P0_A7

The mutliplayer features of the project have been tested, and are properly working.

There is no actual artwork for the multiplayer players, but the basic code does work, including saving and loading, and storing the position of all of the players control objects (ships, characters, etc).

I have also successfully tested other aspects of the AI system, and made some general fixes and improvements in the project.

The state variables have also been tested, including the players stats (injury, need for food, water, etc) and the ship stats (cargo, food stores, etc) and all of these are synced properly with the server.

I have successfully tested the Artifical Intelligence system, including the ability for the AI to use vehicles, and follow the player anywhere in the world.

It is also possible for the AI’s position to be saved to the server, and restored on the next run.

I have fixed most of the issues with the AI. The system still needs to be updated and improved, but it is mainly functional.

The enemy AI is capable of following and attacking the player even at extreme distances and velocities.

I have also improved the lighting for the interiors, and fixed various other bugs and issues.

I have successfully tested most of the AI for the enemy ships in the project. There were a few minor issues which were fixed.

I have, however, run into some issues when testing the AI over long distances and high speeds. It seems that the AI can often overshoot the player, instead of slowing down and stopping correctly.

I am in the process of finding a solution to this.

I have made several improvements to the physics system for the large starships.

The previous system worked ok, but it was very simple, and didn’t properly represent real world physics.

The new system is still quite simple, but it is more advanced. I intend to improve this system further in the near future.

The next goal is to test other large ships. They should be able to track and attack the players ship even at very high speeds and long distances.

I have added a “compile time tracker” script to the project to aid in continuing optimisation efforts, and I have been extensively debugging the core mechanics of the project.

In particular, I have been testing the floating origin and persistence systems. I fixed a few minor bugs, but thankfully the core mechanics seem very solid, players can travel between star systems, at extreme distance, and can enter and leave ships, land on planets, etc, and save their progress at any point to the server, and then resume from the same position that they left off from.

In the near future I plan to add a system to save the world state to a database, so that the server itself can be shutdown without a loss of player progress.

I have added some decorative art to my project. I spent some time experimenting with the specular workflow in unity, and, combined with the recent addition of the postprocessing asset, the shiny, glossy, materials in the project are looking a lot better.

I have also experiment with lighting and shadow to improve the presentation of some of the artworks.

I have fixed a variety of bugs and issues in the project, mostly involving collision, and optimisation.

For the next few weeks I will be mainly focusing on more extensive debugging and optimising for the project.

I want to focus on optimising my compile times and removing some unneeded code and assets from the project.

I want to take another look at ASMDEF files too, this could help to optimise the compile times, but it may require me to refactor my code quit a bit.

I don’t want to start too many new features until I have properly tested the project as it is.

I have added “persistence” support to the “items” base class in my project.

Previous, items could be picked up, moved, combined, used, etc, but these changes would not save, and the items would be back in their original positions when the user quit and restarted.

Now, the positions of all items can be added to the server (and to the database) and are saved between runs (even if the server itself is shut down). This gives powerful virtual world and persistence features to the project.

There is still some work to do with this system, for example persistent items are not parented properly, so if the item is on board a moving object (such as a ship) it will not move with the ship.

In addition, for performance reasons, not all items are persistent, and currently the user must manually select which items should be made persistent. This should be done automatically.

I have also fixed some bugs regarding the placement of cities, etc.