P0_A5

Unity 2019.3 should be out quite soon, probably in the next few days.

Based on my research into the HDRP, I think porting to the HDRP at some point should be feasible, but I will need to wait a while until there is more support for it.

The DirectX grass shader, that is possibly going to be the most complex system to port to the HDRP, has got an update coming shortly that adds better support to the HDRP.

I will continue experimenting and evaluating the HDRP in A6, and hopefully begin a full port to it in A7, which would be about eight months from now.

I will probably need to postpone several of the goals that I had for the next phase of the project, because otherwise I would need to spend time porting all of that work into the HDRP.

The main goals for the next phase of the project are the introduction of preliminary multiplayer support, an overhaul of the procedural city generation system, more experimenting with the HDRP, in preparation for an eventual port, and a new character system (possibly based on Daz3D characters) and the replacement of the existing starship model that serves as the players main hub.

These last two objectives may need to be postponed, at least in part, due to the HDRP port. Adding new artwork before porting would not be a good idea.

I have made some changes to the GUI system that I was working on recently.

In addition to adding support for multiple colours in the GUI options, I have also added a 3D “background” object, to make it look like the GUI is mounted on a wrist-computer or portable computer.

This has the advantage of being far more immersive than an on-screen display with no background, as well as making the GUI more easily visible by having a plain black background.

I have spent some time optimising and debugging some long-standing issues with the project.

One of the changes that I made is a new way to access the main control script. This script holds references to all of the primary scripts used in the project.

Previously, I had been using a public reference to acces this, which was tedious, but I have since figured out a better solution.

I have also fixed some bugs with the nebula and starbox background systems.

The Grass shader that I am using has an update that adds preliminary support for the HDRP.

I am having some issues getting it to work in my project, but if I can solve these issues, it could be easier to modify this shader rather than create a new one for the HDRP in shadergraph.

I have created a new world-space GUI system which I think looks quite good.

I wanted to avoid “on-screen” guis like this as much as possible, since I am trying to create an immersive, realistic, project, but I will inevitably need GUI’s like this at some points in the project, to handle things like interacting with the crew, choosing dialog options, and making other critical decision in the game.

I do have voice recognition technology already in the project and working, however the state of the art of voice recognition is not good enough to use it without a visual alternative.

In the future I could try to improve the immersive effect by creating some kind of in-game laptop or mobile computing device that the user could select to display the gui. This is something that I definitely intend to do.

I have made some progress with recreating the terrain blending shader in the HDRP.

I can blend reasonably well between three textures, although there are some noticeable seams.

There are also some problems with applying the new material to the actual terrain objects.

It may be preferable to try to actually convert my existing shader to the HDRP version without actually using the shadergraph.

I have fixed a few additional issues with the HDRP port.

So far, it actually seems to be going ok. The next major issue to deal with will be the terrain, water, and grass shaders.

I intend to work on a concept for a new terrain shader at some point next week.

I have also done a lot of work on the Dynamic Story Generator. It is relatively simple, but I have started working on some dynamic plotlines that integrate into the rest of the game.

I can then improve on this later, and add more features, etc.

The Advanced GUI’s are now done.

I am quite pleased with the result.

I have added a kind of advanced tracking radar system, which allows an enemy ship to be detected by the frequency of it’s electromagnetic emissions, similar to how sonar works with sound.

These emissions can then be compared with random noise, natural phenomena, and the signatures of man-made objects, and if a matching signature is found, it can be targeted.

I have used this to create “stealth” ships, that are invisible to all other forms of detection, and can only be detected in this way.

I have also added the ability to target specific locations on enemy ships, instead of just targeting the ship itself. Previously the code to do this was there, but it wasn’t wired up to a GUI.