Development Update – January 2022 Feb 1 - Tim
Greetings! A month has passed, so like we promised, we’re here to deliver an end-of-month update, where we detail various developments that developed over the course of the month’s development, and a lot of developments did indeed develop.
We showed a couple shots of Cavity for our new year update, but progress on Cavity has fallen into a bit of a pit and Pat doesn’t want to show it off just yet. I had to make do with cool technical stuff, actual game progress, and some other leeks that got leek’d instead. You know, like a teaser for an entirely different map. Keep reading, you’ll see it.
IT’S THE PING!
When we last saw him, Trever was networking a lot of player movement. Over the month, he worked on networking player animations and syncing player inputs. A lot of work has been done in polishing, as we’re trying to make movement prediction and reconciliation feel as good as possible. Since I know it always sounds better coming from the programmer himself, I got Trever to describe some of the work he’s done.
Making our own engine means making our own lag compensation and syncing. This is a first pass in having the player feel like they are in total control but with server validation and the server reeling him back. 150ms ping for both clients for the first test, then 350ms ping for both for the second test. It needs a lot of refining and tweaking, and it needs to take ping into account, but this is a huge step.
I’m currently trying to figure out the best way to correct the player without feeling like they're being pulled back by the server super hard. There are a few more things to account for, like the player's rotation inputs, but the base is there. I’m trying to get things in a good state where members of the team in Australia and the US can play together without it feeling sluggish or jittery.
Trever also managed to work up a grenade framework with some basic VFX. I can sleep better knowing that the grenades I throw will certainly bounce their happy way into the outstretched arms of my enemies so that their oblivion will be of my own choosing.
WHAT’S ON THE MENU?
In other news, Isengrim has made significant progress in developing a functional menu UI. While these screenshots all show the in-engine menu still undergoing massive changes, it’s one more step towards a completed game, and having a functioning menu means we can test a game loop and lobby mechanics.
Part of making our own engine involves making tools for UI development. This means figuring out scaling and dynamically adding in buttons so that the game types and maps you make in the eventual forge mode can be displayed seamlessly.
GUNS DON’T MOVE ON THEIR OWN
Assault Rifle
Plasma Rifle
He’s also done some animations for the pistol, but I was told I shouldn’t show those yet, since they’re still being polished. Honestly, my favorite one so far is when you ??????????????? with the ?????????? right before you ???????????????????. One of these days, I’ll get to show them to you, and we can all enjoy the pistol movements together.
FORERUNNER EXPLORATION
Sam and Aviixe are working on an unannounced map right now. During the month, Aviixe spent several days exploring colour palettes, lighting, and materials for the map before spending any time on the map’s key art. This early part of a map’s creation process helps establish the mood of the map and gives us an idea of what materials we’ll have to make. I won’t tell you what the map is called yet, just know that it’s very fun and Sam is very excited to make it.
LEEKS, NOT LEAKS
At the start of the month, Pat had the brilliant idea of making the i01_sneak_peeks channel in the Installation 01 Discord server so we can share content we’re working on or stuff that got posted somewhere else, like Twitter or ArtStation. Unfortunately, now our developers are openly leaking content and nobody is stopping them. I am 100% blaming Pat. The audit log says he did it. Oh well, it’s already out there, so I may as well show you the stuff that got leaked over the month that hasn’t already been featured:
SPAAACE APES
Surprisingly, we’ve had quite a few people ask about Installation 01’s interest in NFTs. Put simply: there is no interest. We would like to take the time to reiterate that Installation 01 is completely non-profit in accordance with Microsoft’s Game Content Usage Rules. This means that we legally can not and will not deal in any NFT content of any kind. Thank you for understanding.
THE DAILY GRIND
Does the prospect of working with a group of passionate, muscular, handsome young game developers really get your jimmies rustling? Click this button or contact us in some other meaningful way if you want to help develop the coolest game ever with a bunch of totally-ripped broskis!
Join the i01 TeamSTATE OF THE GAME
Actively In Development
- Grenade Framework
- Player Inventory
- Player Animations
- Menu UI
- Cavity (Map)
- Unannounced Map’s Key Art
- Weapon VFX (General)
- Gen 2 Renderer
- Improved Animations Tools
- Inverse Kinematics
In Design Iteration
- Pickups/Interactives Framework
- Equipment Framework
- Lobby Systems
- Player Customization
- Reviewing key art for menu
- Realtime Global Illumination
- In Editor Vertex Painting
- Audio Occlusion
In Backlog/Pending Further Discussion
- Gametype Systems
- Hud Systems
- Raytracing
- Threaded Loading
- MacOS Support
- Procedural Weather tools
- Soft Body Physics
What do I write here? Saying goodbye isn’t exactly my thing, nor am I really supposed to say goodbye.
This isn’t goodbye. We have a bunch of stuff in the works for you to enjoy, like a whole game.
It’s gettin there. We might also put together an armour showcase in a couple weeks. I dunno, we’re still thinking about that one. In any case…
I’ll be back
DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN
Tim
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