Apologies for the silent running..We've been under the gun over the last 3 months. Let me sum up what's been happeningL
- First we we finished the recode of all major systems, that wrapped in about Feb and opened the door for the new save system and multiplayer.
- The engine powering our game was way too out of date as we were using a custom branch that had stopped being updated in November. So that meant that we had to not only upgrade the engine from Unreal 4.12 to Unreal 4.15 but also switch from the custom Multi-res branch over to the vanilla and strip out a bunch of features. That was fun
- In upgrading to 4.15 we switched over to the new Forward Renderer in Unreal 4.14 / 4.15 which caused our main map to crap the bed, meaning we had to switch over to our brand new map sooner than anticipated. This map is 9 times larger above ground and 3-4 times larger underground.
- Our pre-placed building system didn't work with the new map as it is based on multiple streaming levels, so instead of spending time fixing that we decided to move forward with our custom placed system ahead of schedule. It was one thing after another here but the end result is as such:
- A new map that is roughly 12-13 times larger than the old one, meaning a lot of room for new adventures and other players
- We are using the new Forward Renderer in Unreal which is a boost of 20-30% FPS
- We have a new massive dungeon system
- We have a brand new save system, which is essentially our multiplayer save system but running locally with SQLite.
- Meaning we are very close to multiplayer
- Every structure in the game(including the cart) can now be hand placed