Better Menus, Better Matching
We’re redoing all of our in-game menu systems for a vastly improved user experience. This dovetails with better Steam integration, which we are working on at the same time. The end result will be cleaner, more uniform, more functional menu systems with hooks into your Steam friends lists. This will allow you and your Steam friends to connect more easily in the same network games.
Menus are pretty time-consuming and complicated to work on, involving graphic design, information architecture and programming. For those of you interested in our development process, here’s a look at the wireframes we’re starting with…
And here’s what we’re aiming for (below). Much of the legwork here started by our pal, long-suffering designer Ryan Hewson. Poor Ryan. We tend to shove his original masterpieces through the harsh meat-grinder of utilitarianism. Sorry mate, we luv u!
Network Optimization
For non-techies: you can look forward to less frequent disconnects. Disconnects have been pretty common as of a few weeks ago, as we changed the way network games operate.
For semi-techies: we have been working with Unity network relay servers (to handle NAT punchthrough issues), which has added a little more lag and weight to network connections. Since our previous network code was completely unoptimized, we are now doing a first pass on optimization to reduce lag and mitigate disconnections between hosts and clients.
Latest Beta Footage, Map Improvements
As mentioned in our last update and a recent forum thread, we’re verrrry slowwwwly adding beta testers. Hope to get more of you in game soon.
https://youtu.be/D41K-FmzkqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQTpNbvSm6w
We’re pretty much done our Crossroads (was ‘Deathmatch 01’) map at this point, and are making big art improvements to ‘Deathmatch 02.’
Here are some previs paintovers for DM02 (below). Many of the pieces you see here have already been modelled and are in testing.
Until Next Time!
Keep your hands on the wheel and your finger on the trigger!