Hello fellow gamers! It's been a while. As we said in last DevLog post, we've been working on rework of some critical game engine features, which we (almost) completed in the latest development build.
Deferred Rendering
One of the things our game engine was lacking up until now is modern rendering technique - Deferred Rendering. Most modern game engines use some form of it to bring players the image they see on their screens. You can learn a bit about differences between traditional Forward Rendering technology and Deferred Rendering in this article.
Using newer rendering technology lets us now have things which we couldn't have before, like dynamic lighting from multiple light sources and particle effects, which will bring a lot more life in the game without concerns for performance.
And performance is our big concern! There are a few things let to tune, optimize and test on different hardware, but Deferred Rendering gave us a boost in rendering performance from 10% to 90% depending on user's hardware and graphics quality settings.
UDP Networking
Again, if you want to dig dipper in the tech stuff of it, you can start with this article describing the difference between the old networking we used and the new one.
In the start of the project our goal was to quickly achieve working results and it was much easier to use reliable and robust TCP for our networking than bother with handling lost packets ourselves. Unfortunately, it's not a good long-term solution for a lot of games, including ours, since it needs to be as real-time as possible without any spikes in delay between client and server.
Which is why we completely rewritten our networking library from the ground up now using UDP instead of TCP. Preliminary test show increase in stability and network delay, but some bugs still need to be worked out.
Few other things
We are also work on Alpha world level design. In the build we added a lot of new tools for terrain design which allowed us to create cool caves.
A big progress have been made in developing the new Tentacle Biome, current results you can see here.
Work In Progress
Since we didn't have much changes this time, we decided to share with you some things we are working on now.
Character GUI
One of the most important pieces of game interface is a Character Screen which displays your equipment, calling, abilities and many other info. It's on its way to the game, but you can get an early look at the design now.
Plum Octopus
New mob in the making is Plum Octopus. For now we can show you only concepts of it, but expect it to be in production very soon :)
Rabbits Race
Rabbits is a race of enemies that will oppose players in achieving their goals. They have warriors and mages and they're relatively smart. A statue of a Rabbit Warrior was in game for some time now, you might have seen it on one of the videos or screenshots.
New traps and Tentacle
Dynamic and egaging game world is one of our main goals in developing of Elteria Adventures. We are currently working on adding more interractive traps in the game, concepts of which you can see below.
On top of it is a Tentacle, which is technically a mob, albeit pretty stationarry one.
Next is a spring that will launch player that step on it directly upwards with some bit of air control - it can be a way to reach higher places or to recieve signifficant damage from a falling.
The last one is a sort of a tunnel that drags nearby players inside and unless they're carefult, transports them on the other side, which can be any place including a death trap ;) Watch your step...
New Gems
Gems are an important part of the exploration gameplay in Elteria Adventures and we want to make them less generic and more fun. New gems are in the process of modeling now, but you can check their concepts now. From left to right: Dark Gem, Lava Gem, Wonder Gem and Nature Gem.
See you next time!
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