Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We're still putting the last few bits together for a release, converting assets and building packages etc., and just polishing things up. We do tend to get a bit carried away with the polishing part, but during these pre release periods where we interact with the content a lot we get into a rhythm and get through stuff quickly, especially now with all the improvements to our tools.
We've also been doing some very exhaustive testing, trying to catch up on various old little bugs and testing the renderer for compatibility with different hardware. We have a history of issues with Intel integrated graphics that we were never able to solve completely, but this time round we seem to have got the renderer working flawlessly, without compromising quality or performance. This is going to be a really huge graphical improvement for people running integrated GPUs.
Procedural materials is something we've been sinking quite a bit more time into. These are super important for the overall look of the game, but also support some very important new itemisation and customisation mechanics. Developing one of these materials well once means doing it for every item past and future in one go, so it's worth the effort. This is especially important now that we've integrated the same methods into our standard asset pipeline, which allows us to get a consistent level of detail and quality which we would never achieve if we had to put all the work in each time. Here's a screenshot of one of our new procedural leathers in different quality, wear and colour:
We've updated and replaced a huge amount of assets now, mostly in the early game where our oldest assets were found. We have kept the look of everything consistent with how it was, but just better. One more small thing, but surely appreciated by Exanima fashionistas, we decided it was time to update our belts, check these out:
Anyway, won't be long at all now before we put the renderer update out, and we're already turning a lot of our attention to the arena update that will follow shortly after. We've been filling in the last few gaps, like some missing tournament match types, and discussing how we will integrate various future mechanics, with some focus on multiplayer. As we've mentioned we want to turn the arena mode into a much more fleshed out game mode with much more to do, and a platform that we can continue to build new features into.
That's all for this week, have a good one!
-the BM team
We're still putting the last few bits together for a release, converting assets and building packages etc., and just polishing things up. We do tend to get a bit carried away with the polishing part, but during these pre release periods where we interact with the content a lot we get into a rhythm and get through stuff quickly, especially now with all the improvements to our tools.
We've also been doing some very exhaustive testing, trying to catch up on various old little bugs and testing the renderer for compatibility with different hardware. We have a history of issues with Intel integrated graphics that we were never able to solve completely, but this time round we seem to have got the renderer working flawlessly, without compromising quality or performance. This is going to be a really huge graphical improvement for people running integrated GPUs.
Procedural materials is something we've been sinking quite a bit more time into. These are super important for the overall look of the game, but also support some very important new itemisation and customisation mechanics. Developing one of these materials well once means doing it for every item past and future in one go, so it's worth the effort. This is especially important now that we've integrated the same methods into our standard asset pipeline, which allows us to get a consistent level of detail and quality which we would never achieve if we had to put all the work in each time. Here's a screenshot of one of our new procedural leathers in different quality, wear and colour:
We've updated and replaced a huge amount of assets now, mostly in the early game where our oldest assets were found. We have kept the look of everything consistent with how it was, but just better. One more small thing, but surely appreciated by Exanima fashionistas, we decided it was time to update our belts, check these out:
Anyway, won't be long at all now before we put the renderer update out, and we're already turning a lot of our attention to the arena update that will follow shortly after. We've been filling in the last few gaps, like some missing tournament match types, and discussing how we will integrate various future mechanics, with some focus on multiplayer. As we've mentioned we want to turn the arena mode into a much more fleshed out game mode with much more to do, and a platform that we can continue to build new features into.
That's all for this week, have a good one!
-the BM team
