Looking forward to a demo, adding more content and keeping the area to explore small would be good for the demo.

The inventory system is your own if I recall? Like how an item can take more than one slot.

Yep, the inventory system is our own custom system. We wanted to make sure players couldn't just carry a ton of resources. It's not perfectly realistic but we wanted it to be somewhat real in how much you can carry. We also will add weight that affects your move speed slightly.

Looking good, top screenshot is very nice. Looking forward to the playable prototype.

Our main goals at the moment are to go back to documentation and clearly define all aspects of the game and what we require to get the prototype out. We noticed that there are too many grey areas in our ideas and think we need a very clear definition of the features this game will have as this is an ambitious project and we want no surprises.

That's great. Beeing clear on the game gameplay and details is important.

Will it be some missions or quests ?

Does it uses a rest system ? You barricade a house to sleep in during some hours, only zombies breaking some door could awake you from your sleep and rest ?

Will it be some missions or quests ?

Does it uses a rest system ? You barricade a house to sleep in during some hours, only zombies breaking some door could awake you from your sleep and rest ?

Those are the details that we are currently working out. We have some ideas floating around.

Looking good!

Are you still using csg houses or models or a combo of both?

Mostly models now as I recall. Tj does all the modeling but the idea is having some external hulls that can have different interior configuration hulls to give variety while saving dev time. All interiors are actually loaded/unloaded at run-time as the player gets in range of the house too. Since we want are map to be very large with a lot of houses this helps with memory/entity count in both the editor and in game. The exterior has a script that tells us what interior prefab (in which all props are in also) to load. The interior collision is all there in the editor at design time though so we can generate the navmesh and characters can move around inside as if the interior was there. We do this because characters are moving around all the time even if they aren't in direct range. That and we don't have to screw around with the navmesh at run-time.

Do you use pivots to control house interior and exterior visibility ?

All interiors are actually loaded/unloaded at run-time as the player gets in range of the house too

So you have re usable indoor configurations also (group of models) as prefabs ?

So you don't use any LOD for houses ? Texture mip mapping also or lwoe res texture for lower LOD ?

BTW, the game and assets looks really nice.

So you have re usable indoor configurations also (group of models) as prefabs ?

The interior prefabs includes the interior structure along with all props. So we can make more than 1 prefab with the same interior structure and different prop configuration to also make variations.

So you don't use any LOD for houses

Being top/down we don't use LOD we just set the view range to medium or far I forget. Since the camera can't see that far then those houses far away won't be drawn at all but that doesn't matter as the camera can't tell that anyway.

BTW, the game and assets looks really nice.

Yes, Tj does a great job!

Thanks guys!

That's your metal shader on the gun btw YouGroove. Unfortunately while in game you don't really get close enough to appreciate it.

That's your metal shader on the gun btw YouGroove. Unfortunately while in game you don't really get close enough to appreciate it.

Your game view is top down far view, so you will be able to notice the effect only in the inventory ?

Did you invert the roughness map ?

If you want , send me your model and textures i can test and tell you.

The shader effect works but sometimes you need a strong metallic value, roughness is influencing the shader but not as much as your metallic part.

Those are the details that we are currently working out. We have some ideas floating around.

 

I mean simple quests :

You find some NPC in some places fighting or protected form zombies on fortified places, you dialog with them and they propose you some quest task.

Or you find a note, reading it , this is a quest telling you some treasure or something to find.

Also event triggered quest :

You fall in some hole with some underground and your characters talks alone saying he must find the exit, later he says he must find a mechanism to open the exit door. This is dynamic quest.

Good luck.

The interface and graphics look so crisp! You and Rick have been doing an awesome job so far! Can't wait for a video!

@ Rick, are you loading assets at runtime via Lua or C++? And are you streaming them in somehow (possibly on another thread)? Just curious on how you are approaching this.

@nick I'm loading the interiors in Lua at runtime on the main thread. As far as my experience has gone you can't load entities on another thread and have it work correctly in LE. When the game starts we load 1 instance of every model and then hide it as a precaching method. Then when you load the same model again it's near instant. However, we are noticing a slight delay still with loading interiors but haven't looked into it. We could be either missing a model in our precache setup or the amount of models in the interior is getting to a size that even loading instances is noticeable. If that's the case then I'll have to setup some means to load the interior and it's props over multiple frames.

Aw ok, that makes sense! I didn't know that instancing was pretty much instantaneous. Very cool though!