Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We released a patch for the beta this week which reintroduces the sewers remastered for the new renderer, some new important itemisation mechanics and lots of improvements and fixes. You can find out more here:
www.baremettle.com
We're still hunting some elusive bug that's causing issues in the arena mode, but we think we're very close to finding it now. We've been working on finalising outdoor lighting for the new renderer, and solved the main issues we had with shadows and the GI. There's a couple of things to sort out for the markets, and once those are done we should be done with the beta and this part of the update.
We have also been looking at some ways to further improve performance. The new renderer deals with driver CPU bottlenecks so that the GPU isn't just waiting for the CPU to feed it work, and is very well optimised at the low level, so that the work is done very efficiently. We have given less attention so far to high level optimisation, which is basically doing less work in the first place, particularly for the GI. This is stuff like not updating GI in parts of a map that are currently hidden behind a wall, or updating what's off screen at a lower rate, more aggressively excluding empty space etc. Now being fully GPU bound, these optimisations can really improve things on lower end systems, help with high refresh rates and resolution, and give us some headroom for new effects like the volumetric lighting.
Our focus is also shifting towards getting the full update completed. The main topic here is procedural weapons. We had a strong start with tools for our 3D modellers to create factories for the models, and then we started on the material system and came to the unfortunate realisation that our old renderer just wasn't going to cut it. Now that's all sorted and integrated with the new renderer, our armour is already running on the same system, along with all the relevant itemisation features. At this point we've got to finalise the more gameplay focused features of the new weapon system and migrate everything over to it.
That's it for this week, we'll probably do one more big patch for the beta some time this week, see you next week. Have a great week.
-the BM team
We released a patch for the beta this week which reintroduces the sewers remastered for the new renderer, some new important itemisation mechanics and lots of improvements and fixes. You can find out more here:
Exanima 0.8.1.6 Beta
Been a super busy week and we wanted to get an updated beta out before it's over. We've finished updating the sewers for the new renderer and they are in again, some nice new features to make the new itemisation feel more complete and there's a whole lot of fixes and improvements. Cumulative...
www.baremettle.com
We're still hunting some elusive bug that's causing issues in the arena mode, but we think we're very close to finding it now. We've been working on finalising outdoor lighting for the new renderer, and solved the main issues we had with shadows and the GI. There's a couple of things to sort out for the markets, and once those are done we should be done with the beta and this part of the update.
We have also been looking at some ways to further improve performance. The new renderer deals with driver CPU bottlenecks so that the GPU isn't just waiting for the CPU to feed it work, and is very well optimised at the low level, so that the work is done very efficiently. We have given less attention so far to high level optimisation, which is basically doing less work in the first place, particularly for the GI. This is stuff like not updating GI in parts of a map that are currently hidden behind a wall, or updating what's off screen at a lower rate, more aggressively excluding empty space etc. Now being fully GPU bound, these optimisations can really improve things on lower end systems, help with high refresh rates and resolution, and give us some headroom for new effects like the volumetric lighting.
Our focus is also shifting towards getting the full update completed. The main topic here is procedural weapons. We had a strong start with tools for our 3D modellers to create factories for the models, and then we started on the material system and came to the unfortunate realisation that our old renderer just wasn't going to cut it. Now that's all sorted and integrated with the new renderer, our armour is already running on the same system, along with all the relevant itemisation features. At this point we've got to finalise the more gameplay focused features of the new weapon system and migrate everything over to it.
That's it for this week, we'll probably do one more big patch for the beta some time this week, see you next week. Have a great week.
-the BM team
