Software and Games

I have spent a lot of time adding in a checkpoint save system for the third campaign.

This allows the player to quit and resume the game at the most recent checkpoint.

The system is quite basic, and needs a lot of testing, but the core methodology is working.

There is one intermittent bug that occurs when the player returns to their capital ship, but I have not yet been able to track this down. This only seems to occur during checkpoint loading.

I also fixed a few minor bugs that I found when working on the checkpoints.

There is still quite a bit to do. The next goal is to add checkpoints to the other campaigns. This should be easier, since they are more procedural and less objective based.

The modelling improvements and changes are essentially done, for the moment.

I have fully integrated the art changes with the game, and fixed some issues that occurred.

I have also spent some time improving the AI enemies, and making other improvements, etc, to the game.

In addition, I have tested the campaign with the new artwork, and fixed all issues that I discovered.

The next goal is to add more checkpoints/save points to the story missions in the game, and test them.

The vast majority of the new modelling and texturing is now done. The artwork is simple, but it should, hopefully, be ok for early access.

I am using a combination of repeating textures and static textures for the artwork.

I have also added most of the lighting and prefab decorations to the scene, but there is still quite a bit of work to do here.

I made some changes to the mission triggers too, as well as some story and dialog changes.

The next goal is to add enemies and more code changes for the mission triggers, and test everything.

I have made some changes and improvements to the new UI camera system, in order to fix some bugs that I found.

I also discovered a long standing issue with the ground cover rendering when on planets. Under certain circumstances the grass renderer was being applied twice, breaking grass exclusion, and no doubt causing additional framerate hits.

This has now been fixed too.

I have just a few major objectives left before I can enter early access.

The game is still in a relatively unfinished state, but I can leave a lot of the final work until after the EA phase.

The only major goals left are to add more artwork to the first and third campaigns, and add and test a checkpoint system.

Then the only goals left are lots of testing, more and better artwork, and more story improvements, etc, etc.

I have started work on the remaining artwork now.

I am continuing my deep-dive testing, and I have fixed some issues with the floating origin system as well as rewritten some of the Persistent NPC spawning code (There were issues with the seeds being reset, resulting in different NPC’s being spawned on differen runs).

I have also added more functionality to the NPC system, as well as tested and improved the AI companion system.

I have added a new UI camera system which renders world space UI’s above all other objects. This prevents grass, etc, from rendering on top of the UI. This system is still being tested, and I am not sure if I will stick with it, there are some bugs and unintended behaviour.

Finally, I have completed another deep dive of a complex feature in the game. This one was easier than the previous one, there were only a few minor bugs found. I even had time to add some new features to the system.

There is still quite a lot left to do here though.

The most recent updates are some changes/improvements to the AI, especially while engaging in combat (There were some things that I missed here), and some improvements to the weapons.

I have also started a new, intensive run of tests.

So far, I have discovered quite a few bugs while doing this (It is a deep dive in to a series of complex systems), however these bugs were relatively minor, and I should, hopefully, be mostly finished with this now.

The main issues that I ran into so far involved the floating origin system. I am testing the code to scan for objects at very long ranges, where the game objects themselves have not spawned in yet.

I am also testing dynamic loading of NPC’s on board vehicles, etc.