Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We've been testing these fairly big engine changes, we wouldn't need to do this if we didn't expect to run into problems, which indeed we did. We have tracked down and fixed some (older) bugs, but mainly we identified some problem cases with the pathfinding, these are rare, and sometimes more hypothetical even, but they exist. We could have worked around these for now or ignored them, but we decided to take the pathfinding through its "next evolution" which while solving these problems also supports some of the more advanced features that we planned to add later.
This isn't a huge change to how the new pathfinding works, but it does affect every part of it. We are basically switching to a more complete 3D map representation which gives us more detailed and accurate information about available vertical space and solid space. This not only allows us to solve our problem cases, but also improves AI pathfinding in many situations, supports using low ceiling restrictions (height restrictions, crouching to enter small spaces, eventually crawling etc.) and improves navigation during flight. We've also made some further qualitative and performance improvements to pathfinding in general.
We've been testing on AMD graphics too and managed to find fixes for some graphical issues with their newer drivers. We've heard reports of some rendering errors when Steam overlay is enabled, but we weren't able to replicate this. If you're experiencing this problem and have any details, please let us know. These issues aside, we're happy with how much these AMD driver changes have improved performance.
Hopefully it won't be too long before we're ready for some test builds, we want get the ball rolling while we finish up the new content and force powers. We have quite a lot of additional things we're currently working on in terms of gameplay features, but we're not sure yet when we'll actually introduce them. Force alone is probably the biggest gameplay addition yet, and we've been able to do some cool things with level design using new features, not only in the new content, but with some pretty big changes to some existing content.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
We've been testing these fairly big engine changes, we wouldn't need to do this if we didn't expect to run into problems, which indeed we did. We have tracked down and fixed some (older) bugs, but mainly we identified some problem cases with the pathfinding, these are rare, and sometimes more hypothetical even, but they exist. We could have worked around these for now or ignored them, but we decided to take the pathfinding through its "next evolution" which while solving these problems also supports some of the more advanced features that we planned to add later.
This isn't a huge change to how the new pathfinding works, but it does affect every part of it. We are basically switching to a more complete 3D map representation which gives us more detailed and accurate information about available vertical space and solid space. This not only allows us to solve our problem cases, but also improves AI pathfinding in many situations, supports using low ceiling restrictions (height restrictions, crouching to enter small spaces, eventually crawling etc.) and improves navigation during flight. We've also made some further qualitative and performance improvements to pathfinding in general.
We've been testing on AMD graphics too and managed to find fixes for some graphical issues with their newer drivers. We've heard reports of some rendering errors when Steam overlay is enabled, but we weren't able to replicate this. If you're experiencing this problem and have any details, please let us know. These issues aside, we're happy with how much these AMD driver changes have improved performance.
Hopefully it won't be too long before we're ready for some test builds, we want get the ball rolling while we finish up the new content and force powers. We have quite a lot of additional things we're currently working on in terms of gameplay features, but we're not sure yet when we'll actually introduce them. Force alone is probably the biggest gameplay addition yet, and we've been able to do some cool things with level design using new features, not only in the new content, but with some pretty big changes to some existing content.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
