Greetings captains!
Instead of a feature deep dive, I wanted to showcase a whole bunch of upcoming visual improvements in the lead-up to the new playtest and the wrap-up of game development. Be ready for a very visuals-heavy dev log!
Aesthetics
In addition to wrapping up game systems, I've made a few passes at in-battle rendering with a focus on lights, effects, and the backgrounds. As a result, battles should feel much more lifelike. Take this new screenshot for example.
Global Lighting
First off, lighting has been completely overhauled. The Last Captain has switched away from the camera's default auto-exposure values and manually adjusted them so that different levels have drastically different moods. The space backgrounds have also been updated to much higher fidelity. Just compare these two images of the same battle in different lighting conditions:
Individual Ship Lighting
All ships and stations in the game are receiving a lighting pass to support a much more dynamic look. The individual ship lights will be much more obvious when fighting in many of the new, darker space battlefields. They are carefully placed to make sure performance remains high even on lower-end PCs.
Before Ship Specific Lighting
After Ship Specific Lighting
Ship Turning
Ships now actually turn into the direction they're going, which makes both the player's ship and NPC ships feel much more dynamic.
Atmosphere
A bit strange mentioning this one, considering there is no atmosphere in space. Nevertheless, different environments have varying levels of dust and particles in vacuum, leaving even space environments feeling a bit "foggy" for lack of a better word.
That, and we're adding in fights in the ominous upper layers of gas giants...
That's all for now! As usual, there is much more to show off. Until then, I'm curious, what do you like the most about these new changes? What are you hoping to see? Let me know, and I might just be able to fit them in before launch :)