Hi all,
Afraid there's not many new visuals to show off since last progress update, as it's mainly been work behind-the-scenes.
Do keep in mind these all are all heavy works in progress and will change a lot.
Laying drives
Cannon rotation constraints are no longer automatically detected, which often led to odd and unpredictable behaviour.
Instead, you now set the desired constraints manually. This creates a zone around the cannon which must be kept empty.
Crew role assignment
Crew roles are now assigned by assigning which parts each crew member operates.
This new approach let's you explicitly assign gun sights to gunners and opens the door to further crew hatch and optics mechanics.
ETA
9th August 2023
A sizable delay from my original end of June ETA, made back in April.
This was due to several rewrites planned for the refinement period on the roadmap being included in this update. Otherwise I'd be converting old systems, then immediately rewriting them come the refinement period.
The new estimate includes a 2 week closed-beta, to iron out the major changes before an experimental branch release.
I've been taking my time on this one. It'll hopefully be the last rewrite of this scale, so it needs to be a rock solid base for the rest of the planned features and future modding.
So happy to see the patience of the community with these longer term updates, which generally move the game forward the most.
Done
- Part management and installation rewrite
- Part selection rewrite
- Overlay system rewrite
- Vehicle part rebuild process rewrite
- Part obstruction detection rewrite
- Part and vehicle save and load process rewrite
- Overhauled and converted from volumetric to geometric:
- Turret baskets, rings and traverse motors
- Engines
- Transmissions
- Torsion bar suspension
- Cannons
- Crew
- Ammo racks
- Gun laying
- Designer to gameplay transition rewrite
- Crew multi-tasking overhaul
To do
- Minor AI updates with new functionality
- Damage model rewrite
- Backwards compatibility for old designs
- Graphics and polish
- Hamish