Howdy,
Fuxer is on vacation and I have been harvesting and planting for 2 months straight and my brain is fried from the 75 hour weeks I have been working, so in my confused state without Fuxer around I have decided to post the link to Beta 0.7 of The kID. This is my candid explaination of where I believe we are currently at with the game.
I did not make this decision lighty, because Beta 0.7 is nothing close to what the final demo will be, but what the hey. We are currently reworking everything from what was once Silent Hill fans trying to emulate that game into making it a very unique game. Beta 0.7 however, reflects none of this, and is only somewhat functionable in my opinion with high-end machines. I just got done with harvest and planting and need data from somehwere to get the ball rolling again in the right direction. This might also be informative to other 3DSG users trying to make large/complex games. This is more for developers than it is for The kID game, because there is little reason for me to release the the game at this beta stage other to explain to the 3DGS communities the current issues we are facing.
Let me go ahead and list the main ones from my department, which is programming. These are issues you will see in Beta 0.7. This will only make sense to advanced users by the way.
1) We have an all-model level (Fuxer's request for certain reasons). It is very large, and is not broken down yet into smaller segments, so the initial loading time of all these models the first time the game is played (after it is cached and played again it is not as bad) is very bad, depending on the system, it could take up to 3 minutes, stuck on the GM Soft presents splashscreen. The only level geomtery in the level is a box to surrounds it so 3DGS physics will work correctly.
2) D3d lighting on horizontal sufaces (i.e. the ground) with an all-model is not working very well. What it does is it will illumanate, for instance, one model segment of the pavement, and the when the player moves forward, it does not smoothly transition from one pavement model to the next. Instead, it will illuminate the closest pavement model and then suddenly skip to the next. This is only an issue with horizontal surfaces of models, not vertical. In beta 0.7 I have a d3d spotlight working, but regardless, of whether it's a spotlight or dynamic lights postioned ahead of the player and above at a certain height, the results are always the same; the horizontal lighting on the all-model level with d3d lighting skips from one horizontal surface to the next. It is not fluent. We are attempting to correct this with a shader spotlight, but for developers, I thought this might be of interest. This however, should not be a problem on level geometry, but only on models. I am not sure if this is specific to direct-x or 3dgs at this time.
3) The next problem relates to using d3d clipping and models. This again I am not sure is specific to 3dgs or d3d. With level geometry when using d3d clipping it uses polygon clipping, but when using models it uses origin clipping. Yeah, like that makes sense, right? First let me explain clipping, this is where you set a range and and anything outside that range is not rendered by the engine, thus saving FPS. With level geometry any polygon outside that range is not rendered, but with models it gets trickier, it based on origin, or center position of the model. I will try to explain this. Let's say you have a large building model that is 2200 quants in lenght, you have d3d clipping set for 1000, now when the player approcahes the building and is only 300 quants from the edge of the building, it is still being clipped by the engine. Why? Because with models the engine or d3d, whichever, clips from the origin. So even though you are 300 quants from the edge of the model building, the building is 2200 quants in length, so the center(origin) is 1/2 that which is 1100 quants, then you add the diatnce from the length edge, whic is 1100 + 300 = 1400 quants, so even though you are only 300 quants from the building, the engine is using the center of the building model, which is 1400 quants and clips the building, not rendering it. So you either need to make your model buildings small, break it into seperate model segments, or do clipping manually. Yeah, that problem.
4) I have struggled immensely to keep the FPS up on this sucker, but am barely hanging on. I will have to go back through everything and try to get it back up. I spent a month alone on the particle fog trying to get it where it wouldn't drag this already stressed-out program down to unplayable FPS.
5) Having the view of 3dgs cameras not be blocked by objects seems to always be hard to do. Though it shouldn't happen to much in this beta.
6) For developers I will rant on another day with issues on a game of this scale doing things out-side the box.
7) For interested people with decent machines, video cards, and high speed accesss....
Warning: This beta will make low-end machines cry and beg for mercy
Here's the key commands:
Movement:
WASD /Cursor Keys - Moves player
Shift - Run
Camera:
Q (hold) - Force camera to front
E (hold) - Force camera to back
Battle:
mouse_middle (click)/alt - Scroll through targets in range.
Pipe:
mouse_right - Attack
Pistol:
mouse_left (hold) - Aim
mouse_right - Fire Pistol
Inventory:
I - open/close inventory
cursor_up/cursor_down - Nagivate through inventory buttons
cursor_left/cursor_right - Rotate to next item/weapon
enter - Activate selected button
backspace - back to main inventory menu
Other Keys:
esc:
During SplashScreen - Goes to Main Menu
During Main Menu or Game - Start credits
During Credits - Ends game
enter - During Kid Splash will skip to Main Menu
0 - Restore Player to full health. Testing only.
F1 - FPS/debug
F6 - Screen Shot
Hmmm.. Pistol is auto-aim if target within range and holding mouse-left, if no target holdin mouse-left and aim with mouse. There are 2 inside rooms, one by gas station and one by hospital. I think I forgot to add my favorite song into beta 0.7 in the inside room by the hospital, oops, it will be in the demo which will definately be the next release which will be much-much different from this.
Oh, and this beta is around 130mb methinks and it's a .rar not .zip.
After 2 months of harvest you can tell me it's the worst beta you ever played and I will say, "yup".
The truth is, we have spent a lot of time on this game, and we have a ton of work to do yet to make it playable. Take that for what's it's worth.
Beta v0.7Loco
I should be able to get it increased and we will be getting a domain name and large bandwidth capabilities very shortly.
