed to be more akin to a “disposable rental” than something the player owns themselves.
The Tutorial:
The Tutorial has been re-made from scratch, much like the Lobby, but is still a work-in-progress. The overall structure of the Tutorial hasn't changed much, aside from changes in the Weapons and Tools.
You will be able to test out the Tools and Weapons freely, as well as practice in a basic mission where you have to find evidence and destroy the infection. Again, keep in mind that the Tutorial is still a work-in-progress for now, so some things are still missing. These will be added in the coming week(s).
The Main Menu and Loading Screens:
The main menu and loading screens have been remade from scratch as we felt these really needed an upgrade and we really wanted to get rid of the boring static loading screens.
The main menu now has an in-game background to really pull players into the vibe of the game. It has been given some new elements too such as version/update information and buttons to our various social media, Steam and Discord.
The loading screens have been replaced with in-game transitions and animations. Starting a mission, loading the mission ship etc. happens in the background whilst in-game (sound) effects and animations play as your transport ship is flying to and docking with the mission ship, without interrupting gameplay,
Linux Build:
With the new engine it is now possible for us to release a Linux version of the game. Keep in mind this build will be experimental for now. We have Debian on our testing PC so we have been able to test for Linux but feedback will be very welcome as testing on one machine doesn't catch all bugs and issues.
These were the biggest changes so far, let us know what you think and happy disinfecting!
Greetings from Rachel, Jeroen and friends.
Getting ready for the 0.07 release
With Steam integration functional we can now focus on the last bugs, bits and bobs that are needed for the version 0.07 release. This means we are still on track for the release during or just before Steam Summer Sale.
Here's some of the things that have changed or are changing since my last blog post:
Steam Integration:
The integration with Steam is going very well, players can now find and join lobbies and the networking is neatly relayed through Steam servers, so you don't need to port-forward and such. Yet, Direct Connect (via IP) also still works giving both us as you more flexibility in how you connect to other players.
What remains now is finish implementing the last few things, such as the Team Status Screen in the Lobby, fix some minor bugs and polish things so it looks nice and runs smoothly.
The Tutorial:
The biggest thing that needs to be done still is the Tutorial as, much like the Lobby, it has to be remade from scratch. The Tutorial may not be entirely done and polished by the time of release, but we'll try to make sure it's at least functional so that new players can still learn the ropes of disinfecting.
The overall design of the Tutorial is much like the one in version 0.06, but touched up where needed and with new/improved models, textures and code.
The Reprogrammer:
As said in my previous blog post the Reprogrammer is getting an overhaul. This is mostly done and has changed the way it works and how you use it quite a bit: The infection will grow so called 'Lymph Nodes' over time, which are detected and displayed by the Reprogrammer. You'll have to move close to each Lymph Node and use the Reprogrammer on it to hack and weaken the infection. Once enough Nodes are hacked the infection will be destroyed.
This change makes for more tactical and dynamic gameplay, especially with the new AI. The hacking mini-game or animation itself is still a work-in-progress, the rest is fully working and you can already use it to kill the infection.
Animations:
Most of the Tool and Weapon animations have been updated and they've been made much faster/shorter so switching inventory items is less of a drag.
The player has basic facial animations now, such as blinking and eye movement, to make them look more alive.
Fixes & Polish:
From our own testing sessions and your feedback we gathered a lot of (small) bugs, so the gameplay is becoming smooth already. Of course, new bugs can always pop up so feel free to notify us if anything is awry. We'll be focusing a lot of fixing and polishing things the coming weeks to make everything as smooth as possible.
Looking forward to playing with y'all. This may be my last Progress Report before the release, posts after release will be mostly updates much like before the engine change.
And if you have questions, bugs to report or simply want to chat come join our Discord :)
1 Year Anniversary!
Hard to imagine it's been a year already!
Big, big thanks to everyone that's played the game, gave feedback and suggestions, made videos or did streams. Your continued support has really helped to keep us going.
It's been quite the turbulent year. Things sometimes went right, things sometimes went wrong too, but progress has been steadily made. We even switched to an entirely different game engine, which did delay progress on new features and such by 6 months, but also gave the game a huge upgrade and opened up many cool new possibilities for the future.
That being said: this new version 0.07 is very close to being ready for release. All the core gameplay is working in both co-op and solo play with minimal bugs. We're currently working on the Steam integration, which is now partially working but still requires some more implementation and testing. Once this is done you will be able to play with your friends through Steam lobbies & invites, much like the old version had. We're keeping the Direct Connect (connecting through IP) functionality if possible though, since some of you had issues with Steam and VPN's which caused de-sync and lag.
If all goes well we should have the big release this month, right on time for the Steam Summer Sale so let your friends know ;)
Thank you once again and we'll see you in space,
Jeroen & Rachel
Engine Change Progress Report #6
The time has finally come as we are in the final stages of developing the new version of Disinfection, on the brand new engine. Almost all of the core features are there and we've started work on implementing multiplayer code.
Multiplayer:
We are no longer using Steam for all the networking, rather we use the new engine's internal networking capabilities. This means that if we ever want to release and integrate Disinfection on other platforms, we can! However we will still be integrating Steam into the game so players can connect with each other through Steam itself, just like on the old version of the game.
It also means that until Steam integration is implemented you will have to directly connect to the host via their public IP. The game automatically fetches the host's IP and shows it to them to make things easier and we've added some basic instructions to the team create and team join menus to make things easier:
The multiplayer functionality is currently very basic still, but progress is made at a good pace so we're hoping to have all the core functionality working very soon.
The Testing Beta will be updated a lot the coming weeks, with the new multiplayer functionality being phased in step-by-step. Keep in mind that things may be buggy and feel free to report issues you encounter on the Steam Discussions or on Discord.
Player Skins:
New options have been added to the General settings menu for player skins. You can now choose from 4 different spacesuit skins and 4 different character faces:
This will be build and improved upon further at a later stage in development but we wanted to get this basic feature out of the way to make things easier later on.
Weapons:
Weapons are mostly complete and functional, but we are still working on the Reprogrammer as we are looking to improve it and are still experimenting with some approaches. The other weapons are fully working.
Tutorial:
The Tutorial is being working on, we are busy porting the map over to the new engine, polishing the existing assets and making new ones to upgrade it to the standard we've now set with the Lobby. The Tutorial will mostly stay the same, but will get a lot of general polish and slight adjustments to improve it.
Engine Change Progress Report #5
The testing beta has received a bunch of new updates, lets take a look at what's happening.
The game loop is almost fully complete, only the Weapons aren't (fully) working yet. There have been a lot of bugfixes and polish on many of the existing features, and a lot of new stuff has been added too.
An experimental Linux build is now on Steam for you to try, we've also gone and bought an extra desktop PC and additional hardware so we can test Linux builds on a dedicated machine, as well as test various (older) hardware with Windows 10 and 11 to see how our game(s) run. This should make debugging a little easier for hardware related issues, though of course it is impossible (and too expensive) to cover all grounds.
Let us know if you tried the Linux build and how it went :)
The game engine has been updated to stable release now and the Steam integration plugin for the game engine has reached that stage as well, meaning that we can start work on the networking code at full steam (pun intended) now.
New Features:
Identification and scoring now works,
Computer core data dump is now added to the scoring,
Mission difficulty is now implemented, affecting various things such as infection speed, how much the monster can sprint, etc.
The debriefing now shows the mission difficulty modifier for the total score,
The mission now ends when the entire team is dead, scoring now includes a penalty if this happens,
There is also a penalty now if the infection is neither identified nor destroyed,
The player can now die of oxygen deprivation and from being attacked by the monster(s),
The player PDA has new CRT effect, PDA screen will start glitching on low suit integrity,
Added a bunch of new sounds for the ship systems and improved the ambient sounds,
New sounds for the monster and for the player,
Infection start location is now randomized,
Airlock door is now blocked by the infection during hunts.
Tools:
Nano detector now fully functional,
Nano detector will now beep when it's done scanning.
Doors:
Updated animations for monster interactions,
Implemented door drag for fully infected doors,
New door drag sounds.
The Hunter:
New animations for hunt end, attacking and killing,
New sprinting ability & animation,
Attacks and kills players now,
If a door is in the way it will attempt to violently open the door, how long this takes depends on mission difficulty,
Lights flicker near the monster now, including your flashlight,
Your heart beats loudly when near the monster and you may hear it whisper in your head.
Engine Change Progress Report #4
The new version (0.07) has seen several (small) updates the past weeks. The game engine we use has seen many major updates as well, improving further upon the game. Lets take a look at what has been added and changed:
Fixes and polish:
The level generator has gotten a final overhaul, yes, really final this time :). It has been expanded with more level patterns for more variation and it has been given a big set of new capabilities which has allowed for more natural-feeling and interesting levels. Hallways can do things like loop now and there are finally no more issues with clipping bits of level geometry.
New collision meshes have been added, replacing the old/outdated ones. These new, custom made, ones are more optimized and more precise.
Minor fixes in collision and fixed some missing collision.
Reactor Core now has sounds and animated effects.
Basic temperature simulation has been implemented.
Several fixes and optimizations in code.
Several fixes in player interactions.
Minor fixes and changes in the in-game UI.
Tools:
All of the Tools have been added, such as the ER detector and Temperature Gun.
Weapons have been added but they aren't functional yet, this will happen once the monster is ready.
Doors:
Doors now stop functioning when fully infected.
Door code has been updated to support interactions with monsters (such as The Hunter) and things like malfunctions due to getting infected or due to power loss.
Sounds have been updated and new sounds for malfunctions and monster interactions have been added.
New animations for malfunctions and monster interactions have been added.
The Infection and Monsters:
The way monsters work has been changed somewhat: the infection source and the monsters are separate entities now, so you may have to try and destroy the source whilst being hunted. In the future there will be a few different types of monsters with unique abilities and ways of having to deal with them.
Navigation and pathfinding has been implemented in the level generator and AI.
Hunts have been implemented.
The Hunter monster has been given new AI and new animations with some made with motion capture.
The Hunter monster can now try to smash open doors violently to reach a nearby player it has targeted.
Motion Capture: We're still working on getting our motion capture setup working right. We've bought a second Xbox Kinect and have updated our custom software. There's been some minor progress and small successes with this already :) Hopefully we can do full motion capture for all our character animations in the future.
Make sure to check out the Testing Beta on Steam to try out the new version.
Engine Change Progress Report #3
Merry Christmas!
It has been a while since I last wrote a progress report. We have been diligently working on the new version of the game and the Testing Beta has seen several updates the past weeks. Things are taking longer than we anticipated, mostly because we wanted to 'step up our game' if you will. This means improving the overall quality of what we've made so far, as mentioned in previous blog posts, which takes extra time.
So: we're moving the estimated release of the new version to the end of January. In the meantime you can opt into the Testing Beta, to check out the new version so far and give feedback.
Speaking of the new version, here's the report:
The Infection:
The infection is slowly becoming functional and we're revising a lot of things, especially the monsters. With the new animation system we are able to make the monster animations and player vs. monster interactions more scary. The way the infection works has been revised too, making the infection source and the monsters separate entities. This means that you can no longer kill the infection source by killing the monster, though you could try to deter the monster, instead you may have to hunt and kill the infection source whilst being chased by the Hunter for example. The infection source and monster AI are being revised as well, with new and improved pathfinding and behaviors.
The Hunter will get more focus as the main monster that hunts players too and it is getting a whole set of new animations, such as destroying and opening doors or crawling through holes as well as new attack and killing animations, which were lacking in the old version.
We are either going to ditch the other hunting monster, the one that could move through walls, or we are going to give it a more passive role similar to the infection events. This is something we're still debating on, let us know what you think.
The infection types are more diversified in their behavior, having gotten new parameters for the way the infection spreads throughout the ship. Some infection types will infect areas quickly, but spread very slowly whereas others may spread quickly throughout the ship whilst taking much longer to infect it and create growths.
As for the environment: the infection is getting an upgrade visually, making it look much more like the ship and former crew are being consumed and converted. The shaders have been redone as well.
The PDA:
The PDA suit statistics and evidence section have been revised: As you can see there's a new section for 'Color'. This will be the color of your glowsticks, which has been a requested feature by many as it should make finding your way around the ship and to eachother a little easier as a team. There will be several preset colors to choose from and it will be part of the general character customization.
The evidence section now looks like this:
The Tool and Weapon information sections are pretty much the same, the text has been revised though to give more of an short overview. It should be more readable too now:
There's also a new section in the PDA, for information on the various infection types with their strengths and evidence:
Glowsticks:
The glowsticks now have a proper model and they will have the light color of your choosing once the character customization menu is functional, other than that they work the same as in the old version:
Player Animations and Motion Capture:
All the player animations have been remade, except for the new death/infection animations. We've used motion capture animations and added a lot of new ones for walking, strafing and crouching. There are new animations for crouch-walking and crouch-strafing as well, which the old version lacked. The third-person player model will have facial (idle) animations too, to make the characters look more alive. The new face model(s) have already been rigged for this. The rigging of the player, along with the model, has been revised too to remove some of the old jank.
We've bought two Xbox Kinects and are working on a motion capture setup, so we are less dependent on manual labor and third-party animations. This will allow us to make better custom animations for the infection monsters and player.
The Tool animations have also been remade, Tools are now attached to your spacesuit to make it a little more realistic visually and to allow players to see what teammates carry. This will mean that (big) Weapons will not fit in the inventory and thus may have to be carried and dropped, depending on if something like the Chiller actually fits. This is still something we're debating, let us know what you think about it.
Level Generator:
The level generator has had some more bugfixes and changes. It should no longer fail to generate a level and it now has different ways of generating the different ship sizes, so a small ship will always result in a small level and a large ship will always be large. There also was an old bug that made the infection spread speed depend on the ship size, making the difficulty level all wonky too. The way the infection is updated has been changed to get rid of this issue.
The ship sizes have changed to Small, Medium and Large to reflect the changes in the level generator.
New Testing Beta on the New Engine
The new Testing Beta:
The new Testing Beta is now on Steam and you might have noticed that you now get a Steam popup asking which version of the game you want to play:
Because all the files, including the EXE, are different in the new version we had to activate this choice menu. This popup will stay in place until the new version has been fully released. People that aren't opted into the Testing Beta can just select 'Play Disinfection'. Selecting 'Play Testing Beta' will only work if you are opted into the Testing Beta, which you can do through Steam itself. This is a public beta, so anyone that has the game can opt in.
Progress So Far:
Work on the new version of the game goes steadily, though we did have some delay due to illness which means the Testing Beta isn't feature complete yet. However: there will be very regular updates, so we can get feedback on new things faster and so that we can push new fixes faster too. This does mean every update will be much smaller, usually only containing a very short list of additions, changes and/or fixes. When the Testing Beta is feature complete we will probably return to our more consistent (two-)weekly update schedule.
Right now we are looking for some early feedback on all the changes so far and any new bugs that may rear their ugly heads.
This is what is currently working: The main menu is mostly functional. Most of the options menu is not functional yet but the graphics settings are fully working. Settings will be saved and recalled. We added links to our Twitter, Discord and Steam page so it is easier to contact or find us. There is no Tutorial yet, even though the button is there. The Tutorial will be one of the last things we will do since we need to implement all the features first. For now you can play the Tutorial in the old version, since the gameplay mechanics won't really change that much. The main menu background has been redone from scratch, with new animations making full use of the new engine's animation system. The loading screens have been fully removed from both the main menu and the mission start, instead animations and (sound)effects play. Let us know what you think and if it all runs smoothly for you too ːsteamhappyː
As said in our previous blog post: there's no co-op yet, only solo play. This is because we need to rewrite the networking code from scratch as the new engine is completely different from the old one in this regard. There's no ETA on when co-op will be functional, but at the very least before the end of December.
You can use the new mission interface to start and end missions, though there isn't much to do yet as the monster AI and Tools/Weapons aren't functional yet. The mission interface now displays the Computer Core password, except on high difficulty missions. In a future update there will be ways to hack the Computer Core or to find the password inside the ship (i.e. on a corpse or note):
You can use this password to access the Computer Core and do a data dump. This interaction is completely new and works in a similar way as the new mission interface. There might be additional features that will be implemented for the new Computer Core interface in the future.
The level generator is fully working, with doors and decoration, though it may still have the occasional bug. It will simulate the passive infection spread, as well as oxygen. Power and temperature are not functional yet.
That's all for now. Let us know what you think of the new version so far, we're eager to hear your thoughts.
Engine Change Progress Report #2
Work on the new version of the game continues steadily. With the new Lobby finished we are now focusing on the player, player interactions and the randomly generated ships.
Player Interactions:
The old system we had where the player has to click on physical buttons has been removed. It was too clunky and would have made navigating more complex things such as the Store a chore. We also felt the Mission Control menu and navigation could be spruced up a bit so we set out to design a new way for players to interact and navigate menus. This new system will also allow us to make other elements of the game more interesting i.e. an hacking mini-game for the Computer Core data dump and other ideas we're currently experimenting with. When interacting with things like the mission Control or the Store your character now looks at the screen when you click the keyboard. You can now navigate the interface with your mouse. You can leave the interface at any time without resetting the screen. The Mission Control menus have been given an upgrade and we added a new section to it so we can give players more information on what they need to do for that mission, before starting the mission.
The new mission select interface, selecting a mission:
The new mission information menu, this will display more details on your various (special) tasks:
The Level Generator:
The level generator is fully working now. Nothing much has changed as the level generator already worked very well in the old version of Disinfection. The various components for the level generator (hallways, stairs, rooms, etc) are almost fully ported over. We do need to update the textures of the decoration, like we did with the Lobby, and we need to make some new textures for the walls, ceilings and floors as the components needed to be arranged a little differently now. This will take quite a bit of time and effort, so this will probably be one of the last things we finish for the new version of the game. All the textures for the components are getting optimized too, some were too big whilst not needing the extra detail thus wasting GPU and VRAM resources.
Here's some screenshots of what we have so far:
Getting Rid of the Loading Screen:
Our original idea for starting and ending missions in Disinfection was to ensure a single, continuous, experience for the players. This meant we didn't want any loading screens. Unfortunately this wasn't possible in the old engine as the static Global Illumination needed to be re-baked every time and the navigation data for the AI also needed to be re-calculated every time. However in the new engine we now have dynamic Global Illumination, which is calculated in realtime. This doesn't need any baking at all. It also seems that navigation data can be pre-calculated and saved in the engine's editor and thus it doesn't need any calculation during gameplay. The new engine also allows us to preload the necessary components for the level generator, which makes generating new missions extremely fast, at the cost of a little more RAM usage. Even large missions didn't even dip the framerate below 60 during testing, which the level generator doing everything in a single frame. Of course it doesn't need to do everything in a single frame per se, but it's very nice that it actually does work that well. So, instead of a loading screen, we now have a short transport and docking sequence that plays whilst the mission is being loaded and prepared. This makes starting and ending missions a lot more immersive as it actually feels like you travel from location to location with your ship.
Traveling to your next mission:
Planning:
If all keeps going well we should have a playable testing beta by the end of this month, so players can freely opt into this beta, try out the new version and help find bugs. This testing beta may be solo play only initially as we need to rewrite a lot of the networking code, so that may not be finished in time. In December we will add the missing content & features and fix bugs. If it all goes well we should have the new version of the game ready for public release by the end of December.
Engine Change Progress Report
It's been a week since our big announcement, lets take a look at the progress so far, as promised.
The New Lobby:
The Lobby has been getting a big upgrade as we've added loads of detail and updated existing models and textures. There's still some bits and bobs missing, such as some doors, but most of it is there. The new Lobby has the Leaderboard and Store now properly integrated into it for when we are gonna implement those new features. The lower and upper floors have been completely removed as we felt the old Lobby was too big, didn't really have the right atmosphere due to its size and required too much walking. It also caused some confusion for new players. The staircase to the lower floor has been replaced with the new medical bay. The new Store is now where the medical bay entrance used to be. The staircase upwards from the starter airlock is also removed. All players will now spawn in this same starting airlock, the host player no longer spawns in the, now removed, cabin.
Here's the old mission control area versus the new one:
The old medical bay versus the new one:
The old starting airlock versus the new one:
And the old mission airlock versus the new one:
In terms of performance the Lobby has improved quite a bit, despite all the new visual flair. We've already done some more in-depth profiling and framerate measurements and it all looks very promising so far. Above screenshots were taken with realtime Global Illumination, realtime reflections, SSAO, Volumetric Fog and Bloom, and overall framerate was above 120FPS on our GTX1060ti. The graphics settings menu will be updated to reflect all these new effects, with presets, more on this in a future news post.
The Player:
The player model and animations were also in need of an upgrade. The model has been greatly improved already and the inside of the helmet as well as the face has been completely redone. We're also planning to make a couple more different faces for the future character customization feature. The helmet takes up less space on the screen as many of you requested and the camera doesn't wobble around anymore during walk animations, it's just a slight bob now. The player animations themselves are being revamped at the moment and we're also adding Inverse Kinematics for the player interactions so your character actually physically interacts with buttons, levers and other things.
The way players interact with the Mission control menu and with the future Store and Leaderboard is changing too: no longer will players have to press the big buttons on the model itself, instead when you click on the keyboard or screen the player character will look at the screen and you'll be able to use your keyboard movement keys for navigating the menus. This makes these interactions easier for you and much more flexible for us as we want the Mission menu to be able to display more information regarding the mission you have selected and the Store and Leaderboard will be able to show more things too whilst keeping navigation simple.
Dynamic Sounds:
We've experimented with Godot's sounds system a bit already and the Lobby has gotten a bunch of new environment sounds to further improve the atmosphere. The first bits and bobs of the realtime effects such as reverb/echo are also in effect too and this seems to work well. Once the level generator is working we can do more in-depth experimentation with this, but the first results sound promising.
Code:
Most of the code still needs to be ported over, but the basic player functionality is all there. The player can move around and interact with things. Doors have also been ported over and the way players interact with these has changed slightly: the player (character) now pushes a button or pulls a lever to open or close a door. Broken doors will make full use of the Inverse Kinematics system so the player character fully interacts whilst dragging open or close a door, making things much more immersive. This will also open the way for things like locked doors having to be opened by the player, by dragging levers and clamps to unlock the door, as well as other new interactions.
