Hey everyone, fifth chapter of the dev blog here to provide you guys with some details about how game development is going.
I am happy to say that the new update is roughly around 75 to 80 percent complete and my new release estimate is roughly two weeks from now.
Now let's take a look at what I've been working on:
- All weapons have their respective attachments and logic associated with each attachment (such as recoil reductions and whatnot) have been implemented.
- Improvements to the IK system that forces the third person character to maintain their hand on the barrel of the rifle during animations will make the system much smoother.
- Replicated AI spawning and movement logic. AI enemies will select the closest player and update to their location correctly. Additionally AI enemies have a buffer time in between selecting players, if one player gets closer than the selected one, there is brief delay before the enemy switches targets.
- Implemented user interface (UI) functionality for correctly updating health for each client.
- Shop functionality has been implemented, player can view their inventory and the shop. Shop panels provide 3D models of each weapon and the inventory shows weapon slots as well what weapons are contained in the inventory. Additionally, attachments now appear and can be interacted with from the inventory (Weapons can have attachments removed etc.)
- Reworked options menu that is much cleaner and provides new options to tinker with as well as video memory usage screen that shows the impact on performance different settings will have.
- Made some improvements to the main menu and lobby screens.
- Added the level transition when going from lobby to in-game for all clients. Added the logic for determining how many players should be connected before starting game.
- Added a controls page that shows which keys perform what actions. (Future update will bring the ability to change key bindings in the controls page).
- Implemented logic to go with options menu with a saving and loading system for options.
- Created basic setup for in-game options menu alongside pause functionality in single player mode.
- Added search filter to server browser and the ability to search by ping as well as region.
- Added new camera animations for shooting, walking and reloading and reworked camera anims for running.
- Added walk sway while ADS (So the weapon doesn't stay completely still when moving).
Now that I've revealed what I've been working on and finished here's what's next for me to work on:
Replicating More AI Functionality
- Currently player damage is replicated but not the animations and attacks of enemies. This is my next big step and should be finished within a few days.
- Also only one AI enemy (the minion or the walking zombie) has been replicated, however the groundwork has been laid and replicating other enemies is very straightforward and simple.
- A replication bug with the zombies' clothes and variations not correctly updating for the clients. I am looking into this issue, especially as I add more clothing and skin variants to the zombies both in this update and future ones.
Creating and Replicating Player Elimination/Respawning
- Currently players do not respawn and do not have a death functionality. I aim to improve from the previous versions by added new effects and camera animations when a player dies.
User Interface Stuff
- A scoreboard that tracks player's stats like kills, assists, deaths, headshot and average accuracy as well as ping has yet to be implemented.
- An XP indicator when a zombie is killed and post-match results have also yet to be implemented.
Good progress has been made in all areas of the game and as stated at the beginning of the post, my new estimate on release for v0.3.3 is roughly 2 weeks from now.
Thank you for reading and the next dev blog will come out on Thursday.
Thank you.
Kind Regards,
KolaCape