Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
This week we've mostly been working on getting the remaining force powers and updated content ready for the next insider release. Basically a third of all force powers rely on a certain type of visual effect, that could be done in a simple way or an annoyingly complicated way that would look better. We were set on the simple way, but when it came to it we ended up doing it the complicated way so it took some work, but it did turn out great. We're still dealing with some tricky control and input interactions for one power specifically, but we're very close to our target for this update now. There are as many as 16 powers planned for Force, but not all of these will be in the update, some will come later along with other game features.
We're also just about done with updating story items to the procedural system, at least the ones we're introducing in this update (which is most of them). As we did this we found the procedural system wasn't always giving us the exact aesthetic we wanted, so we also worked on some general improvements to the materials and further ways to customise them. This again is something that trickles down to all other items too. It's a huge inherent advantage of the procedural system that we're able to improve materials, add features, make adjustments, and all items instantly benefit from the changes and remain consistent in quality and style as materials are generated on the fly. Without this we'd have to individually update every single item, which isn't even feasible.
Recently we fixed an issue with leg-environment interaction that could cause legs to become "broken". While this did fix a cause of this, at its core this is an issue that can affect any object and has always been present in one form or another. We haven't had any more reports of it, but internally we found ways to still reproduce it, especially using Force thaumaturgy and even the new object interaction methods. This has been kind of a fundamental flaw in our unique physics engine, it is very stable under stress, but with this one fault. We've tried to solve this several times over the years, but never found a solution that always works, until now. Finally we figured out a way to seemingly solve any instance of this, overcoming what was probably our physics engine's biggest weakness.
As we get a bunch of content and other things in game and ready for release we inevitably spend a lot of our time just making final tweaks and adjustments and generally working on many little things that are not worth mentioning here, but we're getting through a lot and overall things are looking good.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
This week we've mostly been working on getting the remaining force powers and updated content ready for the next insider release. Basically a third of all force powers rely on a certain type of visual effect, that could be done in a simple way or an annoyingly complicated way that would look better. We were set on the simple way, but when it came to it we ended up doing it the complicated way so it took some work, but it did turn out great. We're still dealing with some tricky control and input interactions for one power specifically, but we're very close to our target for this update now. There are as many as 16 powers planned for Force, but not all of these will be in the update, some will come later along with other game features.
We're also just about done with updating story items to the procedural system, at least the ones we're introducing in this update (which is most of them). As we did this we found the procedural system wasn't always giving us the exact aesthetic we wanted, so we also worked on some general improvements to the materials and further ways to customise them. This again is something that trickles down to all other items too. It's a huge inherent advantage of the procedural system that we're able to improve materials, add features, make adjustments, and all items instantly benefit from the changes and remain consistent in quality and style as materials are generated on the fly. Without this we'd have to individually update every single item, which isn't even feasible.
Recently we fixed an issue with leg-environment interaction that could cause legs to become "broken". While this did fix a cause of this, at its core this is an issue that can affect any object and has always been present in one form or another. We haven't had any more reports of it, but internally we found ways to still reproduce it, especially using Force thaumaturgy and even the new object interaction methods. This has been kind of a fundamental flaw in our unique physics engine, it is very stable under stress, but with this one fault. We've tried to solve this several times over the years, but never found a solution that always works, until now. Finally we figured out a way to seemingly solve any instance of this, overcoming what was probably our physics engine's biggest weakness.
As we get a bunch of content and other things in game and ready for release we inevitably spend a lot of our time just making final tweaks and adjustments and generally working on many little things that are not worth mentioning here, but we're getting through a lot and overall things are looking good.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
