What's up this week? 12/18/12

Lets hear it neutrino, what's up? :mrgreen:

Damn you, you got me excited!

Stop imitating developers! :evil:

You bastard

I can say something...

... the website has been updated. There's a new background and a new font for the title.
I like the new font. :mrgreen:

http://planetaryannihilation.com/

They are preparing for the end of world, probably, so they are just too busy for new updates.

This time of year is typically low productivity because of all the people leaving town. We had a tradition at Cavedog that we shut down the entire company the week of Christmas and we also follow that tradition here. I'll still be working that week though (although I will be in Florida for a few days).

I'm working on the texturing for the planet. This is a procedural solution that allows the mapping of unique texels on every inch of the planet. So far it's been a lot of work and I'm only part of the way through it but it's going to be cool when finished.

Mike has been working on order queues and getting the units to actually follow the orders. It's cool to see the machinations of his mind as he writes these systems in preparation for the higher level AI code.

Elijah continues his work on unit motion and pathing. The system has advanced pretty far by this point with flowfields, steering, pathfinding etc. all working. There is still more work to do here but it's rapidly coming together. He's had a few challenges because of my insistence on everything being truly dynamic.

William has been doing system integration and working on client/server and replication model. So the code that Mike/Elijah/William have written have all been combined into a client and a server that can connect and run. This stuff is still separate from the actual planet generation I'm working on but the integration with that should happen soon.

On interesting thing to note is that we've also put more work into how the server is configured and managed. We've integrated a scripting solution there that's very powerful. I'll go more into the design of this at a later time but it's going to allow some really cool moddability of things like the game lobby in a way that's fairly client agnostic.

WJ has continued his work on integrating and implementing the UI system. The solution of using webkit is conceptually elegant but technically a bit difficult to deal with. Perf also continues to be a concern so he's working to get a handle on that.

The art team has been concepting and building commanders for the different factions. In addition they've continued to push the concepts for the final terrain look which I hope to show soon.

What? :shock: I thought there will be just one faction.

Thank's for the update!

Far as I understand, different factions have same units, different paint jobs, different commanders & possibly 'lore'.

May have changed though.

Thanks for the update Neutrino.I´m realy looking forward to the final terrain look.

How is this different from being client atheist?

Well Neutrino has said to think of it not as "one faction" but rather "one unit pool". It also fits in with Über having said they will be looking into commanders being different beyond the visuals. We don't really know more than that right now.

Mike

Nice update, I so love you guys at Uber for actually taking your time to answer queries like this. Somebody asks and one of the project leads answers within a short timeframe. Just awesome

A client atheist I suppose doesn't believe clients exist at all, whereas a client agnostic believes there is a client out there but doesn't care what kind of client it may be?



And seconded on what Cola_colin said. Good to hear the updates Neutrino.

So true... but for now let us all enjoy the holidays and hope the world still exists in 2013 so we can enjoy the work Uber is doing for us now :mrgreen:

I take it this means units won't have SupCom2's "Hover Syndrome" and will move in a much more Realistic(Like in FA) manner?

Mike

I don't care so long as it's not like that in PA, that was the single, biggest immersion breaker for me, and don't get me started on how the damn units clipped into each other! It would be a serious let down for me if not fixed.

Mike

So where in Florida will you be visiting? It's pretty great this time of year (particularly because it's summer weather during winter.)

Nice update, thanks for getting back guys, its nice to be kept in the loop and not just left wondering all the time.